Communication and relations

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March 11, 2024

Towards diversity-responsive teacher educators: reflections of a professional development initiative

In the past year, a fruitful collaboration took place between a teacher educator, Ann, and a doctoral researcher, Benjamin, regarding a professional development initiative (PDI) on […]
February 19, 2024

Creative research as a starter for professional dialogue

Creative research methods invite people in and promote professional development while participating in the research.
January 15, 2024

‘So how do you feel that lesson went?’ Patterns of discursive interaction in post-lesson debriefs

Thinking before we talk, or realising that talk is structuring thinking and thus learning, would allow for more intentional conversational choices in post-lesson debriefs.
December 13, 2023

Teacher’s Profession is (Still) Attractive in Finland

In 2023 at the University of Helsinki, only 10% of the applicants were accepted to primary school teacher education programme and only 4% of the applicants were accepted to special education teacher education programme.
December 13, 2023

Identifying School-Based Teacher Educators’ Professional Learning Needs: An International Survey

The presumption that, if you can teach young people in schools you can therefore also teach adults how to teach and how to teach more effectively, is one that has permeated many teacher education systems and policies (Parker, Zenkov, and Glaser, 2021).
August 28, 2023

Sleeping Beauty and the future of (teacher) education

What if you fell asleep and wake up one hundred years from now? How do you think education smells in 2123? Which metaphor would best represent the teacher-student relationship we see? Which animal do you hope runs the school premises? Sixty educational professionals working in all areas of the educational field
February 1, 2022

Long-COVID-19 – The need to (re-)research about teacher educators’ professional learning needs

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged us to rethink about the long-lasting implications for teacher education and how the traditional approaches to educate teacher candidates have evolved. This unexpected scenario has become a living laboratory for teacher educators who have had to transfer to solely relying...

March 5, 2021

Fit to teach?

As a teacher educator of 13 years of experience, I have learned a great deal since Covid-19 took its grip on the UK in March 2020, with the pandemic providing me with time to reflect on and review my previous and current practice (Bain et al 2002).The personal and professional became inextricably intertwined, prompting me to engage with my practice in more depth. I am a teacher educator, a parent, an assessor, and a former school teacher. These roles once separate, have become interwoven, leading me to look at my engagement in the teacher educator landscape through a different lens.

October 30, 2020

Changing the ‘message’ of school physical education in response to COVID-19: avoiding the ‘new normal’

The current Covid-19 pandemic has, and will continue to, significantly influence the way in which teaching and learning are experienced in schools (Kaur, 2020). As some governments begin to consider plans and protocols for a safe return to schools, as a physical education teacher and physical education teacher educator respectively, we raise the concern that physical education...

October 13, 2020

Teachers as teacher educators in the post-COVID world

It has been a decade since the highly influential report Teaching Scotland’s Future, also known as the Donaldson Report, was published. This document set out a blueprint for developing teacher education in Scotland. I know this report well, because I read it cover to cover, in preparation for my current job in Teacher Education. The interview presentation asked me to consider the recommendation: “All teachers should see themselves as teacher educators...”

October 13, 2020

Teacher educator conversations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities and responsibilities (post 3)

On March 12th, 2020, the HEIs closed. As work moved from our educational institutions, complete with offices, corridors, lecture theatres, tutorial rooms and staff rooms, to our homes, we also moved from the physical world to the virtual world of work. In designing these new...

October 13, 2020

Teacher educator conversations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities and responsibilities (post 2)

Our identities have changed somewhat as a result of the many changes to our professional routines, norms and practices coupled with changes and adjustments in our personal routines. Our omni-presence at home means we ‘wear many...

October 13, 2020

Teacher educator conversations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic: opportunities and responsibilities (post 1)

As a teacher educator and Assistant Dean Research I believe it is incumbent on me to examine, suggest and explore initiatives amongst teacher educator colleagues in helping in identifying and initiating how best to consider ‘spaces’ where teacher education colleagues can harness...

June 23, 2020

Mentoring as support for professional development

Mentoring is acknowledged as a means to support professional development for teachers. However, mentoring has multiple meanings and may be practiced as supervision, support or collaborative self-development for new as well as experienced teachers. As researchers we were curious to find out what expectations newly qualified teachers, their mentors and their school-leaders have to mentoring and professional development and thereby to identify what kind of mentoring is needed...

May 12, 2020

Being and Becoming A Research-Active Teacher Educator

It’s April 2020 and I’m writing this at home in lockdown during the Covid 19 pandemic. In these terrible times, one of my ways of maintaining a semblance of ‘normal life’ is to take refuge in my research, an enjoyable and – usually - productive process for me. But this was not always so. In my early years as a teacher educator, I struggled to research and write. A brief autobiography will explain why.I entered teacher education, straight from school teaching...

September 18, 2019

Learning to teach starts with “learning to look”

How student teachers learn to teach has been dominated by the idea that the “knowledge of teaching is acquired and developed by the personal experience of teaching” (Munby, Russell, and Martin (2001, p.587). Of course, this is an important part of how new teachers learn how to teach, though I am also interested in the value of the pre-practicum phase and how this contributes to their knowledge of how to teach. Specifically, I have become interested in the contribution teacher educators’ modelling of teaching strategies and behaviours can make...
June 24, 2018

Communication as the basis for understanding

Art can be a beacon to education. Two big art revolutions, the Renaissance and Impressionism, can show us a vision that should influence teaching and learning. The revolution of the Renaissance era, as Botticelli's picture Primavera (spring) of the end of the 15th century shows, allowed to depict the beauty of the world and of human beings.
January 15, 2018

Adolescence psychology in school-based teacher education

In The Netherlands, workplace learning consists of 40% of initial teacher education. The main activities in workplace learning are the training of teaching skills and assignments for the teacher education institution and school.
August 18, 2017

21st century creative pedagogy: its importance in teacher education

21st century English school-based education and learning debatably needs rethinking. Our classrooms repeatedly still mirror those of the Victorian era and education may be viewed as ‘traditional’ and ‘boring’ with pupil motivation and engagement frequently a problem