Section archive - Trends in Teacher Education

The diversity and complexity of the post-modern era places new and important challenges on teacher education. This paper presents Swedish lecturers' descriptions of what they consider to be competences and qualities necessary for future teachers. Their descriptions constitute the starting point for a wider discussion on the decisive role of beliefs and emotions in being and becoming a teacher.

The paper presents results from a large-scale online survey about the motivations of career change students, and their beliefs about the attributes that they bring to the teaching profession. The findings revealed that career changers' motivations were largely intrinsic. The data also revealed that career change entrants believed that the most important attributes they bring to teaching are life experiences, generic workplace skills and experience, and personal qualities, rather than specific content knowledge.

The goal of the study is to highlight teacher collaboration in Sweden and Greece utilizing nationwide surveys with physical education teachers in both countries. The sample consisted of 707 Swedish and 451 Greek professionals. The presentation of the results is connected with issues of formal cooperation, deprivatized practices and personalized interaction in four teachers groups: primary and lower secondary schools in Sweden and in Greece. According to the data, formal cooperation and deprivatized practices occur more frequently in Sweden than in Greece. However, personalized interaction is rather high in Greek lower secondary schools.

As the university's role has become focused on supporting economic development and global competitiveness, the macro-political context is at odds with longstanding agendas of professional responsibility and self-governance in teacher education. In this policy context, the authors argue that teacher educators need to engage in rigorous practice-based inquiry that addresses issues of policy and governance, particularly those that tend toward direct government intervention or professional governance.