Section archive - Instruction in Teacher Training

The current study investigated the relationships between a professional learning community (PLC), faculty trust in colleagues, teachers’ collective efficacy, and their commitment to students. The findings from the Hong Kong teacher sample indicated that two PLC factors including collective learning and application and supportive conditions – structures, and the factors faculty trust in colleagues and collective teacher efficacy could significantly and positively account for the school-level variances of teachers’ commitment to students.

The purpose of this article is to offer a conceptual analysis of empirical research on teachers’ education and outcomes that is linked to the political controversies and policy debates that shape it. The review reveals that there are six distinguishable genres that examine connections between teachers’ education and posteducation outcomes: teacher certification and its correlates, teachers’ educational backgrounds and the teacher workforce, entry pathways into teaching and their consequences, teacher preparation programs and their graduates, teacher preparation and learning to teach in the early career years, and teachers’ life experiences and beliefs/practices.

In this article, the authors sought to understand how student teachers (STs) in a teacher credential program with a history of attention to diverse learners were learning about their culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students through Teacher inquiry (TI). STs took actions of various kinds to learn about diverse students: researching contexts and histories; examining student work and performance at full-class, subgroup, and individual levels; and asking and listening beneath the surface to students’ reasoning, attitudes, beliefs, and concerns about school learning and other issues. However, TI elements were used to varying degrees, in various ways, and with varying levels of success.

This paper examines ways in which the current policy context influences teaching and explores the challenges these influences pose for research on teaching. To illustrate this potential policy impact, the authors focus on three core dimensions of teaching: who is the teacher, is teaching practice stable or changing, and what constitutes teaching quality.