Human behaviour in educational contexts can be facilitated and supported by technology enhancements. This thesis considers a virtual 3D world as one such technological enhancement and explores its use in supporting technology acceptance in pre-service teacher education. The adaptation of different educational technology tools can often be challenging for teachers due to negative perceptions, lack of experience and a fear of technology. This thesis investigates the role that immersion within virtual environments can play to change perceptions, increase experience with and overcome fears associated to adopting technologies in the classroom. For this reason, this thesis asks the following questions: What factors and indicators show a positive influence on the participants’ perceptions of learning technologies? Do the virtual world (VW) activities encourage more VW connections and interactions inside the VW? What are the pre-service teachers’ reflections on learning in the VW setting? How is the learning experience in the VW applied to the real world classroom practice? This study focuses on the use of classroom technologies in a pre-service teaching program at the University of Malta. PreVieW (Pre-service teachers Virtual World experience) is evaluated using quantitative, qualitative and social network analysis (SNA). The combination of these three methods is used to measure the extent of the VW’s influence as a medium in affecting the participants’ perceptions about classroom technologies and their behavioural intentions to adopt technology during teaching. The results show that the VW experience has an overall significant positive effect on the self-reported perceptions of technology. Factors affecting this result are perceived ease of use, experience and attitude, whilst social network graphs show that VW activities are responsible for social group formations. Participants attribute the strengths of PreVieW to its flexibility and learner-centric activities whilst finding the technical setup as challenging. Participants reflect on the cultural differences in the understanding of teaching and learning in the VW as opposed to a traditional classroom. Findings lead to a deeper understanding of the human-computer interactions in a VW set in a formal learning experience. Following this a model is recommended proposing the integration of a VW experience in a teacher education program together with a number of propositions to enrich learning in a 3D VW.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Education in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor Of Education (D.Ed.) in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Studies at the University Of Zululand, 2018 / The study examined pre-service teacher training in Open and Distance Learning based Universities in South Africa and Nigeria. The specific focus of the study was on the initial teacher education programmes at Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) and Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE/PGDE) phases in the two ODL based universities. The theories of self determination, humanism, transformational learning, distributed learning, and transactional distance served as the frameworks for the study. Information for the study was gathered through survey. Anonymous web-based questionnaire was designed and used to obtain information from the pre-service teacher trainees in the two ODL based universities. Interviews were conducted for a selected number of academic and support staff members from the two universities. A combination of purposive and stratified random sampling was used to generate the sample frames of the participants for the study. The sample of the pre-service teacher trainees that participated in the study was drawn from the nine (9) Provinces of South Africa, and six (6) Geo-political zones of Nigeria. One thousand, two hundred and sixteen (1216) ODL based pre-service teacher trainees in their B.Ed. and PGCE/PGDE programmes responded to the web-based questionnaire from the two countries. In addition, a total of ten (10) academic and support staff members were interviewed from the two Universities. The overall results revealed that the majority of pre-service teacher trainees by distance are young people between 18 and 29 years of age, unemployed or engaged in voluntary works with no stable source of income. Furthermore, flexibility of the programme and desire to work full time while studying were found to be the major factors that motivated majority of the participants to enrol in pre-service teacher training by distance. Electronic mail (E-mail), postal services, Learning Management Systems (LMS), radio programmes, and social media were found to be the major platforms through which the selected ODL based universities reached their pre-service teacher trainees. Moreover, mobile phone and tablet were found to be the major devices that the sampled student teachers used to access learning materials.

Addressing training in Response to Intervention at the pre-service level has potential to reach educators during their formative years; preparing them to implement research-based practices upon entering the field and building the capacity to do so with more fidelity and less support. While the knowledge levels and perceptions of pre-service teachers are critical to the future success of RTI implementation, the level of training among pre-service educators is less understood relative to their colleagues in the field. This exploratory study was designed to examine pre-service general and special education teachers' perceptions of RTI, and self-efficacy in implementation. A survey, created and distributed to measure teacher candidates' (TCs) opinions and self-efficacy in RTI, found that TCs have positive opinions of RTI. They believe it to be effective for students, but have less ability to implement specific components in the classroom. The outcomes from this study suggest that special education majors had significantly higher ratings of their self-efficacy than elementary education majors. This has implications for curriculum changes in teacher training programs to better prepare educators to implement RTI in the classroom.

