One of the duties of an editor of the European Journal of Teacher education is to, occasionally, write the editorial. I must confess that I often struggle to find an important and interesting theme that fits the articles in the issue. This time too, I paced a lot in my study until I desperately decided to take a turn for the future and use the new programme ChatGTP to write my text. I learned from the media that I just needed to come up with the right prompts and without any effort I would impress the readership of our journal with a well-written and notable editorial. Unfortunately, for me (and perhaps for you as readers as well), we will never know whether a robot is able to write an editorial aqs ChatGTP site is so popular that I did not get access to the site. I wonder how many students were using the programme at the same moment to write their assignments and essays. I look forward to reading the first studies on the use of this new technology in education.
However, as inspiration still failed to materialise, I still hoped technology would offer programmes to inspire me. I made an old fashioned word cloud of the descriptions in this editorial (see down) of the various articles to get a better insight into the contents of this issue. In the next figure, you see the result.
The most important words that emerged were teachers and teacher, teaching, education, learning, professional (development) and research. Plus, some words that characterise this issue. These are, not unexpectedly, the basic concepts that reflect the content of EJT well, not just this time, but I guess almost always. This does not make this word cloud of particular interest.
When I looked at the word cloud again, I understood that there was more than I could see. It was as if I looked at qualitative data and realised it was not only the things that people talked about that were important but also the things that were left out. Two things seem important, not just in the word cloud but in this issue. The first is that in this issue there is no reference to Covid. While Covid dominated our thinking and acting for almost three years and EJTE was one of the first journals to publish a special issue, it seems that over the last year the attention diminished. I am not sure why, but it may be that covid and the challenges associated with it have become part of the day-to-day teaching and learning. In the future, more and interesting studies will be published about topics initially related to the pandemic, but not in this issue.
The second blind spot in the word cloud is, in my opinion, the lack of the specific topics of the articles. The reason is that only words that appeared more than once were accepted for the word cloud. These missing words make this issue interesting, and they give a good overview of the important themes of researchers in the field of (student) teachers, teaching and learning (and may I add teacher education and teacher educators) and the professional development of teachers and teacher educators. These are some, but by no means all, concepts that need ongoing investigation: agency, reflective practice, assessment for learning, narrative pedagogies, artefacts, professional behaviour, status, career, identities, inquiry-based working, professional learning, development needs, gender and research teaching integration.
Looking at these words, the issue suddenly becomes much more interesting. It is as if we zoom in on major research fields and everyday issues in teacher education which provide us as researchers, teacher educators and teachers with much needed research and support to the ongoing improvement and renewal of teacher education. Also, these words and more so the articles in this issue reflect the diversity of problems and challenges and the complexity of the work of teachers and teacher educators and the political and social contexts of teacher education.
The importance of renewing teacher education is immediately apparent in the contribution of Iris Susana Pires Pereira, Eva Lopes Fernandes, Ana Cristina Braga and Maria Assunção Flores with the title ‘Initial teacher education after the Bologna process. Possibilities and challenges for a renewed scholarship of teaching and learning’. The authors present the perspectives of Portuguese pre-service teachers about a formative strategy developed to promote learning about language and literacy education. The strategy was underpinned by theories about the pedagogical content knowledge, rehearsed (or simulated) agency, the epistemology of reflective practice and assessment for learning. It was implemented during a whole semester, after which pre-service teachers answered a questionnaire focusing on their perceptions about their learning and the learning experience. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data reveal positive and critical perceptions about the construction of pedagogical content knowledge and agentic identities, evidencing the role of curricular analysis, rehearsed practice, reflection and assessment in the learning process. The final discussion, which highlights the possibilities and challenges of the strategy, aims to contribute to the construction of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning of pre-service teachers after the Bologna Process.
Minna Uitto, Erkki T. Lassila, Katri Jokikokko, Geert Kelchtermans and Eila Estola studied an unusual pedagogy which is interesting and innovative. They report about this in their article ‘Using artefacts in narrative pedagogies: A case from beginning teachers peer group meetings’. This article explores the use of artefacts in narrative pedagogies in the context of teachers’ professional development during the induction phase. The research question is as follows: What kind of stories about beginning teachers’ work does the use of artefacts in narrative pedagogies evoke? The article is based on two peer group meetings in which nine Finnish teachers working in day care centres and primary schools participated. The findings illustrate how the use of artefacts offers an entrance into teachers’ daily routines, relationships and practices as well as how artefacts can become important actors in teachers’ classrooms. The article contributes to the emerging literature on the meaning of artefacts in educational practices and beginning teachers’ professional development and to the still not fully recognised potential that artefacts can have in narrative pedagogies in pre-service and in-service teacher education.
The next article ‘Case-based teacher education preparing for diagnostic judgement’ written by Ingrid Helleve, Liv Eide and Marit Ulvik places student teachers at the heart of their research by saying that facing unexpected situations is an integrated part of teaching. Teachers must make immediate decisions, and these decisions may have a great impact on many people. An important question is how teacher education can prepare students for unexpected situations. The aim of this practitioner research study is to investigate if case-based teaching can contribute to reducing the perceived gap in teacher education. A stepwise model was introduced for the students, and data based on the student teachers’ experiences was collected through questionnaire and focus-group conversations. The findings show three main arguments for why teacher education should be case-based. First, analysing cases helps students to understand that every situation in practice is unique. Second, cases link to practice and theory, and finally, a case opens for different perspectives depending on how the diagnosis is made.
