Section archive - Instruction in Teacher Training

A supportive school environment is crucial to the enhancement of student teaching experiences. This study assesses student teachers' perceptions of secondary school environments. Then, it relates the perceptions to their satisfaction with school experiences and teaching commitment.

This qualitative constructivist research study examines how concurrent Education undergraduate students made sense of the complex dilemmas inherent in the cases and in particular, the factors that influenced their critical thinking processes. The article identifies three core categories that emerged in participants' critical reflections.

The authors focus on the role of emotions in preparing preservice and in-service teachers to confront educational and societal inequities. 14 graduate students who enrolled in a course on urban education participated in the study. The authors analyze students’ understandings of a critical incident in the course about gender inequities through individual semistructured interviews, focus group interviews, and document analysis. Four prevalent patterns of emotional selectivity emerged within the specific context of gender inequity in educational contexts. The fourth of these patterns considers emotions-reason informing knowledge, identities, and actions. This pattern offers pedagogical possibilities for challenging personal, educational, and societal inequities as it situates the focus of teachers’ roles as active agents of change.

This research sheds light on the realities for teachers who have small numbers of EAL students in their mainstream classes, and the factors that influence their practice decisions with regard to these students. The inquiry was undertaken in four primary schools in the central North Island of New Zealand. In each school, 1 teacher in a Year 1-2 class and 1 in a Year 5-6 class participated in the research. The 8 class teachers had a range of general and EAL teaching experience. It was found that some teachers generated strategies for EAL students within the context of regular class instruction, whereas others worked with individual EAL students within the class.