Early Childhood Open-Mindedness: An Investigation Into Preservice Teachers’ Capacity to Address Controversial Issues

2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazan Bautista ◽  
Thomas Misco ◽  
Stephen John Quaye
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Thinking Dispositions ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
The Common

We investigated the characteristics of early childhood education (ECE) preservice teachers (PSTs) who were identified as closed minded and their capacity to deal with controversial issues. We define open-mindedness as the willingness to consider experiences, beliefs, values, and perspectives that differ from one’s own. First, we used quantitative surveys to identify PSTs with less open-minded thinking dispositions among those who responded ( n = 84). Then, we selected and ultimately interviewed five participants who indicated that their religious views played a significant role in the way they developed their epistemological and ontological views. Interviews suggested that concepts of social justice and the common good were seen as inimical to their core religious beliefs. As such, some respondents avoided these ideas without sufficiently entertaining the complexity involved with their religious beliefs and democratic ideals. This study has numerous implications for the macrocurriculum of teacher education.

scholarly journals Misunderstanding child-centeredness: The case of “child 2.0” and media education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Mertala
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Early Childhood Teacher ◽  
Media Education ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Child Centered

This qualitative study demonstrates the kinds of pedagogical pitfalls that are included in simplistic understandings of child-centeredness in the context of media education, an emerging field of early childhood teacher education with only a little empirical research done so far. Course diaries from 15 preservice teachers were analyzed to find answers to the question: How do preservice teachers approach child-centered education in the context of media education? The main findings can be summarized as follows. First, preservice teachers approached child-centeredness as an all-encompassing principle that guides early childhood education. Second, media education-related issues—beliefs about children and media, ambiguity of media literacy, and insecurity about oneself as a media educator—appear to bolster views of children as self-driven learners, and teachers as mere facilitators who do not have an active role in children’s learning processes

Revisioning Fairness as Social Justice in Early Childhood Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunmin Lee ◽  
Jennifer Keys Adair ◽  
Katherina A. Payne ◽  
David Barry
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Childhood Education

From salvation to inquiry: Preservice teachers’ conceptions of race

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-384
Author(s):  
Lucinda Grace Heimer
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Classroom Practice ◽  
Future Teacher ◽  
Teacher Education Programs ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
The Impact

Race is a marker hiding more complex narratives. Children identify the social cues that continue to segregate based on race, yet too often teachers fail to provide support for making sense of these worlds. Current critical scholarship highlights the importance of addressing issues of race, culture, and social justice with future teachers. The timing of this work is urgent as health, social and civil unrest due to systemic racism in the U.S. raise critiques and also open possibilities to reimagine early childhood education. Classroom teachers feel pressure to standardize pedagogy and outcomes yet meet myriad student needs and talents in complex settings. This study builds on the current literature as it uses one case study to explore institutional messages and student perceptions in a future teacher education program that centers race, culture, identity, and social justice. Teaching as a caring profession is explored to illuminate the impact authentic, aesthetic, and rhetorical care may have in classrooms. Using key tenets of Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool enhanced the case study process by focusing the inquiry on identity within a racist society. Four themes are highlighted related to institutional values, rigorous coursework, white privilege, and connecting individual racial and cultural understanding with classroom practice. With consideration of ethical relationality, teacher education programs begin to address the impact of racist histories. This work calls for individualized critical inquiry regarding future teacher understanding of “self” in new contexts as well as an investigation of how teacher education programs fit into larger institutional philosophies.

scholarly journals Preservice Teachers’ Discursive Constructions of Cultural Practices in a Multicultural Telecollaboration

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baburhan Uzum ◽  
Bedrettin Yazan ◽  
Netta Avineri ◽  
Sedat Akayoglu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Discursive Constructions

The study reports on a telecollaboration exchange between two teacher education classes in the United States and Turkey. In synchronous and asynchronous conversations, preservice teachers (PTs) engaged in social justice issues and made discourse choices that captured culture(s) and communities as diverse or essentialized. These choices were affected by PTs’ positionings and impacted how PTs connected to individuals only and/or to broader society.  PTs asked questions that created space for critical discussions and facilitated awareness of diversity, yet sometimes led to overgeneralizations. The study has implications for designing telecollaborations that promote language and practices to unpack the issues of social justice.

