Teachers play a key role in promoting flexible mathematical thinking in society. There is a growing need to develop better methods for both pre- and in-service teacher training, but not enough is so far understood about what knowledge and skills teachers use in practical teaching situations. The means for investigating this are few. A new analytic…

Despite the growing importance of in-service teachers' mentalization in early childhood education (ECE), studies on pre-service teachers are scarce. We embedded a newly developed version of video enhanced reflective practice (VERP) program in an online study module in a bachelor's degree program to promote Finnish ECE student teachers'…

Worldwide, scholars and policymakers emphasise the importance of basing teacher education in practice. Scholars have therefore suggested to extend the amount of fieldwork. Still, research has shown that the fieldwork component in teacher education of variable quality. During the last 10 years, an increasing body of research has thus emphasised…

This case study examined three pre-service teachers' reflection processes during their first teaching practicum. During the six-week practicum, the pre-service teachers reflected on their own as well as their peers' teaching in group mentoring meetings several times a week. Unstructured stimulated recall facilitated pre-service teacher-initiated…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate a model for facilitating employees' and full-time, non-business students' entrepreneurial capabilities during their optional entrepreneurship studies at one Finnish Open University. Design/methodology/approach: The case study investigates the course in which transitions from employees or…

This article presents a design for supporting theory-practice reflection in teacher practicums. This design is based on three design principles that promote a transformative stance towards the creation of novel pedagogical approaches: mutual transformation of theory and practice, co-design among supervising teachers, university lecturers and…

An exit survey performed for graduating students is an economical way to assess the outcomes of teacher education. In this study, exit survey data were collected from eight cohorts of Finnish student teachers who graduated between the years 2008 and 2015. A final sample consisted of 1102 preservice primary and subject teachers. A 10-item scale…

Finnish teacher education has been higher academic education since 1979. Thus, all primary school teachers graduate as Masters and they conduct an MA thesis. For this research 23 teachers were interviewed in order to determine their conceptions of reflection, teacher research and their future research intentions. These teacher students worked…

This paper reports on a study into course relevance conducted using some of the principles of Exploratory Practice (EP). I wanted to gain an understanding about how relevant the students taking my English courses perceived them to be in terms of their own lives. I also hoped to resolve some of the tensions experienced due to the differences in…

This paper links the problem of questioning and answering in student teacher supervision with teachers' pedagogical thinking. The first section discusses whether asking the right questions or giving the right answers is more important and what is actually involved when the questions and answers are correct. The second section discusses the…

Presents ideas for broadening the perspective of teacher reflection, discussing ways to encourage teachers and principals to make suggestions about developing their schools and their perspectives of teachers' work. Finland's efforts toward that goal are examined, focusing on perspectives in reflection and tools for broadening perspectives. (SM)

This article details the ongoing collaboration between two teacher training providers in the UK and Finland in the development and use of portfolios to support reflective practice in teacher education programmes. The use of portfolios for assessment in teacher education has developed extensively over a number of years to support the student to…

This paper discusses the need for the renewal of teacher education programs in Finland in order to bring practicing professionals into contact with new knowledge and ideas. To inject new knowledge requires a theoretical understanding of the mechanism of professional change and the process of evaluating professional development. The central factor…

This study focused on the student teacher's process of becoming a teacher with emphasis on reflective development during training; the kind of development that occurred in student teachers when the reflection ability was consciously promoted; the existence of any differences in reflective ability between the different year courses (1-3) and…