The articles that form the final issue of JET for this year present research into the span of the teacher’s professional life, from initial education, through the early years of professional practice to the full career. This vividly exemplifies JET’s remit, which is to publish original, rigorously presented and ethically researched articles with international significance for the academic field of the education of teachers. It also emphasises and demonstrates the importance of new insights for providers of pre- and in-service education for teachers.
The opening paper, by Jie Li and Weicheng Zou from China presents evidence that task-based learning, in the context of pre-service English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher education provision in China. Given that many of the student teachers would not themselves have experienced much task-based teaching in their own schooling, it is interesting to note that their understanding of it and attitudes towards it are not negative. The authors argue for building on this potential openness to active learning to construct transformative teacher education programmes in that context.
Ronen Kasperski and Orly Crispel, from Israel, provide the setting for the next article. They used a mixed methods approach to apply simulation-based learning techniques to enhance the development of student teachers’ interpersonal communication skills. The simulations, using professional actors, were designed to replicate various scenarios that could occur in day-to-day school life. After they had engaged in the scenarios, the student teachers spoke of ‘deep water’ experiences, but importantly were able to relate this positively to an improvement in their communication skills during their subsequent practical work in schools.
Moving into the ‘newly qualified teacher year’, the next paper, by Wenxiao Zhang and Yanqing Li from China views the issue of teachers’ workplace relationships through the theoretical lens of a professional interests framework. Focussing in detail on self-, organisational-, cultural-ideological and social-professional interests, which are the most prominent factors underpinning teachers’ professional relationships, the experiences were probed of one Chinese beginning teacher. Good relationships were noted with the head teacher and experienced colleagues, but these were less positive with parents and less experienced colleagues. The authors argue for the use of professional interests as an important approach to building constructive professional relationships in a teacher’s early career.
Our second paper from Israel in this issue is from Hila Vaitzman, Ben-David and Izhak Berkovich, who focus specifically on the second year of a teacher’s career and how the functions of mentoring subtly shift the early career teacher’s perceptions of the role and the relationship with a mentor. These findings add to our understanding of the theoretical and practical aspects of the importance of continuing mentoring in teacher education.
Another major foundation of teacher education, that of professional development (PD) as the teacher’s career builds, is the theme of the next paper, by Ji Liu and Jiayuan Du from China and the USA, respectively. They address the issue of teachers’ discontent with the quality of PD on offer, arguing that variation in schools’ approaches to the collection, processing and responding to information on the needs of teachers can have an impact on what they describe as ‘information friction’ in provision of PD. The findings of this study indicate that quality of leadership and the extent of school autonomy are key drivers in meeting teachers’ PD needs.
Two papers follow from the science education research group of Professor Sibel Erduran, a member JET’s International Editorial Board. The first is by Olga Ioannidou, Katy Finch and Sibel from the University of Oxford, UK. A long standing, but fascinating debate in science education has been the extent to which school science is like scientists’ science. Teaching and assessing pupils’ knowledge and understanding in science often fails to take account of pupils’ scientific thinking, which would be closer to how scientists actually go about their work. The research reported here presents the outcomes of a PD programme in which teachers were introduced to and subsequently implemented a framework that enabled them to gain insight into pupils’ thinking skills and their scientific reasoning.
The next paper, by Xiao Huang, Sibel Erduran, Piaosa Zhang, Kangkang Luo and Chunmi Li, from China, UK, Malaysia and China, respectively, presents a study into Chinese science, technology and mathematics (STEM) teachers’ engagement in a PD programme designed around observation, discussion and reflection. Enhancement of their content knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge and attitudes towards STEM is reported.
An aspect of PD of relevance to all teachers is presented in the final full paper in this issue. Atli Harðarson and Kostas Magos from Iceland and Greece interviewed 15 teachers from those two contrasting national contexts about how they learned to teach. This most readable and engaging paper reports on the moral aspects of a teacher’s work with a focus on their exercise of character education, ethical virtues and practical wisdom. Most interestingly, the teachers reported very similar experiences of the ethical and professional development. The authors discuss the pace of ethics in teacher education and stress the importance of freedom to innovate and of being trusted.
One Research-in-Progress sort paper concludes the academic papers in this issue of JET. Megan Adams and Sindu George of Australia report on a project involving the triad of student teacher, school teacher and teacher educator. The focus of the study was behaviour management in the classroom. Using the concepts of relational expertise, common knowledge and relational agency to co-construct professional knowledge, the student teachers were empowered to direct their own learning and build and share knowledge of how to teach in classrooms containing pupils with challenging behaviour, a common source of anxiety for student teachers.
The varied contexts and approaches of these examples of interventions in teacher education are testament to the innovative work continuing in our field. The message that comes through very clearly is that one never stops learning to teach. The robust research reported here provides underpinning evidence to build strong design initiatives and curricular content in initial and continuing teacher education programmes. The fact that JET receives a steady and increasing submission rate of outstanding research articles in teacher education reinforces the importance of our journal in building research-informed teacher education internationally.