Education & Pedagogy

The study reported on in this article stems from the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa (2011). This framework proposes the establishment of teaching schools to strengthen teacher education. This article reports on a qualitative inquiry into the views of school-based personnel and the teacher education sector on the implementation of teaching schools as sites for teacher education and whether they think teaching schools could enhance the education of student-teachers. The inquiry showed that the participants were positive that teaching schools will enhance teacher education through serving as a bridge between the academic, university-based preparation of student-teachers and the practice demands of the teaching profession. However, they had no clear notion of how such schools could add value to teacher preparation differentiated to schools in which student-teachers are placed for work-integrated learning. We contend that, prior to establishing teaching schools, much deliberation between all stakeholders is required about the purpose and means of integrating teaching schools in teacher education. If not, teaching schools that serve to bridge the gap between the education of student-teachers at universities and the demands that novice teachers face once they enter the teaching profession might remain an elusive ideal.

Teachers and parents often find special education law complex and confusing. As one step for a basic foundation in special education law, a previous "TEACHING Exceptional Children" article (Zirkel, 2005) provided a snapshot of the "top five case concepts" based on 10 decisions from the Supreme Court. Each of these decisions interpreted either (a) the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 2017) or (b) the overlapping pair of civil rights acts prohibiting disability discrimination: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (2017) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA; 2017). In light of the considerable developments under the IDEA and Section 504 and the ADA in the preK-12 context in the intervening 15 years, this update extends the coverage and addresses the 10 core concepts based on not only the cumulative Supreme Court decisions but also the 2004 IDEA amendments and, to a lesser extent, the 2006 IDEA regulations and lower court case law. These 10 core concepts start with the practical sequence of IDEA issues from child find and eligibility to remedies for prevailing parents and end with the overlapping coverage of Section 504 and the ADA and the relevant specialized steps of the adjudicative process.

Physical education (PE) research focusing on initial teacher education (ITE) and continuing professional development (CPD) have been preoccupied with practitioners in mainstream (regular) schools. This article used situated learning theory to explore special school PE teachers' perspectives of their ITE and CPD in England. A number of key themes were constructed from six interviews with special school teachers, including, 'Special educational needs and disabilities are marginalised during initial teacher education', 'Special school-based placement may help to prepare trainee teacher', 'The professional development opportunities available to special school PE teachers are limited' and 'PE-specific CPD should be tailored to the needs of staff and pupils in schools'. Regardless of route into the profession, all teachers recalled a lack of focus on Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and inclusion in the context of PE during their ITE. This trend was also evident through subsequent CPD offered, although there were accounts of informal opportunities. In concluding we argue that further consideration must be given to the nature of inclusive PE training offered within ITE. There is also a need to reconsider how CPD can best support career-long professional development that nurtures inclusive PE practitioners.

Supporting first-year students to adjust to their new academic environment is a crucial task in higher education. Investigating students' perceptions of fit between secondary and higher education could give higher education institutions valuable information for student feedback and support, when captured in a reliable and valid way. This study examines the construct validity, reliability, and criterion-related validity of the Students' Perceived Fit Questionnaire (SPFQ) by using a longitudinal dataset (N = 930, first-year students). The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor structure measuring students' perceptions of: 1) the extent to which secondary education prepared them for higher education in terms of content knowledge; 2) resemblance in the teaching approach between secondary and higher education, and 3) the need to adapt to their higher education study programme. Concerning the criterion-related validity, it was found that first-year students who experienced similarities in teaching approach are more likely to persist in their studies. Furthermore, our results indicated that first-year students who experienced less need to adapt to their higher education study programme felt more self-efficacious regarding their own learning and, consequently, were more likely to persist in their studies.

Education quality assurance is the necessity for today's competitive environment in university education. Quality assurance standards and strategies are being used in most of universities and higher education institutions. But the perception of quality standards is being usually seen from the perspective of a university management. This study aims to analyze and present perceptions of students towards a measurement of education quality standards and to identify significant groups of students according to their preferences in education quality. Students' questionnaires and focus groups collected the data. Two dimensional and multi-dimensional statistical methods were used to evaluate the results. The outputs show five groups of students based on their perception of the education quality. Examination of students' interest in specific areas, subjects and courses leads to identification of factors which affect their preferences in education. The paper found five significant groups of perceived quality by students. These are Quality receptionists, Business oriented, Expert innovators, Distance learners and Arrangement oriented. Limit of the study is a narrow focus on one private university. This study may encourage other papers to develop and test further the impact of education quality on students' preferences for measurable improvements. The paper is an extension of the conference paper presented on ERIE conference 2017.

