Teacher education – Teaching & Learning Research Initiative

Work of teacher educators: Teaching and learning in New Zealand university-based initial teacher education

Introduction We have been studying the cultural constructions and material realities of university-based initial teacher education (ITE) and teacher educators’ work in Aotearoa New Zealand. By examining the work of teacher educators, we have been able to consider how ITE and the academic category of teacher educator is constructed, maintained, and practised within the institution of the university. Exploring teacher educators’ work, including teaching and learning activities from perspectives of both student teachers and teacher educators, has provided us with new insights into teaching and learning within university-based ITE. Our research questions have been: How is “teacher educator” constructed and maintained as a category of academic work? What do university-based teacher

Moving a school: Higher order thinking through SOLO and e-Learning

Introduction Technological, social and economic change is encouraging increasing emphasis on the development of higher order thinking skills throughout the world and they are being incorporated into national curriculum goals in many countries, including New Zealand. Simultaneously the use of digital technologies is being promoted by many educators and authorities in this country and elsewhere as an approach that will enable students to develop these skills. An increasingly popular tool for identifying higher order thinking is the SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982). This taxonomy describes the complexity of student responses to questions or tasks, and also can be applied to the questions or tasks themselves.

CoRe: A way to build pedagogical content knowledge for beginning teachers

Research has shown that one of the factors which enables teachers to be effective is their rich pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Beginning teachers need support to develop this PCK and recent research in the field has proposed a conceptual tool known as “content representations”, or CoRes, as a model for doing this. The study reported here brought together science and technology experts in content and pedagogy, early career secondary teachers, and researchers to design a CoRe to assist development of teacher PCK. The study then researched the early career teachers’ use of the CoRe in their planning and delivery of a unit in their classrooms to examine the effect of the

An exploration of field-based early childhood teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand

1. Description of study, its context and its strategic value Purpose This study seeks to capture the reality and process of field-based early childhood teacher education using the classroom and the learning encounter as a unit of analysis. It includes a beginning focus on, but is not limited to, interactions between “Student And student”, “lecturer and student”, “lecturer and the group”, and “Student And the group”. The exploratory focus begins to document, describe and characterise the nature and form of field-based early childhood teacher education. By taking this approach, the study’s aim is to contribute to the limited research-base which investigates the “inner workings” of teacher education programmes internationally and to

Making a difference: The role of initial teacher education and induction in the preparation of secondary teachers

1. Aims, objectives, and research questions New Zealand, a country of four million people, shares many of the features of other larger countries with respect to the preparation of teachers and the nature of education and schooling. In accord with other countries, the recruitment, preparation (becoming a teacher), and retention of teachers is the focus of increasing interest in New Zealand as agencies responsible for education struggle to address the apparent declining interest in teaching as a lifelong career. Moreover, the fact that the teaching population across all school levels within New Zealand is an ageing one, with a large group of teachers reaching retirement age over the next 10 to

Training on the job: How do home-based co-ordinators support educators to notice, recognise, and respond?

1. Aims, objectives, and research questions The aim of this research was: To investigate how home-based co-ordinators support educators[1] to notice, recognise, and respond to children’s learning. The research objectives were to: investigate co-ordinators’ practice document educators’ understanding of children’s learning discover how (a) impacts upon (b). There were three research questions: What are co-ordinators doing to support educators to notice, recognise, and respond to children’s learning? What changes are evident in educators’ practice as a result of what co-ordinators do? What factors seem to be important in this process? Background New Zealand home-based childcare services, as with all services within the early childhood sector, must meet certain requirements set out

Effective teacher-education practice: The impact of written assessment “feedback” for distance learners

Ko te pae tawhiti whäia kia tata: Ko te pae tata whakamaua kia tina Continue seeking to bring distant horizons closer: Consolidate what you have achieved 1. Introduction This study focuses on the “assessing” aspect of tertiary teaching in a distance teacher education programme. It explores the perceptions of the role of written assessment feedback held by a cohort of students enrolled in The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand Diploma of Teaching (Early Childhood Education (a Level 7, distance teacher education programme using mixed delivery methods).[1] Effective teacher education improves educational outcomes for learners in tertiary institutions (student teachers) and for end-user learners (children) in schools and early childhood services. This