scholarly journals Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers’ Preparedness to Teach Education for Sustainability

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-96
Author(s):  
Anita Croft
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Sustainability Practices ◽  
Preparedness To Teach

The benefits of beginning Education for Sustainability (EfS) in early childhood are now widely documented. With the support of their teachers, young children have shown that through engagement in sustainability practices they are capable of becoming active citizens in their communities (Duhn, Bachmann, & Harris, 2010; Kelly & White, 2012; Ritchie, 2010; Vaealiki & Mackey, 2008). Engagement with EfS has not been widespread across the early childhood sector in Aotearoa New Zealand (Duhn et al., 2010; Vaealiki & Mackey, 2008) until recently. One way of addressing EfS in early childhood education is through teacher education institutions preparing students to teach EfS when they graduate.

scholarly journals How to Use Challenge-Based Learning for the Acquisition of Learning to Learn Competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers: A Virtual Archaeological Museum Tour in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Abril-López ◽  
Dolores López Carrillo ◽  
Pedro Miguel González-Moreno ◽  
Emilio José Delgado-Algarra
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
Learning To Learn ◽  
Virtual Tour ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Challenge Based Learning ◽  
Museum Tour

This article presents the research results in relation to an interdisciplinary teaching innovation project—Teaching and Learning of Social Sciences and Teaching and Learning of Natural Sciences—with Early Childhood Preservice Teachers (ECPT) at the University of Alcalá (Spain) in the pandemic context by COVID-19 during 2020–2021 (N = 55): 52 women (94.55%) and 3 men (5.45%) from 20 to 22 years of age. The main research problem is to know if the ECPT improves the learning to learn competence after a challenge-based learning (CBL) linked to virtual tour in a museum. The main objective was to improve the learning to learn competence, during a virtual tour at the Community of Madrid Regional Archaeological Museum (MAR) (Alcalá de Henares, Spain) for a reflective training of students to understand problems of the past and present and future global challenges, promote collaborative and multidisciplinary work, and defend ethics and leadership. In order to ascertain the level of acquisition of this competence in those teachers who were being trained, their self-perception—pretest–posttest—of the experience was assessed through a system of categories adapted from the European Commission. ECPT worked, in small groups and using e/m-learning tools, ten challenges and one storytelling cooperatively with university teachers to solve prehistoric questions related to current situations and problems. Subsequently, two Early Childhood Education teachers from a school in Alcalá de Henares reviewed the proposals and adapted them for application in the classroom of 5-year-old boys and girls. The results show an improvement in this competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers: total score pre-post comparison paired-samples Wilcoxon test result shows a statistically significant difference (p > 0.001); an evaluation rubric verified the results of self-perception. Second, we highlight the importance of carrying out virtual museum tours from a challenge-based learning for the development of big ideas, essential questions, challenges, and activities on socioeconomic, environmental, and emotional knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Third, this experience shows the insufficient educational adaptation of the virtual museum tour to the Early Childhood Education stage from a technological and didactic workshops point of view, but there is a diversity of paleontological and archaeological materials and a significant sociocritical discourse.

scholarly journals Belief system of future teachers on Education for Sustainable Development in math classes

Uniciencia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Claudia Vásquez ◽  
María José Seckel ◽  
Ángel Alsina
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Mathematical Education ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Interpretative Approach

This paper studied the belief system of future Chilean teachers of Early Childhood Education and Primary Education regarding their competencies to incorporate Education for Sustainable Development (EDS) in the classroom, specifically, in math classes. To this end, a survey was applied to 87 Primary Education preservice teachers and 58 Early Childhood Education preservice teachers, which was analyzed from an interpretative approach. Results are not clear regarding ESD and its scope, despite being valued. In addition, there is a clear need for training in this regard and the potential of mathematical education as a tool to incorporate ESD into the school classroom. It is concluded that ESD-related competencies need to be incorporated in initial and permanent teacher training programs in a transversal way, in our case for Mathematics Education.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document