Professional identity tensions are a common part of teachers' experience and have been shown to present opportunities for professional growth when approached as a learning opportunity. This study investigated the use of a questionnaire as a tool within an at-tension pedagogical approach. Authors collected data from six teacher candidates enrolled…

The goal of this study was to describe the experiences of fourth year Early Childhood Education (ECE) student teachers during their school practicum at the time of COVID-19 in Cyprus. Specifically, a group of 28 preschool student teachers was followed over the period of 13 weeks during their final practicum course. Through journaling they…

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of question prompts on the process of journal writing by comparing unstructured and structured journals from pre-service teachers in the context of a Teaching Practicum course. Four early childhood pre-service teachers in their final year of undergraduate study constituted the case of this study.…

High quality field or practicum experiences are important for preparing preservice teachers for the profession. Studies suggest preservice teachers rate their practicum experiences more favourably when their cooperating teachers mentor them using apprenticeship-type practices. There is scant research on how such an approach is used in early…

Limited research exists on the factors that contribute to community college students' development of self-efficacy (SE) while serving as preservice teachers (PSTs) during their early childhood education (ECE) practicum. This lack of research is concerning because educators who have high SE enhance the educational well-being of all children. The…

In this paper, early childhood teacher educators describe their work to provide opportunities for pre-service teacher candidates to engage in specific practices that facilitate reflection and planning related to enhancing toddlers' engagement during free play. The practices targeted were structured by the instructor and supported by the mentor…

The great majority of teacher training programmes incorporate reflective practice as a fundamental professional competence since reflection is considered to be a key element in professional development. However, in the literature reflection is conceptualised in multiple ways, making it difficult to determine what types of contexts facilitate the…

Observing the teaching-learning situations that arise in educational contexts is a key part of teacher education. The present study examined how forty-three future teachers constructed their professional knowledge. Adopting a qualitative approach, we discuss the teaching situations observed by pre-service teachers in the subjects of…

Online learning is an educational process which takes place over the Internet as a form of distance education. Distance education became ubiquitous as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. Because of these circumstances, online teaching and learning had an indispensable role in early childhood education programs, even though debates…

This study examined the impact of intergroup dialogue on a cohort of preservice early childhood educators. Specific attention was paid to the ways in which participation in intergroup dialogue shaped participants' sense of identity, the ways in which they "saw" multiple and intersecting identities in schools and classrooms, and how…

This paper examines a cohort of Chinese preservice teachers' (PSTs') (n = 13) international teaching practicums (ITPs) experiences in Canada from the perspectives of complexity theory and boundary-crossing. Through semi-structured interviews and reflective journals, we positioned PSTs' ITPs within multiple layers, including biographies, the…

This paper reports on the importance of the stories and perspectives of early childhood education Associate Teachers (ATs) at a time when there is considerable flux being experienced in the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood sector, due in particular to the ongoing impact of changes in government funding policy, ongoing debates about pathways…

The authors, a team of literacy teacher educators who are focused on extending our own understandings of preservice teacher (PST) learning, conducted a cross-case analysis of how PSTs learned to teach literacy in three concurrent practicum experiences. We draw on Grossman's framework of representations, decompositions, and approximations to…

In this paper, we describe a training proposal for future Infants and Primary School teachers. The paper is based on a collaborative proposal of research and reflection that has taken place between the university tutor and a group of students at the University of Cantabria (Spain). The aim of the paper was to promote a more reflexive and socially…

This article describes a research study in which 10 early childhood education students participated in facilitated critical reflection experiences during a 7-week practicum. Students' critical thinking skills were quantitatively assessed using the Cornell Critical Thinking Test and qualitatively documented through analysis of daily, weekly, and…