This is the English language contents page for E&SD 13(3)
Roza Alexeevna Valeeva
Editorial: The International Forum on Teacher Education 2018 9
Nick Rushby
Colin Latchem obituary 12
Maria Popa
In Search of the Ideal Teacher – Students’ perspective 16
Elena Revyakina & Conor Galvin
Values, Imaginaries and Policy-Making for Teacher Education: insights from researching the Russian Federation context of reform, 2000-17
25
Errol Thompson
Teaching Computational Reasoning Through Construals 40
Doncho S. Donev
Emotional exchange in pedagogical communication using interactive methods 53
Мarinella I.Grudeva, Yordanka St. Dimitrova
Strategic guidelines for increasing the professionalism of lecturers in higher educational institutions 59
Lyubov A. Kochemasova
The social status of teachers in modern teacher education 66
Vladimir N. Mezinov, Svetlana V. Markova, Marina A. Zakharova
Development of personal responsibility in early years teachers in a competitive environment 78
Notes for authors
This special edition includes works of international standing presented at the IV International
Forum on Teacher Education held on 22-24 May, 2018 in Kazan (Volga region)
Federal University (IFTE-2018)1. The changes taking place in the modern education
system make it necessary to improve the skills and professionalism of the teacher. The
main goal of modern education is to meet the current and future needs of an individual,
society and the state, and to prepare a diversely developed personality of a citizen capable
of social adaptation in society, self-education and self-improvement(Bolotov, 2014). A
free-thinking teacher, capable of predicting the results of their activities and modeling
the educational process is the guarantor of the achievement of these goals. Thus, the demand
for qualified, creatively thinking, competitive teachers, able to educate a person in
a modern, dynamically changing world, has increased sharplyKalimullin, 2014; Valeeva
& Gafurov, 2017).
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Colin Latchem, a key and
influential member of the Editorial Board of Education & Self Development. He died
peacefully on 3rd July 2018 after a very short illness.
The role of the modern teacher is nuanced by a series of attributes. He is now asked to be a specialist,
a guide, a friend, a counselor, an expert, a leader, a supporter, a facilitator, and, last but not least, a
model. Not only does he need all these roles, but also has to calibrate their proportion in the individualized
interaction with each student. In this study, we highlight the expectations of future education
professionals regarding the ideal teacher and the personal perceived characteristics that endorse
students’ intention of being a teacher. In this research, 40 student of education were involved. The
participants are enrolled in a one year Teacher Training Program. Most of them have no teaching
experience, and their specialization fields are diverse. In a questionnaire and an argumentative essay,
they were invited to find a minimum number of five features that the ideal teacher needs in order to
generate efficient learning, to rise the well-being state of students and to aim future work performance.
The group chosen for the study, although unrelated through their work activity and formal
education, has a common binder: they all want to become teachers. Their perception is not only
an evaluation of the ideal teacher, taking in consideration their own school experience, but also an
exercise of reflection of their own capacities regarding their disposal to be a teacher. The conclusion
shows a narrowing of the ideal teacher characteristics and an aware realistic exposure of personal
self-evaluated features and fears in relation with the desired possibility of being a teacher.
The paper presents insights drawn from researching the discursive construction between 2000 and
2017 of new values-systems that guide, and force, change in Teacher Education within Higher Education
in the Russian Federation. It considers particularly the imaginaries and values that underpin
official policy documents related to Higher Teacher Education within the broader field of educational
policy across this time scale of almost two decades. The central focus rests on the challenge of
researching the construction of a driving discursive context for change, subsequently consolidated
through the activities of the Modernisation of Teacher Education Project (MoTEP) which was officially
launched by the Ministry of Education and Science in 2014. It is not the intention of this
paper to discuss in any great detail the nature and practice of Russia’s Teacher Higher Education in
itself; for this we suggest Sobolev’s (2016) excellent account. Rather, we focus on what can be learnt
from researching an aspect of one of the most intriguing and grand-scale policy-led projects of our
time; the rehabilitation of Russia as a global power. The research underpinning the paper draws on
Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to explicate the nature and detail of the changes being promulgated
and the construction of these through policy work. It does so by evaluating a series of key policy
documents and discursive events that seek to redefine discursively the values-base of teacher education
in the Federation. For this, a discourse historical approach (DHA) is used, drawing primarily
on the ideas of Krzyżanowski (2010) and Reisigl and Wodak (2001; 2017). Sitting within the critical
discourse studies tradition this approach provides our guiding theoretical perspective and informs
the research methodology. Our analysis suggests that the values-system and imaginaries of teacher
education are strongly reliant on a unique and highly contextualised discursive construction and a
legitimation of policy-actions by means of references to strategies and visions for the ‘competitive,
innovative and leading economy’, and that the imaginaries and values that underpin Higher Teacher
Education in the Russian Federation, are challenging to research because they are considerably more
complex and multifaceted than much of the reform activity assumes.
Can construals be used to teach computational reasoning? This paper outlines some of the issues of
teaching computational reasoning and then endeavours to show how it might be possible, through
using the principles of variation theory to design teaching sequences and consequently construals
that open the learner up to the computational reasoning ideas being considered
The article examines the proportion of teachers who are willing to overcome their traditional approach
when working with students and actively interact with them. The study follows the willingness
of teachers to engage in emotional exchange with their students, the frequency of application
of interactive teaching methods and the assessment of the effectiveness of their use towards
pedagogical aims. Emotional teacher-student exchange is seen as an important part of pedagogical
communication and a determining element in the use of interactive teaching methods in secondary
school.
The article examines the problem of establishing a modern higher education institution as a lifelong
learning institution by forming a creative and flexible educational environment in which the individual
profile of the trainees is fully disclosed. It follow the guidelines in two key documents: The
National Lifelong Learning Strategy (2014-2020) and the Strategy for the Development of Higher
Education in the Republic of Bulgaria (2014-2020). The search for adequate solutions to this problem
highlights the need to constantly increase the professionalism of the teachers in higher schools.
This is primarily achieved through the formation and development of their pedagogical and andragogical
culture, as a guarantee of the high quality of the education process.
The article reports on a sociological study which measured teachers’ changing social status in modern
teacher education. A survey was carried out of teachers’ satisfaction with their social status in
the Orenburg region of southwest Russia. The results illustrate the problems of transforming the
attractiveness of the teaching profession and discusses the factors that characterize the current status
of the teacher, the reasons for the professional instability, the low motivation for achieving career
growth and relevance in a highly competitive labor market.
Development of theoretical principles to the problem of teacher’s decision-making in preschool education
are impacted by the contradictions of modernization of the education system the humanization
of education (the strengthening of the Humanities and social changes in modern society). This
involves a transition from the paradigm of rigid formative education to personal development, the
need to address the humanitarian tasks of the young generation. These are linked to an interdisciplinary
understanding of change in pedagogical education and an increased growth of competition
in the field of education. The authors aim to provide simple and clear answers to frequently asked
questions aimed at improving the quality of teacher education with respect to professional choices
facing the teacher.