The successful learning and professional development of student teachers in field experiences depend on the conditions at the individual practicum school. As a consequence, researchers have investigated the relevance of various contextual factors (e.g. mentoring) and ways of improving them (e.g. mentor training). Whether and to what avail student…

Feedback is widely viewed as a powerful tool, yet a challenging professional undertaking, in initial teacher education. This paper explored how feedback was used to mediate pre-service teachers' (PSTs') learning, in the form of a qualitative study that illuminates both the perspectives of HEI tutors, school mentors and PSTs and the actual feedback…

There is growing attention about the psychological rewards associated with kind school climates in primary and secondary school settings. Its mental health benefits, however, remain under-explored in higher education contexts. This study addresses this gap through examining the role of university kindness or perception of kind acts in university…

This qualitative case study explores how a group of pre-service teachers develop teacher competence through conducting their own classroom-based research during teaching practicum. By conceptualising teacher competence as "knowledge", "strategies", and "dispositions", this study used semi-structured interviews with…

Lesson planning is a challenge for teachers. However, the measurement and modelling of teachers' competence to plan lessons has received little attention. Especially, the question of which aspects are of central importance remains largely unresolved. The study aims to measure the challenge of structuring a lesson as an aspect of the…

The following paper aims to investigate how student teachers relate to the suitability of their student teacher peers after experiencing challenges to their emerging teacher identity, resulting in emotional responses. A constructivist grounded theory study was conducted in which 18 student teachers participated. Data from 14 individual interviews…

Promoting teachers to lead classroom discourse effectively is a relevant topic for teacher professional development worldwide. This study compares the impacts of two teacher professional development programmes that aim to support teachers in their classroom discourse practices. In one programme, an adaptive and practitioner-led approach was…

Drawing on the concept of teacher buoyancy which is teachers' capacity to deal with the everyday challenges that most teachers face in their teaching, this qualitative study investigates the capacity of ten early career teachers to derive sustenance from overcoming minor and frequent challenges in their everyday work. A semi-structured interview…

The introduction of 'differentiated' instruction (DI), tailored to meet students' individual needs, has influenced educational policies throughout the world, including Hong Kong. Recent studies indicate that school-university partnerships (SUP) for pre-service teacher education (particularly during practicum) can foster DI practice but research…

This paper reports the findings from a small-scale collaborative autoethnographic study of two teacher educators' experience of leading Initial Teacher Training (ITT) programmes at a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in England during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected via narrative conversations between the two teacher educators such…

The study presented here is an action research that was conducted in a science and technology teaching course in a pre-service elementary teaching program at a private university in Turkey aiming at improving the pre-service elementary teachers' understanding of science and teaching science. In order to achieve this aim, an innovative approach,…

Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is inherently complex. Challenges include the uncertain nature of teacher knowledge, the need to learn in both practical and theoretical contexts and the developmental journey of the beginning teacher. While one response to this complexity is greater standardisation, another is to foster thinking, autonomous…

The wide expansion of digital technologies in higher education and the importance of specialised training in teaching writing as a guarantee of school success, have introduced the need to focus on the online professional development for the teaching of writing. This study aims to evaluate the effects of a web-based training for writing instruction…

The purpose of this paper is to present an appraisal of a lesson-study implementation with pre-service biology teachers concerning a health education issue, how blood pressure works and how it is affected. The participants were 11 pre-service teachers, a secondary school biology teacher and three teacher educators from a local University. A…

Curriculum integration has recently stirred growing interest in educational discourses. New Finnish core curricula for basic education and for general upper secondary schools encourage and even obligate schools to integrate the curriculum. Integration has been deemed to be important, as the boundaries between school subjects have remained…