RESEARCH IN TEACHER EDUCATION
Year:2022 | Volume:4 | Issue:4 (پیاپی 10)|Papers Count:6

One of the important processes of human resource management in educational organizations is the professional development of teachers. Professional development can help the University professors to achieve the goals and effectiveness of the teaching and learning process. Therefore, the present study has addressed this important issue with the aim of identifying the factors affecting the professional development of the faculty members of Farhangiā n University. In this research, a mixed method (qualitative-quantitative) with a sequential exploratory approach were used. The research population of the qualitative section included all experts, professors and elites in the field of human resources at Farhangiā n University. The sample consisted of 18 experts who were selected using targeted snowball sampling and they were interviewed. The research population of the quantitative section included all professors and lecturers of Farhangiā n University, from among whom, 251 persons were selected as the sample using cluster sampling method. The research tool was a semi-structured interview in the qualitative section and a researcher-made questionnaire in the quantitative section of the study. To analyze the data, open and axial coding methods were used in the qualitative section and the methods of descriptive analysis, correlational analysis and structural equation analysis (second-order confirmatory factor analysis) were used in the quantitative section of the study. The results showed that the factors influential on the professional development of faculty members of Farhangiā n University are: educational strategies and programs, development of creativity and innovation, strategies for improving human resources, career development, development of knowledge management, tendency to research and networking. In the quantitative section, the results of the second-order confirmatory factor analysis and the structural equation model analysis with the partial least squares approach confirmed the validity of the model.

Internship provides students with the opportunity to have specialized practice in the teaching profession. It helps students to connect theoretical topics with the world of practice, become familiar with their job skills, and especially with practical teaching issues, incorporate what they have learned with the experiences of teachers and guiding teachers, and experience teaching in the real classroom. The internship is at the heart of Farhangiā n University's curriculum. The purpose of this study is to investigate the lived experience of Farhangiā n University student-teachers from internships in virtual space. For this purpose, a qualitative approach with a descriptive phenomenological design was used. The statistical population of this study included the primary school student-teachers of Farhangiā n University from Markazi, Isfahā n, Ilā m, Mā zandarā n, and Tehran provinces. The research sample consisted of those primary school student-teachers who had passed at least two internships at virtual space from the mentioned provinces using a purposive sampling method. The Necessary data was obtained using semi-structured interviews. The duration of each interview varied from 20 to 40 minutes, and after 50 interviews, the data was saturated. After conducting the interviews and coding and analyzing them using Nvivo software, the student-teachers’ experience of the internship course in virtual space fell into 4 main themes, including “ interaction and communication” , “ technology and media literacy” , “ teaching” , and “ the structure of the internship course” and 17 sub-themes. The results of the study showed that virtual internship training includes opportunities for student teachers such as benefiting from the teaching of other teachers, archiving the teaching of guiding teachers, increasing the internship time, increasing creativity in education, promoting media literacy, and producing electronic content. There are also shortcomings in this training which include: lack of interaction with students, guiding teachers, and school staff; Lack of experience in classroom management; and lack of familiarity with school rules.

The reflective approach is a new approach in the field of teacher training, especially the practicum program. In this approach, practicum is not a place to practice and repeat the learned techniques, but a process to start and develop the power of analysis, to improve the capacity of judgment through reflection and practice. Farhangian University practicum program has a reflective approach. This research aims to develop an evaluation of the practicum program of Farhangian University (FU) from three perspectives: scientific and theoretical resources in the field of reflection, global experiences, and stakeholders' lived experience. This research can be considered applied because of its purposes and uses mixed methods for data collection. In order to examine and evaluate to which degree reflective criteria have been considered in the planned program, first theoretical resources were documented. Then significations used for reflective practicum by these resources were deductively extracted in order to compare and evaluate the existing program. At the same time, for evaluating the consideration of reflective criteria, 4 practicum programs from Singapore, Australia, Canada, and Finland (countries which are known for their reflective practicum) were chosen and analyzed using George Bereday’ s four steps of comparison' model. Furthermore, to deepen the evaluation process, the practicum was examined from stakeholders’ view (i. e., instructors, teachers, associate teachers, teacher candidates, and novice teachers). Stakeholders lived experiences were phenomenologically examined in order to grasp their perceptions on the quality of the practicum program. The results from the evaluation showed that the reflective practicum program at FU has not considered some of the criteria mentioned in the literature for reflective practicum especially in areas of timing, objectives, expectations, program content, regulating the role of associate teacher, and assessment element. Examining the lived experiences of stake holders also showed shortcomings and drawbacks in some areas as well strong points and advantages in some other areas.