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Preparing student teachers for constructivist teaching about society in primary grades Michaela Dvořáková Abstract The content of primary social studies could be described as cultural universals - domains of human existence that form part of everybody's experience. Despite that, children do need a skilled instruction helping them to elaborate these topics. We suppose that for the constructivist teachers, deep content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge is necessary to elaborate and conceptualize children's experiences. In this thesis, we wanted to learn more about the knowledge base of pre-service teachers. To explore the education students' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of social studies topics, we elicited students' concepts related to the topic of family using concept mapping. Then we performed the content analysis of the obtained concepts. We tried to determine whether pre-service teachers rely on their prior knowledge (including misconceptions) of family or whether they use the knowledge gained in social science classes at the high school or at our university. Students do not use their academic knowledge gained in social studies classes spontaneously, but they are able to do when prompted. An important part of pedagogical content knowledge of a social studies teacher are the...

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Title: Transforming teacher education of chemistry in the Czech Republic Abstract: The title of the dissertation is 'Transforming teacher education of chemistry in the Czech Republic'. The work describes and analyzes the current system of the pregraduate prospective teachers' training of chemistry at universities and faculties of science focused on teaching science as well the subsequent in-service education of chemistry teachers in this country. The work also takes into account the post-war development of education in the republic from 1945 until present and the list of all the universities and faculties that educate chemistry teachers. The most important section of this work identifies and analyzes the current state of training and further education of chemistry teachers and the design of chemistry teachers educational conception in the Czech Republic. Key words: teaching profession, undergraduate pre-service teacher training, continuing in-service teacher training/education, educational institutions, curriculum reform, lifelong educatio

This thesis was carried out following the research line Education and Arts of the Postgraduate Education Program at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Brazil, and it is one of the works originated in the research group FAPEM (Qualification, Action and Research in Musical Education), registered at the Brazilian research support agency CNPq. This work aims at investigating music teaching development in the supervised pre-service teacher training of the Music Course Licentiate s degree at UFSM, from the point of view of a group of six trainees. In order to do so, we sought to understand the trainees conception of training and its relation to primary and secondary education. Besides taking into account the laws related to the theme, our theoretical references included authors from the fields of Education (such as ALARCÃO; TAVARES, 1987; GARCIA, 1999; PIMENTA; LIMA, 2004) and Musical Education (such as MATEIRO, 2002a, 2002b; MATTANA, 2005; BEINEKE; BELLOCHIO, 2007) whose research works focus on teachers professional development and supervised pre-service teacher training. The adopted methodological approach was qualitative, including semi-structured interviews, memory stimulus interviews and video recordings of the trainees classes. Criteria for selecting participants were the trainees interest and availability as well as the researcher s availability for going to the schools at the time the trainees were teaching in order to film them. Data were analyzed following their organization into two categories: (1) conceptions of training, including the supervisor s role, and (2) teaching practice at school, considering that the training was carried out in pairs, its relation to primary and secondary education and the trainees experiences. Based on our interpretation and dialogue with the references concerning teaching development in supervised pre-service teacher training, it was possible to reach some conclusions about music teachers professional development. Thus, we believe this research may contribute relevant data to the teaching profession. We pointed out the sharing of actions by the trainees and their supervisor s mediation, as well as problems and considerations regarding teaching development during training and its relation to music teachers professional development. / Esta dissertação foi desenvolvida na Linha de Pesquisa Educação e Artes, do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria e está vinculada ao grupo CNPq/Fapem: Formação, Ação e Pesquisa em Educação Musical. O objetivo da pesquisa foi investigar a construção da docência em Música no estágio supervisionado do Curso de Música Licenciatura Plena da UFSM, a partir do ponto de vista de um grupo de seis estagiários. Para tanto procurou-se conhecer as concepções dos estagiários sobre o estágio supervisionado e entender sua relação com o ensino na Educação Básica. Além de considerar a legislação vigente sobre os temas, os referenciais teóricos estudados incluem autores dos campos da Educação (como ALARCÃO; TAVARES, 1987; GARCIA, 1999; PIMENTA; LIMA, 2004) e da Educação Musical (como MATEIRO, 2002a, 2002b; MATTANA, 2005; BEINEKE; BELLOCHIO, 2007), cujas pesquisas focalizam a formação inicial de professores e o estágio supervisionado. A abordagem metodológica adotada foi a qualitativa, com a realização de entrevistas semi-estruturadas e de estimulação de memória e gravações em vídeo de aulas dos estagiários. A seleção dos participantes ocorreu pelo critério de interesse e disponibilidade em participar da pesquisa e também pela possibilidade de a pesquisadora ir à escola de Educação Básica nos horários das aulas desses estagiários para realizar as filmagens. A análise dos dados foi realizada a partir da organização de duas categorias: (1) concepções de estágio, incluindo a função desempenhada pela orientação, e (2) a atividade docente na escola, destacando a realização do estágio em duplas e a relação com o ensino na Educação Básica com foco nas experiências dos estagiários. A partir da interpretação e diálogo com os referenciais sobre a construção da docência no estágio supervisionado foi possível tecer considerações sobre o processo formativo de professores de Música. Nesse viés, acredita-se que esta pesquisa possa contribuir com dados relevantes sobre o estágio na construção da docência, ressaltando-se o compartilhamento das ações dos estagiários e a mediação da orientação. Enfatizam-se também problematizações e reflexões sobre a construção da docência durante o estágio e sua relação com a formação de professores de Música.

