Section archive - Theories & Approaches

This study examined how policy-makers described their work and motivations. Furthermore, the study focused on policy-makers' perceived relationship with teacher educators researchers and their understandings about research. The findings revealed that policy-makers described research as necessary to shape their decision-making and important to justify their work. However, some of the participants appeared acutely aware of their own lack of ‘research literacy’ and were quick to note they wished for greater support in this area. Policy-makers sought better communication strategies to utilise research findings in a timely, free and publicly accessible, user-friendly manner.

The authors want to understand how preservice teachers, who enrolled in elementary science concentration, negotiate a science teacher identity to support their motivations and goals to teach elementary science. Results suggest that when elementary preservice teachers learned science through hands-on, constructivist practices, they negotiated norms about how they believed that science could be taught and compared it to their own previous experiences. In early experiences with constructivist practices, participants described learning science as fun and innovative. Elementary preservice teachers who completed three or four classes saw themselves as a possible teacher of science as well as a learner of science. The authors conclude that providing elementary preservice teachers with individual courses that focus on the standards and expectations of elementary students in a particular domain influences the progression from learner to teacher in content and in practice.

This study aimed to explore the impact on program improvement of systematically gathering P-12 student learning data over a 5-year period. The findings reveal that candidates can demonstrate a positive impact on student learning that is generally equivalent for P-12 students of all ethnicities and learning needs. The authors did not identify statistically significant learning gain differences among P-12 students. The data also indicated that participants could differentiate instruction and meet the needs of all learners.

This article describes the National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS). The purpose of the NETDS is to channel high performing teacher education students to disadvantaged schools. This paper is based on the authors' collective, critical self-reflection on designing and implementing NETDS at University of New England over the last three years. The authors use the taxonomy of three different ideological approaches—conservative, liberal and critical—to school reform as a heuristic device for their self-reflection.