Session Information
Contribution
The birth rate in Taiwan has dropped gradually in recent years. As a consequence, the registration for elementary and high schools has also decreased then. Therefore it could be noted that trainees in teacher training centers would face fierce pressure while they have to compete for the fewer vacancies of teaching jobs. The authorities of local high schools play a major role in this keen competition for teaching jobs because they could finally decide who the best candidates are among a large number of trainees. There are two significant points in the process of each audition, that is, the definition of "qualified and competent teachers" and values and standards with which the school authorities judge trainees. We believe trainees in teacher training centers nowadays might not have enough understanding of these two points. Hence, they should have access to getting knowledge of these two points and equip themselves with these important qualifications before graduation. Meanwhile, teacher training centers should also try to cater to their trainees with more curriculum activities concerning these two aspects so that they could hopefully educate more competent teachers in the future. In this study, we have adopted three different groups of subjects, that is, authorities of Taiwanese high schools, teacher training centers and trainees. The main themes in the study are the different definitions of competent and qualified teachers among those three groups and their recognitions of values and standards in teachers' auditions. We conduct the study in two steps. Firstly, interviews with experts in the educational filed and statistical analyses have been done after literature review. Secondly, questionnaires have been distributed to three different subjects in order to gain various recognitions and interpretations about the results garnered in the first steps. After analyses of all the data, we might reach a number of following conclusions. As for basic qualifications for competent teachers, specialists in the educational field have named six important points, which are, (a) enthusiasm, (b) abilities of conducting curricular activities, (c) abilities of classroom management, (d) abilities of counseling special students, (e) abilities of communicating with students' parents and (e) willingness of taking more administrative work. All three groups of subjects have the same recognition and interpretation for later five points. It also could be noted that, when the study have been done in more detail, authorities of local high schools and trainees have different interpretations for enthusiasm in teaching, while teacher training centers and trainees have the same idea on it. In addition, authorities in local high school and teacher training centers seem to pay more attention in abilities of classroom management. As for values and standards in teachers' auditions, the three groups of subjects have different perceptions on educational experiences, resume and references, candidates' ages, experiences of attending extracurricular activities, and abilities of using computer-assisting instruction (CAI) materials. The teacher training centers put much emphasis on resumes and references while authorities in local high schools and trainees often ignore it. Besides, authorities in local high schools highlight the abilities of using CAI materials while teacher training centers and trainees do not. Therefore, based on the fining of this study, we may draw following six conclusions, which hopefully would be helpful for teacher training centers. (1) Authorities of local high schools pay a lot attention to the enthusiasm of teaching. (2) Trainees are likely to overlook the importance of classroom management. (3) Authorities of local high schools put much emphasis on candidates' abilities of using CAI materials while trainees do not think so. (4) Authorities of local high schools put stress on candidates' interpretations of educational proficiency. (5) Trainees often neglect the significance of attending extracurricular activities in their school lives. (6) Resumes and references are not so important in teachers' auditions.
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