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Clarifies the purpose of initial (pre-service) teacher education and continuing professional development, and the role of universities and higher education personnel in these processes.
Over the last two decades, Chile has been driven by an economic imperative to build the capability of citizens to be competent in the English language, resulting in a high demand for teachers of English. As a consequence, teacher education programs have modified their curricula to meet the challenges of educating teachers of English as a global language. This book explores EFL teacher education in order to further understand the nature of teacher learning in second language education environments, examining the varying motives, actions and mediating tools that shaped how a cohort of pre-service teachers learnt to teach EFL in Chile. Framed by a cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) perspective, chapters use key qualitative research to determine how specific factors can help and hinder the effective preparation of teachers, illuminating contradictory dynamics between local and national policies, teacher education programs, and pre-service views and classroom realities. The book makes an important contribution to the growing debate surrounding the design of EFL teacher education policy, curriculum and learning strategies, emphasising the importance of engaging pre-service teachers in learning to teach EFL, and the interrelated factors that shape this learning. English Language Teacher Education in Chile will be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, curriculum studies, and English language teaching (ESL/EFL), as well as policy makers, TESOL organisations, and those interested in applying a CHAT perspective to language teaching and learning.
In this edited volume by experts in the field of teacher education, Current Issues in Teacher Education combines forces from the United States and Canada to present and discuss positions on current topics and concerns in the field of teacher education. It provides an overview and multiple perspectives of issues rather than one author's position or viewpoint. This will allow the reader to reflect on multiple perspectives and to form his or her opinion and route for further action or discussion. Written in a reader-friendly style with accessible language, the book avoids the use of highly techni.
Children’s learning and understanding of science during their pre-school years has been a neglected topic in the education literature—something this volume aims to redress. Paradigmatic notions of science education, with their focus on biologically governed development and age-specific accession to scientific concepts, have perpetuated this state of affairs. This book offers a very different perspective, however. It has its roots in the work of cultural-historical activity theorists, who, since Vygotsky, have assumed that any higher cognitive function existed in and as a social relation first. Accepting this precept removes any lower limit we may deem appropriate on children’s cognitive engagement with science-related concepts. The authors describe and analyze the ways in which children aged from one to five grapple with scientific concepts, and also suggest ways in which pre-service and in-service teachers can be prepared to teach in ways that support children’s development in cultural and historical contexts. In doing so, the book affirms the value of cultural-historical activity theory as an appropriate framework for analyzing preschool children’s participation in science learning experiences, and shows that that the theory provides an appropriate framework for understanding learning, as well as for planning and conducting training for pre-school teachers.
Embracing a sociocultural perspective on human cognition and employing an array of methodological tools for data collection and analysis, this volume documents the complexities of second language teachers’ professional development in diverse L2 teacher education programs around the world, including Asia, South America, Europe, and North America, and traces that development both over time and within the broader cultural, historical and institutional settings and circumstances of teachers’ work. This systematic examination of teacher professional development illuminates in multiple ways the discursive practices that shape teachers’ knowing, thinking, and doing and provides a window into how alternative mediational means can create opportunities for teachers to move toward more theoretically and pedagogically sound instructional practices within the settings and circumstances of their work. The chapters represent both native and nonnative English speaking pre-service and in-service L2 teachers at all levels from K-12 through higher education, and examine significant challenges that are present in L2 teacher education programs.
This book provides new theoretical insights to our understanding of play as a cultural activity. All chapters address play and playful activities from a cultural-historical theoretical approach by re-addressing central claims and concepts in the theory and providing new models and understandings of the phenomenon of play within the framework of cultural historical theory. Empirical studies cover a wide range of institutional settings: preschool, school, home, leisure time, and in various social relations (with peers, professionals and parents) in different parts of the world (Europe, Australia, South America and North America). Common to all chapters is a goal of throwing new light on the phenomenon of playing within a theoretical framework of cultural-historical theory. Play as a cultural, collective, social, personal, pedagogical and contextual activity is addressed with reference to central concepts in relation to development and learning. Concepts and phenomena related to ZPD, the imaginary situation, rules, language play, collective imagining, spheres of realities of play, virtual realities, social identity and pedagogical environments are presented and discussed in order to bring the cultural-historical theoretical approach into play with contemporary historical issues. Essential as a must read to any scholar and student engaged with understanding play in relation to human development, cultural historical theory and early childhood education.
Research and Development in School: Grounded in Cultural Historical Activity Theory intends to give student teachers, teachers and school leaders research knowledge about which methodologies (research approaches) and methods (data collection and analysis methods) they can use as tools when researching the day-to-day affairs of school and classroom practice.
Applying Cultural Historical Activity Theory in Educational Settings harnesses research and development for educational improvement, bridging the gap between research and practice. Exploring how collaborations between researchers and practitioners can be used to co-construct solutions to real-world problems, this book considers key concepts in cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), including models as resources that can be used to build and facilitate collaboration between researchers and practitioners. The chapters of the book draw on research findings from the practices of learning communities in diverse educational settings: teacher education, the education of school leaders, early childhood education and driving teacher education. Applying Cultural Historical Activity Theory in Educational Settings is an excellent resource for researchers and practitioners seeking to construct new knowledge and develop practice, or wishing to expand their knowledge of CHAT.
Eighty years ago, L. S. Vygotsky complained that psychology was misled in studying thought independent of emotion. This situation has not significantly changed, as most learning scientists continue to study cognition independent of emotion. In this book, the authors use cultural-historical activity theory as a perspective to investigate cognition, emotion, learning, and teaching in mathematics. Drawing on data from a longitudinal research program about the teaching and learning of algebra in elementary schools, Roth and Radford show (a) how emotions are reproduced and transformed in and through activity and (b) that in assessments of students about their progress in the activity, cognitive and emotional dimensions cannot be separated. Three features are salient in the analyses: (a) the irreducible connection between emotion and cognition mediates teacher-student interactions; (b) the zone of proximal development is itself a historical and cultural emergent product of joint teacher-students activity; and (c) as an outcome of joint activity, the object/motive of activity emerges as the real outcome of the learning activity. The authors use these results to propose (a) a different conceptualization of the zone of proximal development, (b) activity theory as an alternative to learning as individual/social construction, and (c) a way of understanding the material/ideal nature of objects in activity. Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. He researches scientific and mathematical cognition along the life span from cultural-historical and phenomenological perspectives. He has conducted research in science and mathematics classrooms as well as having realized multi-year ethnographic studies of science and mathematics in workplaces and scientific research. Luis Radford is full professor at Laurentian University in Canada. His research interests include the investigation of mathematics thinking and knowing from a cultural-semiotic embodied perspective and the historical and cultural roots of cognition. For many years he has been conducting classroom research with primary and high-school teachers about the teaching and learning of mathematics.
"The contributions are authoritative and of high quality. This is an important resource." -The Teacher Trainer A seminal, 'state-of-the-art' critical review of teacher and school development which touches upon and discusses issues at both policy and practice levels.
