This research examined the critical incidents of 10 United States (US) early childhood student teachers during a three-week university-sponsored international field experience conducted in three urban preschools in Kathmandu, Nepal. The purpose of employing the critical incident technique was to allow the US student teachers to reflect critically…

Human agency is significant to the understanding of professional identities and actions. It is through human agency that individuals can become powerful in changing or authoring their own identities. Stemming from a larger narrative inquiry focused on understanding the professional identities of public preschool teachers, this paper draws on…

Grading is often perceived as one of a teacher's most difficult tasks. Despite most teachers endeavoring to grade their students as objectively as possible, many students feel that they are subject to unfair grading. The aim of this study is to describe what it is about a teacher's grading that contributes to the perception of unfairness. This…

As a team of teacher educators at a university in the United States, we engage in participatory action research to reflect on how reflective tools which we design engage teacher candidates (TCs) in their reflecting on teaching. In this paper, we describe how we invite TCs to write in-class reflections, respond to self-assessment probes, and…

In Sweden, gender pedagogics has been on the political agenda the last decade. Consequently, gender matters have been given much attention in Swedish preschools, and specialized pedagogues have also been trained to counteract socially constructed gender distinctions. Therefore, we have explored the enactment of gender pedagogics. We asked 17…

Using the critical incident approach, preschool teachers at 10 preschools in Sweden were asked to describe their work with respect to ethnic and cultural diversity. The study attempted to provide insights that go beyond commonly used models of intercultural sensitivity and intercultural competence (e.g. Gudykunst and Kim; Landis, Bennett, and…

At the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) conference in Prague in autumn 2007, an international network of teacher trainers and researchers was formed to discuss and investigate what learning and participation meant for preschool teacher students and staff who work with young children. In Sweden, the first of these…