This investigation concerns the latest teaching and learning innovations in Chinese engineering higher education with special reference to Tsinghua University in Beijing, a leading university of China. Set in the context of rapid enrolment expansion in Chinese higher education since entering the 21st century, the study addresses how university engineering education innovated their contents and modes of teaching and learning to foster top-level talent, enhance relevance and responsiveness of education against rising number of students, scale of knowledge, and labour market demand, through content analysis of 163 award-winning programmes. The study also presents five case studies from Tsinghua University that have won recentregional and national awards under China's Higher Education Teaching and Learning Award scheme in 2012-2013 and in 2014 respectively. The data for the present investigation comes from a rich set of first-hand data of those wining institutions' award applications and collected from field visits by the present authors. The study further proposes a framework for designing and implementing engineering education programme. It is hoped that such a Chinese perspective could contribute to the global dialogue on teaching and learning in engineering education.

The study sought to explore how parents' level of education and literacy skills affect their children's basic education within the context of cultural capital theory.To achieve the objectives of this study, a case study design was employed which comprised the use of interviews with twelve parents and twelve teachers in two school communities in the Winneba East educational circuit of the Effutu Municipality of Ghana.The population of the study consisted of all parents in the Effutu Municipality in the Central Region of Ghana. A snowball sampling technique was used to select the individual parents for the study. The data were analysed through coding to identify themes.The study reveals that most parents were aware of the benefits of education but the reality of their lives including educational and literacy challenges affected involvement in their children?s basic education.In-spite of this handicap, most parents relied on extended families and community members for assistance.Thus, when parents are eager to see their wards through formal education, their own illiterate status does not become a handicap. Consequently, the study recommends that policies on education decentralization must reflect greater consideration of contextual factors including formal education and literacy skill levels which impact on parental involvement in children's basic education.

New technologies with a modern method of teaching must be implemented in university studies, and an important part is teacher training study. These technologies make study more attractive for students and bring greater motivation to an understanding of notions. The main focus of this study is visualisation in science and engineering education using augmented reality in the context of biology education based on constructivist and constructionist concepts. We present in our contribution augmented reality technology as a part of using mobile technologies in biology education for future primary school teachers. The study is focused on perception of this method by future primary teachers who will teach biology as one of the areas of primary education and who were also the subjects of the research. We also mention two already existing biology-themed augmented reality applications, which appear to be interesting, enhancing and beneficial in the context of biology education. The findings of the study confirmed, using this method, that the students' understanding was deeper, their motivation was greater, and, last but not least, their creativity was strongly supported. The students were motivated by the new method, they cooperated very well and learning was constructive.

The internationalization of education (IE) has accelerated across the past two decades. Although there are now a range of representations and theorizations of IE, they find little connection across domains and levels. Toward bolstering a more coherent field of IE, which translates across distinctive expressions of IE, this paper argues for a conceptual approach that includes theorizing IE's past and present enabling conditions, motivating visions, significant (operational) obstacles, and ensuing tensions. The main contribution is a conceptualization of late 20th century international education, which historically situates the current 21st century IE movement. This conceptualization is informed primarily by a periodization of the International Baccalaureate that surfaces the semantic contours and structuring tensions of international education as embedded in the shifting historical and socio-political conditions of the last 50 years. Semantically, 20th century international education carries with it literal (educational activities across national jurisdictions) and normative/aspirational significations (liberal-humanist education for making a better world). And the structuring tensions of international education are constituted in the entangling of the normative visions, as "education for international understanding," with the instrumental agendas, as revenue generation. An emerging IE field can draw on the conceptual framing offered in this paper as a basis for theorizing across the somewhat siloed IE discourses.

This research analyses tweets, interviews and observations to grasp power relations between oppressive education and liberative technology in Arab contexts. It ascertains that liberative technology may limit oppressive education and unveils that oppressive education may restrict liberative technology or exploit technology as instruments for further oppression. It discloses that oppressive education may apply liberative technology to oppress itself or may tolerate liberative technology to gain vested interests. It reasons that students may use technology to counter-oppress oppressive education, meaning that education and students undertake repressive 'battles', turning oppression into a lifestyle. It proclaims that students may, online, incite the public against education. It indicates that, in societies where the crowd is more powerful than authorities, oppressed students can, virtually, unite against oppressive education, meaning that 'the oppressed' (students) becomes more powerful than 'the oppressor' (education). The take-home message is that, despite the growing philosophisation of technology as oppressive tools, individuals are, as found by this article, not powerless, as they can turn technologies into liberative tools and develop emancipation out of oppression. A further proposition to be drawn from the findings is that students are not apolitically decent, as they can encounter downward oppression with even crueller upward oppression.

