Browsing by Author "Mansfield J"

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    Career transitions in teacher education: ‘Stories’ from three teacher educators
    (Springer Nature for The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc., 2024-09-21) Fitzgerald A; Cooper R; Carpendale J; Mansfield J
    Career transitions are often studied from the perspective of changing from one career to the next. Missing from this definition, however, is that transitions can take place within a career. In the case of teacher education and academia, these transitions are often seen as well laid out with an accepted view of ‘success’ and those taking an alternate path being viewed as ‘less successful’. In this self-study, three teacher educators at different stages of their careers were guided by the question: What are the barriers and enablers faced by teacher educators in relation to career transitions? The objective of this paper was to reconsider the notion of career transitions and trajectory. Situated within a small-scale research paradigm underpinned by interpretivism, this self-study presents an analysis of the ‘stories’ of three teacher educators and their lived experiences of career transitions within the academy. A descriptive case study approach was used to guide data collection over four phases to generate data using a narrative inquiry approach using timelines, individual portraits, collective stories and additional insights from a critical friend. The notion of critical friend was employed in two ways: the participants acted as critical friends for each other, and the fourth author challenged thinking and offered new perspectives. This self-study offers insights about the characteristics which have enabled and challenged the three teacher educators and may resonate with others, contributing to our understanding of conditions which can be created to support the intra-academy career transitions and professional development of teacher educators.
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    Supporting the Development of Science Pre-service Teachers’ Creativity and Critical Thinking in Secondary Science Initial Teacher Education
    (Springer, 3/03/2023) Marangio K; Carpendale J; Cooper R; Mansfield J
    Creative and critical thinking (C&CT) capabilities are essential qualities of future ready scientific literate citizens. As teacher educators, developing C&CT in science pre-service teachers (PSTs) requires supporting PSTs’ development of C&CT, in addition to supporting their understanding and capacity to teach for development of C&CT in their future school science students. In this study, four secondary science educators critically reflected on the development of our professional knowledge and practice for supporting secondary science PSTs’ understanding of, and capacity to teach, C&CT as future teachers of science. Meeting transcripts, reflective journaling and curriculum documents were inductively analysed for key themes, utilising an iterative approach with multiple cycles of review. Findings showed that integrating C&CT in explicit ways in our teaching and assessment tasks was not as straight-forward as initially imagined. Three themes were identified, showing how our thinking evolved, namely (1) becoming sensitised to C&CT in our science ITE practice; (2) developing a shared language and understanding for science education; and (3) illuminating the conditions for teaching C&CT. A recurring feature in all themes was the value of tensions for sensitising us to specific aspects of C&CT and its teaching. We offer recommendations for others seeking to develop science PSTs’ C&CT.