Physics teachers: a holistic plan for professional education during both the pedagogical stage and the probation year |
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| Authors: | MV Sá |
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| Institution: | CFisUC, Agrupamento de Escolas de Pombal School, Pombal, Portugal |
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| Abstract: | Despite the Bologna agreement implementation in 2008, teachers' education in Portugal has not changed significantly from earlier practice. The major modification in the requirements of master’s level teacher education programmes was the introduction of a strong component of educational research in a master’s degree; this is designed to replace an educational monograph in the typical 5-year ‘Licenciatura’. Both a professional one-year in-school pedagogical stage and a fifth year as a university student continue to be mandatory, as well as the stage co-supervision of the university and the school. However, existing government regulations imply that in the very near future the full professional education of teachers will have to be complemented with an in-service probation year conducted under the supervision of a school mentor. The current study has been designed to try to determine: (a) how the activities of the probation year should be organised in order to improve this stage of professional education; and (b) how probation years could be used to promote school–university partnerships that could provide for more effective in-service teacher education and/or possible shared educational action research. Drawing on the survey data from pre-service students from four different universities, novice teachers, stage supervisors and school principals, information was collected on the perceptions of the quality and scope of the professional education of future teachers from the beginning of their programmes through their pedagogical stage. A high degree of agreement among all the respondents enables us to point towards the perceived high quality of several components of the teacher education programmes, e.g, teachers’ ability to plan a lesson using different teaching strategies and the high value-accorded school–university collaborations. The results also show the weaknesses of other components, e.g, teachers’ skill with controlling badly behaved students and their ability to capture students’ attention and motivation. Based on these results and on our knowledge about the type of professional support needed to promote teaching practice, we conclude with a holistic plan designed for teachers’ professional education during the pre-service pedagogical stage and the in-service probation year. |
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| Keywords: | Pre-service teacher education pre-service pedagogical stage in-service probation year professional education of teachers school–university cooperation |
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