From Teacher to Trainer: What Changes? Or Does It?

AbstractTime on the job does not ensure professional growth and successful teachers are those who continue to develop throughout their professional lives (Ur, 1991). The little research on the characteristics and competencies of successful trainers who guide teachers through their professional growth conclude that the knowledge and competencies of effective trainers are similar to those of effective teachers (Leach, 1996).This study investigates (1) whether the qualities, skills and knowledge systems that effective teacher educators possess are similar to those attributed to successful teachers, (2) whether experience impacts trainers’ perceptions of the qualities, skills and knowledge that effective teacher educators have, and (3) whether these perceptions relate to the expectations of teachers as regards trainer qualities and competencies.Data were collected through a survey in which trainers were asked to list the qualities, skills and knowledge domains of effective teacher trainers, and to choose the top 10 most important in each category. The responses were collated to determine frequency and importance, and examined statistically to see whether experience played a significant role in choice and rating. The qualities, skills and knowledge domains that emerged from the survey were compiled to form a questionnaire and administered to teachers with varying levels of experience. The findings from this questionnaire were compared with findings from the survey. The results yielded implications for both the selection of potential teacher trainers as well as the content of trainer training programs

Individual-based predominance of visual input in multisensorial integration for balance is correlated with proprioceptive drift in rubber hand illusion

Abstract Rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a traditional task that examines multisensory integration. The visual capture of tactile stimulus given to the seen rubber hand was considered to predominate the sensory processing and interfere with the bottom-up proprioceptive and tactile inputs received from the unseen real hand that results in mislocalization of participants hand towards rubber hand, namely proprioceptive drift (PD). Another task that requires multisensorial integration and shows a predominance of visual input is the maintenance of body posture. However, if the predominance of visual input in one task is generalizable to another task is yet to be elucidated. We aimed to examine if individual dependency on visual inputs in multisensorial integration in balance correlated with PD in RHI. Twenty healthy participants were recruited for the study and completed the RHI task. The contribution of visual inputs to the static body balance was measured with the instrumented clinical test of sensory interaction for balance and indexed with Romberg Quotient (RQ). We found a moderate positive correlation between PD and RQ. Individuals with more dependence on visual information in maintaining body posture had higher PD in RHI. Our results indicate that there can be an individual-based dependence on particular domains of sensory input preserved during different tasks of multisensorial integration. Future studies must clarify whether this tendency relates to certain physical or physiological traits