The purpose of this article is to illustrate some of the ways the relationship between beliefs and practice developed among three early childhood/elementary teachers across three consecutive studies. The findings reveal that the three preservice teachers grew from being uncertain about their beliefs to understanding how their beliefs informed their practice. In this study, the participants reached a level of purposeful decision-making and were able to more clearly articulate their beliefs and related practices.

This article reports on a mentoring programme in a university at the Republic of Ireland, which provides an accreditation pathway to a master’s level qualification. The authors adopted three different and complementary lenses through which to consider mentoring as an academic and professional practice: (a) the international literature; (b) their own reflective and reflexive dialogue; and (c) observations from mentor teachers’ efforts to interrogate their own professional practices. The authors conclude by arguing for productive mentoring, for sustainable change, as an academic, caring and professional practice that is contextually responsive.

The current paper reports on a qualitative study of the impact of a pedagogical practice called cultural and political vignettes (CPVs) on graduate students enrolled in a teacher education course. CPVs are cultural and political ‘‘situations’’ that are presented to preservice and inservice teachers, so that they can practice first-hand the decision-making skills that they will use in the diverse classrooms of New York City public schools. The preliminary findings of this qualitative inquiry indicate that responding to, creating, exchanging, and engaging in situated performances of CPVs provide teachers with occasions to practice their written, verbal, and nonverbal communication skills in a supportive classroom environment where they can discuss cultural and political issues that are rarely addressed in teacher preparation courses.

This study examines how the contemporary European policy debate addresses the further development of the quality of teacher educators. This article concludes that in most countries, policy measures for teacher educators appear to be no different from measures for teachers in higher education in general, while in only a few countries are teacher educators considered a distinct professional group with its own policy measures. The most dominant stakeholders in developing actions and measures related to the professional quality of teacher educators are national governments and heads of local teacher education institutions. Teacher educators themselves, however, are much less specified as explicit stakeholders in policies on the quality of teacher educators.

The author suggests that educators of preservice teachers begin to employ insights gained from the Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future. In order to show relationships between early childhood play and Gardner’s theory, the author crafted the framework. This framework takes into account both artistic and scientific aspects of the mind. The article describes each mind as interpreted from Gardner, and explores the implications for the instruction of preservice teachers. The author concludes that recognizing the importance of play, as captured within Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future, allows us to acknowledge that play is a meaningful and necessary feature in the contexts of school, and ultimately in the lives of the nation’s school children.

The goal of this study is to determine the factors that influence dispositions. The study examines experiences that influence candidates’ dispositions, the role that teacher education plays in dispositional development, and the ways in which these findings can inform teacher preparation programs in their efforts to prepare candidates to work with diverse students.The authors found that teacher preparation courses were the most influential factor in influencing candidates’ responses to issues of diversity. However, the research suggests that candidates’ field experiences have mixed impacts on their situational responses.

This study had two purposes: (1) to test the hypothesis that teacher candidates who faced challenges in student teaching had lower self-ratings on teacher dispositions than their counterparts who did not face challenges in student teaching, and (2) to develop an explanatory model to predict teacher candidates’ challenging experiences in student teaching. As the authors hypothesized, teacher candidates who successfully completed student teaching had significantly higher self-rating scores on dispositions than their counterparts who faced notable challenges. The findings from this study stand to advance our understanding of how dispositions relate to instructional practices and approaches.