Identifying pre-service teachers’ profiles of conceptions of learning: a cluster analysis

Social Psychology of Education - This study was conducted to track conceptions of learning among pre-service teachers and to verify whether they can be grouped in profiles. A sample of 232...     

From teachers’ implicit theories of intelligence to job stress: The mediating role of teachers’ causal attribution of students’ academic achievement

To better understand the cognitive antecedents of teachers’ stress in the school setting, the effects of teachers’ beliefs regarding intelligence and their causal attributions of students’ academic performance on teachers’ job stress were examined in the current study. We recruited 271 teachers who voluntarily filled out an anonymous questionnaire. Findings demonstrated that teachers who endorsed the entity theory of intelligence tended to attribute students’ poor performance to students’ inability but not lack of effort. Results showed a positive relationship between teachers’ fixed view of intelligence and job stress, and this relationship was mediated by teachers’ attributing students’ poor performance to students’ lack of ability, even after controlling for teacher efficacy. We suggest to promote the psychological health of teachers by incorporating intelligence mindset and attribution training programs in preservice teacher education, professional development, and cognitive behavioral stress intervention for in-service teachers.     

Reflection in pre-service teacher education: exploring the nature of four EFL pre-service teachers’ reflections

This year-long study examined the nature of reflections belonging to four EFL (English as a Foreign Language) pre-service teachers. It was longitudinal in nature, taking place during the phases of teachers’ initial observation, teaching practice, and entry into the teaching profession. This study aimed to investigate the nature of student-teachers’ individual reflections throughout the phases of school experience, teaching practice, and entry into the workplace. Data collection was facilitated via interviews conducted throughout the study’s duration, and the collected data were subsequently analyzed deductively using content analysis. In addition, the onion model of reflection of was employed for interpretation of the data. The findings of this interpretation indicated that although most of the reflections concerned environment, behavior, and competence (outer level of the onion model), some of the reflections nevertheless pertained to mission (inner level of the onion model). Moreover, an examination of participants’ individual reflection processes revealed that although reflections initially were outer-level in nature, by the end of the study they had become more inner-level-oriented.     

Group problem-solving among teachers: A case study of how to improve a colleague’s teaching

A case study of six teachers cooperating to improve a teacher’s teaching showed the dynamics of the group problem-solving process. An analysis of their verbal interactions showed the importance of shared understanding to successful group problem solving. The cooperative group structure helped members resolve cognitive conflicts and build group understanding. During this process, the members’ past teaching experiences and knowledge contributed to their conceptualization of the teacher’s teaching problems and their proposed solutions to improve the teacher’s teaching. Tsz Cheung Lam graduated from the Department of Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2004 and obtained his Master of Education degree. His research interests lie primarily on cooperative learning and problem solving. As a primary school teacher in practice, he is now studying part-time for another master degree in data science at the Department of Statistics of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Response to Intervention (RtI) Model: a promising alternative for identifying students with learning disabilities?

Until recently, in the United States, the traditional way to identify students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) was through the discrepancy model where student IQs were compared to their level of achievement. However, educators and researchers alike have questioned this model as a means to define and identify students with SLD. The 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) includes the use of response to intervention (RtI) as possible alternative to the intelligence-achievement discrepancy for identifying SLD. Core components of RtI include high-quality classroom instruction, universal screening, continuous progress monitoring, research-based interventions, and fidelity of instructional interventions. In Spain, the last publication of Ley Orgánica 2/2006, May 3, of Education (LOE) uses the term, Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD), in the chapter on students with specific needs of educational support. Some Autonomous Communities in Spain like the Canary Islands region are regulating SLD identification that adds RtI as an option to use in the eligibility process. Nevertheless, this model it is still at an embryonic stage and many issues are unresolved. While no special issue can cover all of these themes and issues, the contributions included in this monograph examine relevant aspects of this approach. Indeed, this special section is an attempt to introduce in Spain an approach that could be an alternative for identifying and intervening with students who have learning disabilities.     

