Motivating students to endure teacher education and enter teaching is a pressing challenge in many countries. We address this challenge by exploring the concept of "situational interest" (SI) in teacher education and students' interest in teaching. Survey data was collected from Norwegian student teachers (N = 347) using a…

This article explores how teacher education students perceive high-quality practicum. Data were collected through group interviews with students while in practicum at partnership schools and analysed thematically within the context of qualification, socialisation, and subjectification as goals of education. The findings show that students perceive…

This article presents a study of an educational experiment conducted at the early childhood education programme at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. As COVID-19 made social distancing an issue, the traditional practicum in kindergartens was moved to online platforms. Constructive alignment was used as an analytical framework to investigate the…

Teaching practice periods are intended to prepare pre-service teachers for their professional lives as teachers. With this in mind, we have developed a tool for gathering feedback from learners taught by teachers-in-training to provide these pre-service teachers with feedback that contributes to their professional development. This study presents…

Specialized science courses (SSCs) integrate content knowledge (CK) with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and prepare pre-service teachers (PSTs) for reform-oriented teaching. Studies of individual SSCs report positive short-term outcomes, including an increase in self-efficacy and CK. However, few studies explore the longer-term impact of SSCs…

For the last two decades mentoring as a developmental relationship has been investigated and elaborated on by several researchers. In our study, 382 pre-service teachers answered questions about aspects of developmental mentoring relationships. Using structural equational modelling, we investigated relations between mentors' effort,…

This article explores Namibian cooperating partners' perceptions of receiving pre-service teachers on international practicums. The article focuses on what they perceive as the main benefits and challenges of receiving the pre-service teachers and the potential for developing intercultural competence and global awareness through such arrangements.…

Despite considerable attention given to mentoring in initial teacher education little is known about mutual perspectives in perceptions of students and mentors regarding assessment and how this affects the quality of the student's teaching. Perceptions of assessment during practicum might impede the learning dialogue during mentoring and affect…