Education in Swaziland is faced with the challenge of degenerating professional standards among teachers. This study sought to determine the relevance of the current teacher training curriculum in preparing pre-service teachers on professional ethics regarding teacher-pupil relationships. The study’s participants were from two universities; University of Swaziland (UNISWA) and Southern Africa Nazarene University (SANU), and three teacher-training colleges; William Pitcher, Ngwane, and Swaziland College of Technology. Participants comprised five purposefully selected heads of education departments, five focus groups of eight final year student teachers randomly selected from each institution, 100 new teachers with less than five years teaching experience (graduates) from the participating teacher training institutions. Data were collected concurrently using a semi-structured interview for the heads of department, focus group interviews for student teachers, a questionnaire for new teachers and document analysis for collecting data from documents of the institutions. Instruments were pilot tested on samples with similar characteristics to those of the participants. Data analysis was guided by the research questions. Qualitative data from the interviews and focus group interviews were analysed inductively, presented narratively through the use of verbatim quotations. Content analysis was used to analyse data from the documents and presented similarly to that from interviews. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as means, frequencies and percentages using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20. Findings of the study revealed that the extent to which teacher training institutions implemented professional ethics regarding teacher-pupil relationships was not as adequate as it should, in terms of content and methods of implementation. The teacher training institutions generally offered professional ethics not as a course but as part of a course or courses. Therefore, the study recommended that the curricula in teacher training institutions should incorporate a course specific to ethics of the teaching profession. A further study on challenges faced by teacher training institutions in the implementation of the curriculum on professional ethics is necessary. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

In this paper the notion of “mathematics profiles” and “instructional behaviour profiles is introduced. A brief explanation of what these profiles are and how they were constructed and represented for preservice mathematics teachers is provided. An example of one of the participants’ profiles is included as an example. The influence of the pre-service teachers’ mathematics profiles on their instructional behaviour is then discussed. This is done with regard to using the mathematics profiles as a potential tool to optimise the development of pre-service mathematics teachers’ instructional behaviour towards a more reform-oriented approach.