Among the components of the curriculum, teacher is the most important human factor as the interface of the intended and implemented curriculum. Epistemological beliefs of teachers in general and science teachers in particular affect their teaching methods and consolidate the teaching process. As one of the most important philosophical approaches of the current century, the phenomenological approach has gradually gained legitimacy among researchers in various fields of science, including research methodologies in education. The main questions of the present paper are: From a phenomenological point of view, what is the conception of nature as the subject of science? What are the basic features of the science curriculum and science teacher training from a phenomenological point of view? The answers to these questions provide an epistemological framework for the consistency of science teachers' beliefs. This research has been done using the philosophical research (conceptualization, concept analysis, evaluation of conceptual structure). The results showed that the perception of nature obtained from the phenomenological point of view is beyond the subject and object of classical epistemology. Accordingly, a phenomenological model was proposed for the science teachers' training, consisting of the overlapping circles from the center, including nature, student, teacher, approaches to science education, and at the external level, the life-world.

Teacher training is one of the most important and influential areas in the educational and cultural system of any country. One of the factors that can help the development of the teacher training system is to conduct appropriate studies on the reasons behind the rise and decline of this system in the historical context. The purpose of this study was to investigate this phenomenon. The research was conducted by qualitative content analysis method and the inductive coding system. The research population included the teacher training managers of Hormozgā n province since 1343. Sampling was performed using the purposive sampling method by observing the principle of saturation and maximum diversity. It was saturated with 15 people. Data was collected through deep interview and it was validated using audit path and scorers' agreement coefficient. Data analysis showed that in response to the first question about the reasons behind the rise of the teacher education system, eleven categories of pragmatism in the field of teacher education, i. e., responsibility, motivation, being a model of the complex of teacher training factors, healthy human relations, quality, efficient and effective monitoring system, Justice-orientedness, unity, and a comprehensive view and the interactive management in the teacher training complex were enumerated. The three components of quality of the complex of teacher training, pragmatism in the field of teacher training and the planned nature of the teacher training complex were the most prominent among them, and the other categories were of the next degrees of importance. In response to the second question, six key categories including the lack of specialization in the teacher training, financial weakness, inattention, attitudinal weakness, lack of quality and centralization in the teacher training complex were identified as the reasons behind the decline of the teacher training system. Among these, the components of the non-specialization in teacher training and inattention to the teacher training complex were of the most prominence and the other components were of the next priorities.

Social capital is a set of social interaction assets such as partnerships that enable student-teachers to work together in groups to improve teaching and learning. Also, cultural intelligence refers to an individual's ability to function and manage effectively in various cultural contexts. Despite the cultural diversity of Farhangiā n University student-teachers and the importance of their social interactions in their learning and their future students’ learning, studying the relationship between social capital and their cultural intelligence was necessary. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to predict social capital based on cultural intelligence among student teachers of Farhangiā n University (Isfahā n Branch). The research method was descriptive-correlational. The research population included all student-teachers in the last two years of primary school education at the Farhangiā n University of Isfahā n (379 student-teachers) in the academic year of 2019-2020. The research sample consisted of 181 student-teachers who were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan’ s table of sample size, using the stratified random sampling method. The research instrument consisted of Early and Ang (2003) Cultural Intelligence Questionnaire and the Nahapit and Gushal (1998) Social Capital Questionnaire. The reliability of the cultural intelligence questionnaire in the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral dimensions was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient as 0. 76, 0. 71, and 0. 74, respectively. The reliability of the social capital questionnaire for the cognitive, structural, and relational dimensions was computed as 0. 68, 0. 66, and 0. 69, respectively. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed using the opinion of experts. Data was analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression test. The results showed that there is a positive and significant correlation among the structural and cognitive components of social capital and the motivational and behavioral dimension of cultural intelligence. Findings also showed that the behavioral dimension of cultural intelligence could predict the social capital.