Project Aims
- building an understanding of how key personal characteristics are fostered during teacher education
- developing and contextualising a scenario-based assessment (i.e., situational judgement test) that can help promote NSW teachers’ motivation, engagement, and professional growth
Intended Project Outcomes
- increased knowledge for teacher education programs on how the non-academic attributes of prospective teachers are being fostered and developed over time
- a tool that can help promote prospective and novice teachers’ professional growth in non-academic areas (e.g., adaptability)
- evidence for a closer link between educational psychology theory and education practice in relation to teachers’ motivation, engagement, and professional learning
Key People
UNSW School of Education, Education Psychology Research Group:
- Dr. Tracy Durksen, Chief Investigator
- Professor Andrew Martin, Project Mentor and Co-investigator
- Keiko Bostwick, Research Assistant
University of Wollongong, School of Education
- Dr. Sharon Tindall-Ford, Co-investigator
- Dr. Lynn Sheridan, Co-investigator
University of York (UK), Department of Education
- Professor Robert Klassen, Co-investigator
- Lisa Kim, Collaborator
Funding
This project is funded by:
- my Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at UNSW (2016-2019)
- a 2016 Early Career Research Grant from the School of Education (UNSW)
- a 2017 Early Career Research Grant from the School of Education (UNSW).
Research Activities
November 2017: It has been a year since I have posted in this space, so it is time for an update! Since last November, we have continued to collect data from teacher education students and their educators (feel free to visit our participant page for updates on data collection if you are curious).
November/December 2016: Earlier this year we started a longitudinal study with teacher education students beginning their studies in a teacher education program at one of two NSW universities: UNSW and the University of Wollongong. Thank you to those who have agreed to participate! Our aim with this study is to help identify and assess the non-academic attributes (e.g., psychological characteristics including motivation) of pre-service teachers, with the goal of informing the professional learning experiences within teacher education programs. The overarching research question is: To what extent are non-academic skills and characteristics of prospective teachers being fostered and developed through teacher education?
We are now starting to invite students in the Master of Teaching programs at UNSW and the University of Wollongong (who started their studies this year) to try our second questionnaire. This questionnaire is online and will take 15 minutes. Thank you to those who agree to participate!
If you looking for copies of the participant information statement or withdrawal form, please click here for our participant page.
August 2016: We have now completed the interview portion of our current qualitative study. Thank you to the teacher educators from two universities who participated! Our next step will be to draft items based on the scenarios provided through interviews. These items will be reviewed by teacher educators from an additional two universities. The goal is to trial the new scenario-based items with Masters of Teaching students who begin their program in 2017.
July 2016: Thanks to an Early Career Researcher Grant from the School of Education at UNSW, we have started a qualitative study aimed at developing scenario-based questionnaire items that can be used to assess and promote prospective teachers’ adaptability, resilience (capacity to deal with major adversity), and buoyancy (capacity to deal with ‘everyday’ adversity). Our goal is to use items developed through interviews with teacher educators in our PL-TIME longitudinal studies of teacher education students and practicing teachers.
If you are a teacher educator who was invited to participate and and are looking for copies of the participant information statement, consent form, or withdrawal form, please click here for our participant page.
February/March 2016: We started a longitudinal study with teacher education students beginning their studies in a teacher education program at one of two NSW universities: UNSW and the University of Wollongong. Thank you to those who have agreed to participate! Our aim with this study is to help identify and assess the non-academic attributes (e.g., psychological characteristics including motivation) of pre-service teachers, with the goal of informing the professional learning experiences within teacher education programs. The overarching research question is: To what extent are non-academic skills and characteristics of prospective teachers being fostered and developed through teacher education?
If you are a participant looking for copies of the participant information page, consent form, or withdrawal form, please click here.
tracy durksen 