September 6 | International Portal of Teacher Education

Sep. 06, 2016

Dear subscriber,

MOFET ITEC Portal Newsletter

Dear Subscriber,

We are delighted to be sending you the monthly newsletter of the International Portal of Teacher Education, containing the latest articles on teacher education, pedagogy and instruction.

As the fall semester of The MOFET Institute's Online Academy approaches we invite educators to meet online with the heads of our various programs during the Online Academy Open Days. Learn first-hand about our programs and courses for teachers, teacher educators, researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders. Check out the entire Open Days schedule here.

After 8 years online, this month, the portal crossed a meaningful milestone - over 4000 items, taken and reviews from more than 40 leading academic journals and written by more than 6800 different authors.
We would like to thank all our thousands loyal readers, making the International Portal of Teacher Education one of the significant online databases in the field.

Wishing you an interesting reading,

The MOFET Portal Team

September 6, 2016

International Portal of Teacher Education

Please note: a complete list of recent additions to the portal follows the Featured Items.

September 2016

Featured Items

‘These Are Not the Realities I Imagined’: An Inquiry into the Lost Hopes and Aspirations of Beginning Teachers

The concept of the Program for Excellence in Teaching (PET), formulated at colleges of education in Israel, was designed to train teachers who not only exhibit excellence but also have potential to influence the educational system and institute change therein. This study, focusing on 21 students and beginning teachers who participated in the PET at a certain college of education in Israel, examines their professional expectations and the disparity between intentions and implementations that happens as the beginning teachers encounter the reality in schools. This study assesses the dissonance between students’ and beginning teachers’ self-expectations in light of the PET context.

Instructional Strategies for Using Video in Teacher Education

In this study, the authors investigated the impact of two instructional strategies for using classroom video in the context of university-based teacher education on pre-service teacher learning. The authors developed two video-based modules, one using video to illustrate rules, the other using video to elicit preservice teachers’ knowledge, from which they then derived rules. . They found the two instructional strategies to be differentially effective, making distinct contributions to initial pre-service teacher learning. The findings revealed that learning environments based on the rule-example strategy fostered the reproduction of factual knowledge and its application to observe and evaluate authentic classroom sequences, whereas the example-rule strategy fostered the application of knowledge to plan a lesson and to identify challenges in a situative way.

Continuing Professional Development – Why Bother? Perceptions and Motivations of Teachers in Ireland

This article aims to focus on the motivating and inhibiting factors relating to teachers’ engagement with continuing professional development (CPD) and to analyse the data in relation to Herzberg et al.’s (1959) two-factor theory, as a means of drawing implications for the future provision of CPD in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The findings indicate that teachers’ intrinsic motivation to seek out their own CPD continues to apply to actually engaging in CPD. Teachers in this study expressed a preference both to seek out and to pursue CPD areas that they valued for their own personal reasons and in response to their own personal and/or professional needs. The findings demonstrate that intrinsic (personal) factors – namely career advancement, potential growth and achievement – were the chief catalysts in motivating teachers in this study to engage in CPD.

Student Teachers’ Beliefs about Learning and Teaching and their Participation in Career-Long Learning Activities

This study aims to investigate the relationship between beliefs about learning and teaching and participation in learning activities among student teachers. The authors found that student teachers student teachers appear to hold equally strong subject matter-oriented and pupil-oriented beliefs, but they also appear to vary in their beliefs. The findings reveal that pupil-oriented beliefs are positively related to participate in learning activities. No significant relationship exists between subject matter orientation and learning.

Differences of Mentoring Experiences across Grade Span among Principals, Mentors, and Mentees

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of mentors, mentees, and principals pertaining to the first year of mentoring in an induction program. The findings revealed that principals noted little concern with program components and appeared the most satisfied with the mentoring program as a whole. Subsequently, mentors had more positive attitudes than did mentees across grade span, and mentees at the elementary school level had the most positive attitudes among all mentees across grade span. In addition, it was most important to elementary school teachers to participate in mentoring, and also to observe veteran teachers as part of their mentoring activities.