An increasing number of universities around the world have adopted a learner-oriented approach to teaching. Collective learning is regarded as a way to support teachers to enhance this approach. Collective learning processes arise when the teachers collaborate and consciously strive for a shared vision, dialogue, collective action and evaluation.…

Background: In the Netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (RE) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the Christian tradition. In our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university…

Current literature suggests that while teacher educators perform a multitude of complex roles, they receive minimal preparation or possibilities for professional development to fulfil these roles. As a result, they need to acquire relevant knowledge and skills after taking on the position of teacher educators. Therefore, it is important to learn…

Initiatives aimed at supporting student teachers for entering and staying in the teaching profession require a better understanding of the nature of student teachers' development as it unfolds during teacher education. Accordingly, we focused on changes in the extent to which student teachers perceive and expect dis/continuity in their development…

The aim of this study is to gain insight into the content and sources of the educational ideals of beginning student teachers. We interviewed twenty-four beginning student teachers within the disciplines of history and the English language from three teacher education institutes in the Netherlands. The student teachers were selected using the…

Over the last few decades, the Netherlands has been experiencing that numerous student teachers (i.e., pre-service teachers) leave teacher training after a short period of time. To address this attrition problem the current study aimed to gain insight into student teachers' motives for enrolling, continuing or withdrawing from a primary teacher…

This paper compares three types of dialogues as reflective tools in placement learning: supervisory dialogues (mentor to student-teacher), peer dialogues (student teacher to student teacher) and self-dialogues (student teachers to themselves). Forty-four Dutch student teachers utilised the procedure of guided reflection to talk about their…

While policy debate is often focused on the whole teaching profession, primary and secondary teachers differ in more ways than one. While all countries require teachers to have at least a bachelor degree to enter the profession in primary or lower secondary education, the structure and content of the programmes vary and are less geared towards…

This open access book follows the development of the Building Resilience in Teacher Education (BRiTE) project across Australia and internationally. Drawing on the success of this project and the related research collaborations that have since emerged, it highlights the importance of cultivating resilience at various stages of teachers' careers.…

Teacher educators wonder how to prepare student teachers for urban teaching. Beginning teachers in urban environments experience multiple challenges, such as responding appropriately to language differences and cultural diversity. This study aims to provide insight into how Dutch teachers are prepared for teaching in urban schools. A multiple case…

One of the challenges of a geography teacher education program is preparing teachers for their leading roles in keeping geography education relevant for the young people of today. It is important to allow teachers to think about geography education and the future and to foster their curriculum-making competences. In a master course at Fontys…

To better understand the status of the teaching profession, we present a conceptual framework outlining the 4 domains of knowledge-worker professionals: professional benchmarks, professional discretion, room for promotion, and workplace conditions and use the TALIS 2013 survey data to show that these domains exist globally and vary within…

Sociocultural and dialogic theories of education have identified the need to integrate both pedagogical content and language knowledge into teachers' professional development to promote effective interaction with students about subject content. In this intervention study, a meta-perspective on language was developed to understand how experienced…

Teacher learning is essential to the teaching profession, because it has been strongly linked to improved teaching practices and teacher quality. The source for teacher learning is initial teacher education, a crucial phase in the learning-to-teach continuum. To gain insight into this influential period for student teachers' long-term professional…

The academic terms and the periods of the courses related to the language development and communication differs considerably in the programs of the countries which train teachers for the special education department. The aim of this study is to examine the contents and credits of the communication and the language development courses in Teacher…