Search results for: Teacher education programs

This study examined the experiences of a group of six preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong as they prepared for, engaged in, and reflected upon a compulsory research project during the final year of their Bachelor of Education degree program. The article discusses the experiences of these preservice teachers in terms of the construction of their teacher identities. The findings illustrate the identity conflicts the preservice teachers experienced as their research engagement required that they cross institutional and educational boundaries to confront, question, and reject various identity positions, including ‘student teacher’, ‘full-time teacher’, and ‘teacher-researcher’. The article concludes that the lens of teacher identity can provide insights into how student teachers’ perceptions and experiences of research shape and are shaped by their understandings of themselves as teachers.

This article considers the impact of recent political decisions on the provision of teacher education and the continuing development of teachers in England. The author tracks how successive governments have changed the requirements necessary to become a teacher as circumstances have changed in the country. The author also considers the impact of these changes on higher education institutions.

The present study examines performance of students who took a basic skills test (Praxis I) between 1999 and 2005 and one of the four large-volume licensure tests (Praxis II) between 2002 and 2005. The findings of this study reveal that individuals who pass basic skills tests at borderline levels are far less likely to pass licensure tests than are candidates who meet the median state-level basic skills test requirements. Thus, the authors claim that students who have difficulty writing would very likely have difficulty in writing-intensive curricula like English and social studies, which would then be reflected on their licensure exams.

In this article, the authors examine how teacher training can play an active role in inculcating teachers with sociopolitical awareness and the resultant image of this transformative teacher training. The authors present a conceptual and practical model for training teachers as involved intellectuals in the society and in the community. The model was built in light of educational challenges in the global, technological, and competitive world in general and in Israeli society with its schisms and violence in particular. The article also describes findings from pilot studies which have been done to assess the teacher training program at the Kibbutzim College of Education in Israel.