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This instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) explores the benefits experienced by mentor teachers who mentored resident teachers in a year-long residency program.

The study was grounded by the Benefits of Being a Mentor conceptual framework, as defined by Ragins and Scandura (1999). The participating mentor teachers engaged in semi-structured interviews and a focus group. The data were analyzed through inductive and deductive data analysis techniques.

Using inductive and deductive data analysis techniques, three themes emerged on the benefits of being a mentor teacher: (1) extra support in the classroom, (2) professional learning and growth opportunities, and (3) investing in the future of education. The teachers’ perceived benefits were related to the connectedness of their personal and professional growth, the growth of the resident teachers and their students’ learning.

Mentor teachers play a vital role in teacher residency programs, as they are the primary influence on their resident teachers’ pedagogical praxis. In a residency program, mentor teachers support resident teachers’ sustained teaching experience by hosting them for one full academic year in their classrooms; therefore, exploring the benefits they receive from serving in this role is essential.

This study aims to investigate how preservice teachers’ stages of concern, beliefs, confidence and interest in AI literacy education evolve as they deepen their understanding of AI concepts and AI literacy education.

AI literacy lessons were integrated into a technology integration course for preservice teachers, and the impacts of the lessons were evaluated through a mixed-methods study. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model was employed as the analytical framework to explore participants’ specific concerns related to AI.

Findings revealed that participants initially lacked AI knowledge and awareness. However, targeted AI literacy education enhanced preservice teachers’ awareness and confidence in teaching AI. While acknowledging AI’s educational benefits, participants expressed ongoing concerns after AI literacy lessons, such as fears of teacher displacement and the potential adverse effects of incorporating generative AI on students’ critical learning skills development.

Despite the importance of providing preservice teachers with AI literacy skills and knowledge, research in this domain remains scarce. This study fills this gap by enhancing the AI-related knowledge and skills of future educators, while also identifying their specific concerns regarding the integration of AI into their future classrooms. The findings of this study offer valuable insights and guidelines for teacher educators to incorporate AI literacy education into teacher training programs.

In illustrating and reflecting on my use of constructivist grounded theory methodology, this chapter explores findings of a study involving perceptions of learning of eight career changing trainee teachers enroled across four one-year primary or secondary postgraduate initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in England. Through four sets of unstructured interviews over the course of 10 months, qualitative findings suggest that this group of trainee teachers experience a similar learning process of convergence, change, consciousness and confidence. Diagrammatic modelling of data plays a key role in enacting a constructivist approach to grounded theory by demonstrating coding relationships through constant comparison leading to theory generation. Along with other observations, significant findings include how career changers without prior education experience may adapt and adopt new, professional identities with more confidence more quickly than those with extensive prior education experience, and, alternative teaching placements that occur in the ‘middle’ of a postgraduate course may have a significant effect in a career changers perceived confidence in ‘being a teacher’. Recommendations for ITE programmes, future teacher recruitment policy and researchers employing grounded theory are included. Recommendations for postgraduate researchers in education are scattered throughout this chapter.

The purpose of this study is to determine the perception of graduates from teaching degree programs in Early Childhood and Primary Education carried out in Spain in accordance with the European Higher Education Area, who are currently working in classrooms, on their initial training in the educational treatment of diversity (ETD). In addition, potential differences were examined based on the teaching degree that was studied (Early Childhood or Primary).

This study used a mixed methodology including an ad hoc questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Participants were 140 working teachers who had previously earned their degree in Early Childhood or Primary Education programs. Data analysis was carried out from an integrative perspective, using a basic descriptive focus and content analysis.

The results reveal that the new teachers considered that their initial training in the area of ETD was not as extensive as it should have been and as required by their daily teaching needs. They felt that they had acquired better education in the theoretical content as compared to the practical component. They mentioned a lack of training to attend to students entering the system at a later stage as well as for those with high intellectual abilities, noting that the initial training in ETD focused excessively on deficits and not enough on potentialities and other student diversities.

This study may be useful as it offers an improved adaptation to the reality of early education in ETD classrooms of future teachers, both for the competent education administrations and universities. It may also serve as a starting point to adjust the permanent training offer for teachers to their specific needs, making up for the deficiencies of their initial training.

The purpose of this paper is to engage readers with Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) films, which provide a powerful, inspirational digital tool for teachers. The organization's mission is to create documentaries, films and educational materials that contribute to bringing to light compelling stories of Muslim engagement through history and culture. UPF films and educational projects aim to promote peace and understanding to increase cultural pluralism and counter bigotry in our world.

