Finnish pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their strategic learning skills and collaboration dispositions

ABSTRACT

To support the development of pupils’ 21st-century skills, teachers themselves must also be competent in these skills and learn them during pre-service teacher education. The aim of this study is to investigate what kind of profiles emerge among Finnish first-year pre-service teachers’ (N = 872) in terms of perceptions of their strategic learning skills and collaboration dispositions and what background variables explain membership of the profiles found. Latent profile analysis showed five student profiles corresponding to perceived strategic learning skills and collaboration dispositions. The most robust factor explaining the membership of the profiles was life satisfaction. Pre-service teachers in a profile group of high strategic learning skills and high collaboration dispositions showed the highest anticipated life satisfaction after five years. Obtaining a better understanding of pre-service teachers’ skills and dispositions will provide the basis for deeper exploration of how they may acquire these skills and how instruction can better be designed to assist students in developing these skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Pre-service teachers
• strategic learning skills
• collaboration dispositions
• person-oriented approach

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mrs. Anne Martin for her help on the data collection of the study, and the lecturers of teacher training, in whose classes the data collection was conducted.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland [grant number 273970].