Equity-centred teacher education recognises the dual challenge of preparing teachers to support the learning of all students while encouraging future teachers to recognise and challenge societal systems reproducing inequity. The paper focuses on analysing Finnish student teachers' perceptions of teachers' skills related to diversity and equity.…

In the present study, we aimed to specify the key competence domains perceived to be critical for the teaching profession and depict them as a comprehensive teacher competence model. An expert panel that included representatives from seven units providing university-based initial teacher education in Finland carried out this process. To produce an…

Managerialism in higher education has gained prominence in recent decades. One of the crucial elements of this approach is the steering of the higher education sector, including the introduction of multiple forms of evaluation of academic work. Little is known about how academics evaluate themselves in comparison to their colleagues. Therefore,…

The aim of this study was to explore the core of teaching practice as a part of the curricula for master's degree in special teacher education. The data consisted of the curricula of teaching practice of all six universities in Finland that offer this program, along with the results of an electronic questionnaire administered to students. The…

Pedagogical training is considered an efficient tool to train university teachers to understand and foster active learning. In Finland, pedagogical training courses are organized periodically at universities, and university teachers participate voluntarily to improve pedagogical knowledge and skills for teaching in higher education settings. This…

This study reports findings from an interview study with eleven teacher educators from a physics teacher training program in Finland. They represented the four training environments that students encounter during their education, i.e. the Department of Physics, the Department of Mathematics and Science Education, the Department of General…

As in many other countries, Finnish primary school teacher education has reduced substantially the amount of music studies during recent decades. From the perspective of the National Core Curriculum, there is a reason to reflect on teacher education and primary school student teachers' skills to teach music. The present study investigates 392…

Background: Around the world, policy makers and teacher educators are paying increasing attention to how teacher candidates learn to study and enact teaching and to grounding preparation more deeply in teachers' classroom practice. Evidence from the United States and the Netherlands suggests that efforts to tie preparation to practice may…

The shift to an earlier start in foreign language teaching in Finland took place nationwide in 2020. Both class teachers and subject teachers faced a new situation. They would be teaching children younger than before, or they would be teaching a completely new subject for them. This article examines teachers' conceptions of the skills and…

Professionalization in adult education is necessary, and several initiatives are underway to improve the professional situation as well as the competences and skills of adult educators. The relevance and importance of adult education is often stated. Large-scale assessments such as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult…

In many countries, just as in the United States, the pressure is on to raise the quality of the teaching force; the bar is being raised for what teachers should be able to do. Drawing on her experiences organizing the International Summit on the Teaching Profession and leading delegations of educators to various nations, Stewart describes how some…

Culture teaching in a foreign language (FL) classroom involves linguistic and cultural knowledge about the target culture as well as pedagogical skills of integrating these into classroom practice. In general, more attention should be paid to culture teaching methods in FL teacher education in order to move from the traditional, teacher-centred…

This study examined student teachers' beliefs about teaching multilingual classrooms across three European contexts; Slovenia, Spain (Catalonia), and Finland. Research shows that teachers' confidence in handling linguistically diverse classrooms is lacking. Linguistically sensitive teaching (LST) was used as a lens to explore different expressions…

Teacher attitudes have been identified as an important resource when striving towards inclusive education as defined in the Salamanca Statement (1994). This study surveyed some key factors associated with teacher attitudes towards inclusion. The participants were 1,456 classroom teachers in Finnish primary schools who were asked about their…

This study investigated student teachers' (N = 82) learning of action-oriented knowledge (AOK), triggering incidents in teaching practice, and the relationships between these two. Student teacher's action-oriented knowledge is understood as core capability for the practice of teaching, and learning of action-oriented knowledge needs to be…