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Although the importance of teacher induction is widely acknowledged, how teachers experience inductions, particularly those conducted in under-resourced areas, remains underexplored.

This study narrates a novice teacher's induction experience in a Chinese high school, from the perspectives of professional capital and community, social realist theory, practice architecture and teacher agency. The participant, Ming, reflected on a broad array of formal and informal induction activities and participated during the induction period.

Through the three-dimensional narrative space, namely broadening, burrowing and storying and re-storying, five themes emerged from Ming's induction experience: (1) heightened awareness of the meaning of teaching, (2) interacting with various professional communities, (3) professional identity tension and development, (4) the discursive influence of various aspects of culture and (5) the influence on future professional development. Overall, this narrative study shows that teacher expertise and identity development play central roles in teacher induction, and context acts as an important mediating factor in teacher induction. These findings echo the importance of teachers' agency in inductions. The implications for facilitating novice teacher induction are also discussed.

This study contributes to a nuanced understanding of a novice teacher's induction experience in China from the perspectives of practice architectures, professional capital and professional community. The conclusion highlights the importance of professional capital and agency during Ming's induction period. This paper unpacks the complexity of teacher induction by revealing new ways of thinking about induction.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the work of mentors or cooperating teachers (CTs) in Spain and Thailand, by comparing how mentors in both contexts conceive of their work in teacher education.

A comparative study based on a crossnational research (CNR) approach was used. An internationally validated instrument, the Mentoring Profile Inventory (MPI), was given to 171 Spanish and 170 Thai CTs, and an analysis using t tests and constant comparative methods was conducted.

The main results indicate that the Spanish cohort reported being significantly more challenged than their Thai counterparts in working with preservice teachers (PSTs). Both groups indicated a similar degree of motivation. The comparative analysis revealed that the Thai CTs emphasized the importance of ethics in teaching and being a role model for PSTs, whereas the Spanish CTs emphasized the need for strong interpersonal relationships as being central to successful mentoring.

Understanding mentors' challenges and motivations can form the basis for reflecting upon the essential components of teacher preparation in both contexts. Furthermore, comparative cross-context analyses, as demonstrated in this paper, are vital for the identification of important differences that might otherwise remain invisible or unrecognized from a single-context perspective.

The study is original in its focus in that it offers insights that help better understand attitudes and performance within and across contexts – in this case, a European and an Asian country – using a common metric, the MPI. This study serves as an exemplar for other comparison studies for countries of mentors.

This brief history of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) documents developments and trends during the decade 2013–2023. To situate recent ISATT history, we begin with an overview of the association's first 30 years (1983–2012). The dominant theme of those early years was developing ISATT as a recognized and influential professional organization connecting researchers on teaching and teacher education from a growing list of nations and regions of the world. During the most recent decade, there has been a concerted effort toward broad internationalization through biennial conferences and regional meetings, and a growing network of national representatives from across the world. Also, the ISATT journal, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, the journal, which began in 1995, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles written by more than 1000 authors and coauthors, contributing to a growing body of knowledge about teaching and teacher education in many cultures. In the last 20 years and especially in the past 10, the locations of ISATT meetings have become significantly more diverse, following a trend of greater internationalization compared with ISATT's European and North American beginnings. At the same time, the number of ISATT members remains stable and small thereby preserving a collegial and collaborative tone in our exchanges. In sum, ISATT's recent decade finds the association intellectually healthy, successful in managing the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enriched by the proliferation of multinational points of view and styles of research.

The impact of Covid-19 on students and teachers, on courses and programs, and on schools and universities is unparalleled in the history of education. Indeed, many authors have gone as far as to contend that the pandemic resulted in a paradigm shift in education. This chapter explores this contention by first looking at the history of paradigm shifts in education writ large, and then the implication of those shifts on teacher education, in general, and on practicum mentoring, specifically.

The teaching of teaching is sophisticated work although it is often viewed simplistically. To challenge simplistic approaches to teacher education, teacher educators need to actively articulate the specialist knowledge, skills, and abilities that underpin expertise in teaching and to do so through their practice with their students of teaching. In schools, teachers do not commonly experience a workplace culture whereby the explicit discussion and critique of pedagogical purpose and reasoning occurs. Therefore, it is all the more important that teacher educators bring such thinking to the surface in their teaching about teaching. Teaching is not just about the “doing” of teaching; it is also about the “why” – which leads to the development of informed and meaningful practice to enhance student learning. This chapter considers some of the principles that underpin thinking about teaching as more than transmission and therefore shapes what teacher educators need to know and are able to do.