Drawing on official data, this article looks at the phenomenon of teacher shortage in Portugal and its implications for teacher education. It includes a quantitative analysis of needs of the system to renew the teaching workforce alongside aspects of mass teacher retirement and a decline in teaching candidates. Issues such as negative media…

Changing attitudes and perceptions allied to the values of diversity and inclusive education is a recognised challenge in ITE (Initial Teacher Education). Using meta-ethnographic methods, this article aims to describe how preservice teachers' attitudes or perceptions towards inclusive education can be developed during ITE. The results show the…

In this article, we examine current and future challenges of the teaching profession by reimagining teacher education using Portugal and the USA (i.e. Texas) as examples. Our comparative analyses in this area began in 2016 when we discovered our common research interests and the relevance of these topics for our contexts. In this paper, we…

This study uses frame of boundary work to explore university teacher educators' discourses of the early childhood teacher education practicum and to identify the complexities of their positions(s) in these discourses. Data were obtained through focus group interviews with university teacher educators (N = 16) from two Finnish universities and…

Teacher agency has been explored in many studies in different contexts, however research on supporting agency is somewhat limited. In this study, we aimed to support teacher agency in a collaborative inquiry-based in-service course developed based on the ecological model of teacher agency and earlier empirical studies. We conducted a study among…

Mentoring is a favoured practice in many fields, including teacher education. This article challenges the uncritical acceptance of the beneficial effects of mentoring, by developing a novel conceptual model which allows to theorise and study mentoring as a discursive practice, focusing on the relations between all actors involved (i.e. teacher…

Teachers' varied goal orientations meaningfully explain differences in their behaviour and cognition. Achievement goal orientation theory (GOT) provides a valuable theoretical framework for understanding teacher motivation. However, GOT has not yet been applied in the context of mentoring student teachers during the practicum. This study explores…

Teacher education and civic education are scholarly fields characterised by an abundance of writings that offer numerous frameworks, visions, and practices. Whereas several studies already presented theoretical models of the civic education process, the goal of this paper is to offer a conceptual framework of preservice civics teacher education.…

Properly designed feedback can be highly conducive to students' learning. Therefore, teacher education needs to equip future teachers with research-based knowledge of how to provide effective feedback. The present study reports the implementation and quasi-experimental evaluation (a pre-post control group design; N = 141) of a four-week…

The study aims to clarify how Finnish teacher educators integrate research and teaching to support their approaches to teaching. Research questions cover teacher educators' forms of research-teaching integration, approaches to teaching, and the relationship between them. With a survey methodology, the study obtained 101 responses with a…

In this study, we explore how Chinese teachers, who are involved in PETE programmes in universities, understand their professional identity and what specific factors influence their professional identity as teacher educators. Initially, a sample of 15 Chinese university teachers involved in PETE were interviewed and five follow up interviews were…

Developing effective models for teacher preparation is an ongoing challenge for teacher educators. Such models require meticulous attention to both content and pedagogy and to the way these components manifest a professional vision, with an understanding that a programme's content and pedagogy not only shape an image of the ideal teacher but are…

Numerous studies emphasise the contribution of inquiry-based learning approaches to positive learning outcomes for students; however, in this study, we explore how a scientific methods assignment may qualify as a profession-oriented, inquiry-based learning approach in teacher education. The paper presents analysis of student teachers' reports on a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted education at all levels in various ways. Institutions and teacher educators had to quickly respond to an unexpected and 'forced' transition from face-to-face to remote teaching. They also had to create learning environments for student teachers doing their preparation in the light of the requirements of teacher…

Set against a context of a changing world and a polarised debate around contested understandings of the role and purpose of teacher education, this paper argues that the current performativity dominated approach to teacher education in Europe - focused primarily on classroom-based pedagogical competencies - is insufficient to fulfil the agentic…