Attending to the spiritual through the teaching of science: a study of pre‐service primary teachers’ attitudes

Analysis of the attitudes of 140 pre‐service primary teachers, and of extended interviews with 15 of these prospective teachers, indicates differences in the ways pre‐service teachers use science in their heuristic reasoning and their ability and/or willingness to include a spiritual dimension in their science teaching. These differences were a reflection of neither the prospective teachers’ formal scientific training nor their personal religious faiths – both factors have been found to make little difference. Rather, they are indicative of how their personal conceptual frameworks emanate and influence their teaching approaches. Most are clearly able to engage with science’s spiritual component: an appreciation of the need for individual humility and recognition that scientific understanding is the result of a shared, collective endeavour. Despite most prospective teachers being neither hostile to the thought of addressing spiritual issues during their teaching of science nor totally convinced of its importance, they are also largely ignorant of the possibility, never mind the potential benefits, of its inclusion.     

Predicting students’ learning strategies: The contribution of chronotype over personality

Students’ learning strategies as well as the search for its determinants have gained expanding interest in psychology and educational research. The present study investigated the contribution of chronotype, another construct of increasing importance in the academic context, to students’ learning strategies controlling for the established predictor of personality and its relations to chronotype. A sample of 318 college students (mean age = 22.6, SD = 2.5; age range = 19–34) was assessed online through self-report questionnaires. We discriminated between two learning strategy factors aggregated by a diverse set of learning strategies, learning discipline and elaboration. First, results confirmed significant associations between most personality scales and students’ strategy use. Furthermore, we found evidence for significant associations between chronotype and personality, as well as chronotype and learning strategies. Finally, structural equation modeling revealed that openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and morningness were significant predictors for elaboration, whereas learning discipline was significantly predicted by conscientiousness and morningness. We conclude that chronotype plays an important role explaining students’ learning strategies over and above personality.     

Dead end jobs or a path to economic well being? The consequences of non-standard work among people with disabilities

How do non-standard jobs affect the economic well-being of workers with disabilities, and what happens when non-standard workers use disability lawsuits to challenge discrimination and improve their economic opportunities? This study uses data from the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and a Lexis search of legal cases to help answer these questions. Temporary employment, independent contracting, and part-time employment are almost twice as likely among workers with disabilities as among those without disabilities. Non-standard workers with disabilities receive lower pay and fewer benefits due both to the types of job they hold, and disability gaps within job types, which contribute to their high poverty rates. They would continue to have high poverty rates even if these pay gaps were eliminated, however, because they work fewer hours than non-standard workers without disabilities and are concentrated in lower-paying occupations. In attempting to improve their opportunities through disability lawsuits, non-standard workers prevail in only a small minority of cases. Several policy implications of the lawsuits and survey data are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Believe in me,and I will too’: a study of how teachers’ expectations instilled confidence in Grade 10 students

Social Psychology of Education - Teacher expectation research has continued to establish an association between what teachers expect of their students and what students accomplish academically....     

Developing pre-service teachers’ confidence: real-time coaching in teacher education

Teacher quality continues to be of major concern in the Western world, and identifying the most effective approach to teacher training remains a contested area. It has been argued that teachers resist change because they lack motivation, have inadequate knowledge and expertise to modify their practices, and are reluctant to take risks for fear of having their confidence damaged. While remaining skeptical of such a deficit view, our interest is in pedagogic approaches which seek to better prepare teachers for teaching in contemporary society and, thus, to enhance their ‘effectiveness.’ This article discusses the use of a Real-Time Coaching (RTC) model designed to enhance pre-service teachers’ practical skills for contemporary classroom teaching. The model focuses upon pre-service teachers micro-teaching while simultaneously gaining feedback via a headset in real time; this is then combined with multiple collaborative feedback cycles within a learning community in order to foster reflective practice. To collect information about participants’ experiences with the RTC process, two rounds of semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. Our findings indicate the RTC model has the capacity to foster a sense of confidence and ownership of learning by developing practical skills alongside affective attributes such as resilience, efficacy, and a disposition toward continual improvement.     

Four components that sustain teachers’ commitment to students – a relational and temporal model

Teacher commitment is a key factor for explaining how and why teachers care about their students’ learning and well-being, and it is a well-known fact that teachers invest emotionally in their work and their students. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the conceptual underpinning of commitment in relation to the teacher-student relationship and to suggest a conceptual model based on empirical material. Eight teachers were selected for interview, all of whom had been in the profession since 1993 and had reported high commitment throughout their careers. The content of the teachers’ accounts were analysed, with attention to how commitment to students manifested itself in their stories. The analysis resulted in a model consisting of four temporally related components of teacher commitment to students: moral, action/motivational, knowledge/self-confidence and reward/self-esteem. Understanding teacher commitment is important for preventing teacher attrition. Rather than applying general measures to boost commitment, this model provides conceptual bases for addressing deficits in particular components of teacher commitment.     