Between 1919-1920, while giving a series of speeches in China, John Dewey raised a doubt about Chinese education: Can Chinese education cultivate children with independent consciousness? Based on the sevenyear "Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between Canada and China" project, we have the answer to Dewey's doubt. In the 1990s, Chinese education could not respond affirmatively to Dewey's question, but after forty years of reform and development, Chinese education has taken a big step forward in cultivating children with independent consciousness. However, Canada's school education is, at present, better at cultivating self-determined and independent children in daily life, organically integrating teaching knowledge and cultivating students, and encouraging the structured teaching characterized in the reciprocal learning project as "the forest and the trees." The teaching framework of different disciplines in Chinese school education has more obvious constraints on education and teaching. Although the current Chinese education, from the grassroots to the government, has begun to try to break the shackles of the "discipline framework" and explore new possibilities, at the present time, it solely uses western concepts and ideological framework to conduct its own practice, especially with respect to Dewey's experience theory. China needs to contribute its own distinctive educational concept and ideological framework, so it can truly "find a place in the world."

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on online initial teacher education. This review is timely given the growing numbers of online students studying teacher education in Australia and beyond. The paper begins with a presentation of the search protocol including search terms, databases, and inclusion/exclusion criteria that resulted in 492 refereed articles being included in the review. Analysis of title and abstract of these articles allowed insight into a variety of factors and trends, including journal of publication, year of publication, research approach, and key focal areas. Two "well-established" research focal areas emerged: technological pedagogical innovations and student experiences of studying teacher education online. Two "emerging" research focal areas were teacher educator experiences of teaching online and online teacher education in traditionally experiential specialisations, such as drama and outdoor education. When all the articles are considered holistically, a fragmented and siloed research approach is revealed, evidenced by a large number of journals publishing articles on multiple focal areas, leading to considerable repetition among the evidences presented across the articles. As such, this paper highlights the need for a more coherent and organised approach to research in online teacher education and its dissemination to all stakeholders.

In 2017, 31% of students progressed from further education (FE) to higher education (HE), with many coming from non-traditional backgrounds such as vocational and educational training (VET). The skills, expectations and experiences that VET students bring to HE will differ significantly from those of the traditional A-Level entrants, who are familiar with an academic environment and processes. It is important that students progressing from VET make a successful transition from vocational to academic education sectors, not only for personal achievement but also to reduce attrition at higher education institutions (HEIs). The aim of this research is to investigate the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of FE students studying on a vocational course and their forthcoming transition to an academic environment at an HEI. Findings identified three key themes: the challenges associated with progressing to an academic environment from VET; the further personal and professional development that results from studying in an academic environment; and the expectation of diverse experiences when transitioning. Practical guidelines have been created from findings to inform HEIs and further education colleges (FECs) about understanding, supporting and managing students who transition between the two distinct educational environments, hopefully reducing student attrition and improving retention and overall student satisfaction.

It is important to determine the attitudes of physical education teacher candidates who will carry out physical education courses in secondary and high schools and classroom teacher candidates who will carry out physical education courses in primary schools. The purpose of this study is to determine the attitudes of physical education and classroom teacher candidates towards teaching profession. The research was evaluated with a general survey model. The research group consisted of totally 280 teacher candidates; 168 of them study at School of Physical Education and Sports in Physical Education and Sports Teaching Department, 122 of them study at the Faculty of Education Primary School Teaching Department in the 2017-2018 academic year Hatay Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey. As data collection tools Personal Information Form developed by the researchers and the "Attitude Scale Toward Teaching (ASTT)" developed by Erkus (2000) et al. were used. In the statistical analysis of the data, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used. In the result of the research, it was determined that the attitudes of physical education and classroom teacher candidates towards teaching profession were high, but it was found that physical education teacher candidates had higher attitudes than classroom teacher candidates.

This study utilizes multimodal narrative reflection to examine pre-service teachers' beliefs regarding language education. Building awareness of beliefs acquired by reflective practices is fundamental to the improvement of teacher education because reinterpretation of beliefs allows for the consideration of new frames of reference for language education. As methodological tools, multimodal narrative reflections are analyzed to identify whether reflection on personal linguistic experience favours the acquisition of teaching strategies for plurilingual education. Results show that there are some beliefs that are deeply seated, while other beliefs are more likely to be modified; what we see at work here is the pressure of hegemonic linguistic purism and monolingual principles. This article uses a case study to illustrate how multimodal narrative reflection within a plurilingual approach to teacher education prompted a transformation of beliefs. It helped the participant to move away from the idea that languages have to be mastered, to a more fluid notion that learning languages is about the development of a plurilingual repertoire. These findings have implications for teacher education in terms of achieving meaningful changes related to language education. The study demonstrates that it is necessary to develop a framework for plurilingual education at the university level.