The purpose of the Turkish researchers Emine Gümüş and Mehmet Şükrü Bellibaş is to ‘The relationship between the types of professional development activities teachers participate in and their self-efficacy: a multi-country analysis’. They explore the extent to which various types, either job-embedded or traditional professional development activities, predict teachers perceived self-efficacy while controlling for several teacher characteristics and school context variables. Data from 32 countries and regions were drawn from the 2013 cycle of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Each of these countries and regions was analysed individually, employing two-level hierarchical linear modelling. The results indicate that, in most countries, teachers who participated in job-embedded professional development activities, such as coaching or mentoring, teacher networks, and action research, were likely to have higher perceptions of self-efficacy. Meanwhile, traditional forms of professional development, such as seminars, conferences, courses, and workshops, only affected teachers perceived self-efficacy in a few countries.
The next article comes from the Maltese researchers Michelle Attard Tonna and James Calleja and is titled ‘An investigation of the professional behaviour, status, career and identities of teachers in Malta’ is about a widely recognised problem. As in many countries, and in Malta as well, there is a shortage of teachers. Given this shortage and the diminishing attraction of the teaching profession, it is important to have analytic and systematic studies of teachers’ lives and careers, and to locate teachers’ lives within a wider contextual understanding. The rationale for this research is to study Maltese teachers’ professional behaviour and how they define themselves as teachers, particularly in a period where teachers in Malta were experiencing reform fatigue. The authors’ aims were to explore the factors which motivate people to enter and remain into teaching and to identify the routes they take throughout their career. One of the findings shows that the majority of teachers enter the profession for altruistic motives; however, if given the opportunity, they would move into another role or profession.
The Dutch team Jan Baan, Lisa Gaikhorst & Monique Volman wrote an article about ‘Professional development in inquiry-based working; the experiences of graduates from academic teacher education programmes’. In the Netherlands, research-intensive teacher education programmes at research universities aim to educate teachers to work in an inquiry-based manner, meaning that they should be able to use and conduct research to reflect on their teaching. Little is known, however, about how graduates of these programmes function and develop as teachers. In this study, seven graduates of Dutch academic teacher education programmes were followed to investigate how their inquiry-based working developed during their first years of teaching. Interviews were conducted with these graduates from and their school leaders over three subsequent years. Their involvement in inquiry-based working was found to shift from the classroom level to the school organisational level, with this shift being dependent on individual and organisational conditions. The results suggest ways to support teachers’ professional development in inquiry-based working.
As the authors of the next article remark, education on all levels has been increasingly feminised. Manuela Heinz, Elaine Keane and Kevin Davison studied this theme in the context of Irish education. The title of their article is ‘Gender in initial teacher education: entry patterns, intersectionality and a dialectic rationale for diverse masculinities in schooling’. The paper contributes to debates about gender and diversity in teaching. The exploration of the underrepresentation of males, socially constructed as a privileged group, is a complex task for researchers working within a social justice framework. The researchers explore entry patterns to primary and post-primary Initial Teacher Education programmes, socio-demographic backgrounds and career motivations of male and female Initial Teacher Education applicants and entrants in Ireland. The findings point to possible reasons for the underrepresentation of males in primary teaching, including competitive performance-based selection systems, Irish language competency requirements and a predominantly denominational school system. An intersectional analysis demonstrates the diversity which exists among male Initial Teacher Education applicants. New insights into the complexities of male positionalities in teaching can enhance dialectic debates about reasons for and implications of the underrepresentation of male teachers as well as the transformative potential of diverse and ‘caring’ masculinities for schools and society.
The last two articles focus on the learning and research of teacher educators. An international group of researchers, Yueying Gong, Ann MacPhail and Ainat Guberman wrote an article about ‘Professional learning and development needs of Chinese university-based physical education teacher educators’. The study examines the professional learning and development needs of Chinese university-based physical education teacher educators and their views about effective ways to address them. This is significant given the limited research exploring this group. The findings show that the majority of physical education teacher educators had a strong desire to undertake further professional learning and development in three areas: subject knowledge and didactics with particular emphasis on professional training in specific types of sports, research related academic activities and institutional activities. They preferred formal learning programmes as well as international learning activities to address these needs. The cost of the activities was the most significant factor influencing their engagement. Based on the study it can be recommended to pay closer attention to the professional learning and development needs of specific subject area groups of teacher educators.
The study by Yanling Cao, Liisa Postareff, Sari Lindblom-Ylänne and Auli Toom aims to clarify how Finnish teacher educators integrate research and teaching to support their approaches to teaching. The title of their article is “Research questions cover teacher educators’ forms of research-teaching integration, approaches to teaching, and the relationship between them”. With a survey methodology, the study obtained 101 responses with a questionnaire. Six forms of research-teaching integration were identified with a qualitative content analysis. Integrating research with teaching content was mentioned most often, whereas integrating research with teaching methods and applying inquiry-oriented methods in teaching were reported less. Three kinds of approaches to teaching were found by cluster analysis. The participants with different approaches differed in their ways of research-teaching integration. However, the differences were not statistically significant in chi-square tests. The study contributes to the international research on teacher educators and the variety in research-teaching integration in teacher education.