Section archive - Preservice Teachers

This study explored the relationships among preservice teachers’ mathematics and science teaching efficacy beliefs, their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and their domain knowledge (DK). It was found that participants’ PCK and efficacy beliefs correlate to a high degree and influence each other. Furthermore, the results indicated that participants’ mathematics and science DK did not predict their teaching efficacy beliefs, however, their mathematics and science overall PCK score predicted participants’ efficacy beliefs, more exactly, their outcome expectancies. Furthermore, the findings show that elementary preservice teachers’ previous efficacy beliefs are more likely to predict their future efficacy beliefs than their mastery of DK and PCK.

This article examines the social construction of identity among preservice teachers and the implications for professional identity. The author concludes that the results of this study have shown that students based their negative representations of the profession on what they perceived to be others’ representations rather than on personal experiences. Furthermore, while training is intended to guide prospective teachers and enable them to build a positive teacher identity, the findings reveal that the training programme was unable to deconstruct negative student representations, which had an impact on the identity constructed.

This article aims to explore the differences between first-year and fifth-year student teachers on a number of personality and motivational variables that are indicative of their approaches to learning. The findings reveal that first-year and final-year student teachers differ on a number of variables relevant for their academic performance during teacher studies. The authors found that final-year student teachers displayed more conscientiousness, self-efficacy for learning and performance and had higher academic and problem-solving self-concepts than first-year student teachers.

This article examined the transfer problems experienced by pre-service teachers enrolled in the Free Normal Education programme during their internship teaching practicums. It was their first significant point of exposure to such problems. The author found three patterns in transfer problems. First, the participants’ personal backgrounds (rural/urban, eastern/central/western) generally correlated to various degrees with how they perceived their previous learning experiences and teaching practice. Second, participants from rural backgrounds who returned to their hometowns for their practicums found their prior learning experiences to be less useful than did their urban counterparts, and were less familiar with the teaching skills they had been taught at university. Third, rural background participants who undertook their practicums in Shanghai viewed their teaching experiences as excellent, but still faced many difficulties.