Teacher Training : Perspectives, Implementation and Challenges Hardback

This book opens with a study seeking to show how students and practicing teachers develop core professional competencies in the early childhood education department of the Levinsky College of Education in Israel.

These competencies, such as relationships with children and adults, mediated learning experiences, and classroom management, are embedded in a small number of core practices that have been systematically and intensively incorporated into early childhood education studies, and sometimes integrated by the graduates into their daily practice. The authors also introduce a study examining the transformation in perceptions of learning-teaching processes of third-year student teachers in in the early childhood education program in Levinsky College of Education while implementing emergent curriculum.

A multiple case studies (Yin, 2014) approach is used to reveal learning processes and challenges. Following this the authors show how student teachers at Levinsky College of Education implement an emergent curriculum approach (Jones, 2012; Rinaldi, 2001; Yu-le, 2004) and create bridges to diverse childrens homes, focusing on the rationale of the program, its implementation and childrens perspectives. To train student teachers in the early childhood education program, a simulation center was created in which videotaped simulations are used as a critical learning tool.

Subsequent analysis of the students documented thoughts and feelings about the simulations revealed key insights regarding communication with parents. This compilation goes on to examine how early childhood education interns interpreted communication with parents and what difficulties and challenges preoccupied them, because the identification of these central difficulties and challenges may contribute significantly to the knowledge of family-school relations in a diverse and changing society. A subsequent study provides a careful investigation into the effects of a course on the parent-teacher relationship on student teachers and interns perceptions.

This study was derived from the goal of preparing student teachers to cope effectively with relationships with parents. The authors examined teachers use of repeated narrative writing based on Pennebakers (Pennebaker &Evans, 2014) expressive writing method to cope with emotionally loaded incidents related to behavior problems in the preschool classroom.

An analysis of sixty narratives written by two Israeli teachers revealed that repeated narrative writing helped them overcome helplessness, regulate negative feelings towards people and situations involved in the incidents, and develop self-efficacy and self-determination, as well as improve their classroom management competencies. The final chapter demonstrates an approach to elicit teachers ideas about teaching and their reflections on teaching practices.

The approach of constructing a practical argument allows for analysis of teachers thinking in combination with their actions in the classroom.