Conditions for professional learning in teacher education

Preparing student teachers for effective teaching in diverse schools and classrooms is one of the main goals of initial teacher education. In this context one might ask: how are initial teacher education programmes designed in order to provide student teachers with relevant professional learning opportunities? How can student teachers benefit from effective and meaningful conditions for professional learning both in schools and in institutions of higher education? The papers included in this issue draw on empirical studies that, in one way or another, enable us to reflect on the learning experiences of student teachers in a variety of contexts such as Belgium, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the USA. This issue begins with the paper ‘Why become a teacher? Student teachers’ perceptions of the teaching profession and motives for career choice’, by Bergmark, Lundström, Manderstedt and Palo, from Sweden. It reports on findings from research on student teachers’ perceptions about the teaching profession and their motives for career choice. Data were collected through written texts with 259 student teachers from 3 Swedish teacher education programmes. Findings are described according to 4 main themes: (re)creating the caring school; creating a desirable (professional) life; fostering the upright human being, and forming valuable knowledge. The authors identified multiple motives for entering teacher education with implications for teacher recruitment and retention. The second paper ‘Changes in Sensed Dis/Continuity in the Development of Student Teachers throughout Teacher Education’, by van Rijswijk, Bronkhorst, Akkerman, and van Tartwijk, from The Netherlands, focuses on the ways in which student teachers experience changes in terms of dis/ continuity during their initial teacher education programme. The authors draw on data arising from 25 authentic supervision dialogues/conversations and included the analysis of development within and across 6 student teachers’ developmental trajectories. Rijswijk et al. concluded that student teachers’ initial sense of dis/continuity is not necessarily predictive of progress and (un)successful completion of teacher education. They also suggest that sensed dis/continuity varies differently over time in student teachers, in terms of when it changes and of with what types of past perceptions and future expectations these changes occur. Based on the data, the authors describe the changes of past perceptions and future expectations of student teachers who expressed (i) a general sense of continuity (ii) a general sense of discontinuity, and (iii) an ambiguous sense of dis/continuity in their first supervision meeting. Rijswijk et al. discuss the implications of their study for supervision and for the role of supervisors in the professional growth of student teachers. The development of proactive strategies to avoid study-related burnout during teacher education is the focus of the third paper by Väisänen, Pietarinen, Pyhältö, Toom and Soini, from Finland. The authors present findings from a study of the use of active social coping strategies during studies and their interrelations with reduced burnout levels among student teachers. The authors investigated the association between proactive selfand co-regulated strategies and study-related exhaustion, inadequacy and cynicism. Data were collected through a survey with 244 student teachers from 3 Finnish universities. Väisänen et al. conclude that the proactive strategies adopted by student teachers seem to prevent study-related burnout, in particular in terms of exhaustion in studies and inadequacy in studying, but not directly the perceived cynicism