Teachers will be able to utilize the resources provided in this paper to harness the power of media in their classrooms. Outlining the process by which teachers can follow the C3 inquiry using the film Prince Among Slaves will prepare teachers to see the alignment of the C3 Framework with their teaching. The “best practice” classroom strategies in structuring deliberations are ones that encourage students to fully participate and emphasize their voice.

This paper will unpack the practice methods that address the film Prince Among Slaves to be of benefit when sharing narratives through digital film and engage students in critical thinking through the C3 Framework. UPF films are the product of scholarly research and innovative production teams as the films provide the opportunity to visualize and explore multiple perspectives to understand historical content by providing a context for inquiry teaching and learning that is inclusive through deliberative discussions in the classroom.

The author certifies that this manuscript submission is original work and that all authors were involved in the intellectual elaboration of the manuscript and all parties have been acknowledged.

We’re all just looking at the stars; how behavioral economics helps us understand the barriers to education programming in Tanzania.

This article uses a qualitative approach to explore the behaviorally normed barriers to quality classroom instruction that contribute towards low learning outcomes. Themed text analysis was applied to qualitative secondary data from seventeen classroom observations and teacher interviews collected from low-performing schools in rural Tanzania.

It was found that teachers in poor-performing schools in Tanzania were focused on the delivery of curriculum and pedagogy, with a misplaced belief that their pupils were performing adequately. The study found no evidence of teacher resistance to change; instead, the teachers were content and often happy to implement the reading program, believing that teaching phonics-based instruction improved their teaching approach. Teachers sought confirmation of their quality instructional practice from convenient yet inaccurate sources that did not include effective pupil assessment.

As a result of the chosen research approach, findings may lack generalizability.

While existing models of teacher change rely on logic and reason for decision-making, this paper provides evidence that teacher models of change are much more complex and irrational, aligned more closely with insights from behavioral economics (BE). Additionally, this paper justifies that traditional research frameworks that study what works provide an incomplete picture to support effective program improvement.

The application of behavioral economics to research and education programming focused on reducing the restraining forces rather than pushing incentives and other program components.

This chapter will explore the main historical trends of the continuous teacher education development in Russia since the 18th century till present. Continuous teacher education in Russia has been a historically changing problem. Its roots lie in the end of the 18th century but its further formation relates to the emergence and development of open comprehensive schools and the spread of general education and opening the universities throughout the country in the 19th century. At the same time neither in the 18th nor the 19th centuries, teacher education in Russia could not be considered as a system, since its structure did not yet have orderliness, stability, constancy and integrity, even at a minimal level (various educational institutions were abolished and closed, teacher education was just beginning to appear in the regions). Thus, the formation of teacher education as a system fell on the border of the 19th–20th centuries. The topic of continuous teacher education in the USSR received impetus since 1986, when the requirements of scientific and technological revolution determined the task of creating a unified system of continuous education in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the continuous education was not recognised as a guiding principle of the teachers' professional development, although de facto it already existed in the 1920s. The phenomenon of continuity in teacher education, understood as the totality of means and forms of obtaining and deepening teacher education throughout life, existed as early as the beginning of the 20th century.

Recently, the pace of pedagogical change in the field of social-emotional learning (SEL) has increased worldwide; hence, there is a greater need to understand and promote social-emotional elements in education systems. The purpose of this study was to explore the implementation of SEL content and practices in the curricula of teacher-education courses while being mindful of the principles underlying teacher–student relationships.

Using a qualitative methodology, data were collected from 55 students enrolled in three courses taught at a college in Israel. The participants wrote reflections on their SEL experiences, which were analyzed using thematic analysis.

The students’ responses revealed various practices and themes that significantly affected their personal and professional development, among them, the relationships in the classroom, both among the preservice students themselves and between them and the teaching staff. The participants also noted that the SEL components of the course influenced the quality of learning and the development of a professional identity that is actively attuned to elements of SEL.

By introducing SEL early in the preservice stage, preservice teachers learn to create safe and supportive environments for their future students, thus improving students’ academic achievements, behavior and well-being.

The study underscores the importance of embedding SEL in the teacher-education curricula and its influence on both preservice teachers’ learning experience and the formulation of their image as future teachers while highlighting the significant role of teacher–student relationships in promoting healthy personal and professional development.

Pedagogical classes within the general secondary education system in Russia have been practised for almost two centuries. They have been recognised as an effective teacher training method in complicated stages of national history and as a part of the vocational guidance of school students. Modern pedagogical classes, on the one hand, can be a significant element of the system of continuous teacher education. On the other hand, they contribute to the understanding of the meaning and content of the teacher's profession, and solve the problems of vocational guidance and professional identity. The purpose of pedagogical classes of the late 20th to early 21st century is to have students prepared for choosing a teaching profession and further study in teacher training institutions and universities.