The role of the degree of acquaintance with teachers on students’ interpersonal perceptions of their teacher

Some researchers suggest that the way a teacher is perceived during the first encounter with a classroom group resembles, and therefore is predictive of, later classroom processes as perceived by students. This study investigated the degree to which interpersonal ratings (i.e., control and affiliation), given by secondary school students to teachers unknown to them, are comparable to ratings given by students who are well acquainted with that teacher, by means of a quasi-experimental design. Ratings concerning a teacher students had not met before, based on a 5 min video vignette, were compared to ratings given by students who had been taught by the same teacher for at least a year (N $\,{=}\,$ 489). Students at no acquaintance perceived a teacher’s interpersonal traits in a similar way as students who were familiar with that teacher. It is concluded that students’ early interpersonal perceptions of a teacher largely resemble perceptions formed by students that know this teacher well.     

A person-centred approach to understanding dark-side antecedents and students’ outcomes associated with physical education teachers’ motivation

The present study firstly establishes physical education (PE) teachers’ motivational profiles based on their autonomous motivation, controlled motivation and amotivation and, secondly, investigates how different PE teachers’ motivational profiles differ in terms of certain maladaptive antecedents (i.e. psychological need frustration, pressures perceived at work and burnout). It also addresses the differences in their students’ perception of autonomy support, psychological need satisfaction and autonomous motivation. A total of 105 PE teachers and their 2164 students completed validated questionnaires. Four profiles were retained in the cluster analysis. Results showed that teachers who were high on autonomous motivation displayed the most optimal pattern of outcomes, whereas teachers who were high on amotivation showed the opposite pattern. Analysis of the established profiles suggested that the experience of controlled motivation was linked with maladaptive outcomes among both teachers and students. Implications for educational policy and practice are discussed.     

Lost confidence and potential: a mixed methods study of underachieving college students’ sources of self-efficacy

This study investigated the sources of self-efficacy of college students enrolled in a learning frameworks course, whom we identified as underachievers. Through weekly journal entries, the group of underachievers ( \(n=13\) ) cited the factors that made them feel confident or not confident. Students’ responses to open-ended prompts were coded according to Bandura’s (Self-efficacy: the exercise of control, W.H. Freeman, New York, 1997) four hypothesized sources of self-efficacy and an additional emergent theme of self-regulated learning. After, through student responses on a self-report survey, we compared the group of underachievers to a group of achievers ( \(n=36\) ) on their self-efficacy and its sources. Both quantitative and qualitative results underscored the importance of mastery experiences for underachievers. The underachievers had significantly less mastery experiences and verbal persuasions despite having similar levels of self-efficacy. Implications for how to cultivate mastery and to provide efficacy-supportive feedback as well as psychological mechanisms regarding high potential underachievers are discussed.     

Effects of counterstereotypic training on preservice teachers’ assessment of students’ academic performance

Social Psychology of Education - Studies have provided empirical evidence, that teachers’ judgments of students’ academic performance are biased by social stereotypes. Thus, in the...     

‘Interfaith dialogue’ as a form of opposition of ‘minority religions’ to governmental pressure in Russia

Russian governmental policy toward non-traditional religious groups, especially so-called New Religious Movements (NRMs), is discriminatory. Despite Russia’s formal secularity, the government strongly supports the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), a position which results in various limitations on many other religious groups. As a result, legal actions have been initiated against new religious groups, for example the Bhagavad Gita trial in Tomsk, Siberia, and the designation of the literature of the Jehovah’s Witnesses as ‘extremist’. However, pressure by the government can sometimes lead to the development of spontaneous interreligious oppositional associations. One important example is the ‘interfaith dialogue’ in Tomsk, where local leaders or representatives of religious groups, such as the Episcopal, Jewish, and Latter-day Saints (Mormon) churches as well as the Hare Krishna movement, unorthodox Buddhist groups, and local pagan movements, united to oppose governmental and ROC efforts to disband a Hare Krishna group in the Tomsk area. This research note presents results of a case study, which involved participant observation, of the phenomenon of oppositional interfaith dialogue in Tomsk in the period 2011–2014. I discuss factors that influenced its appearance, its relationship with the local government, and the methods of cooperation between the different religious groups within this association and offer some theoretical interpretations of these developments. The results of this case study illustrate new and important modern relationships between minority religions and the government in Russia.