A Head-Start to Teaching: Exploring the Early Field Experiences in Pre-service EFL Education in Turkey

This study explored the experiences of pre-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers, cooperating teachers, and university collaborators in a structured early field experience course. Qualitative methodology including data sources of interviews, observations, focus groups, audio and video recordings were used. The results of the study indicated that the exposure of pre-service teachers into real school contexts provided them with the necessary foundations of becoming reflective practitioners. The benefits of the structured early field experiences outweighed the challenges. Early field experiences are critical in forming the pre-service teacher beliefs and philosophies of pre-service teachers, so they should be designed carefully to meet their needs

Hybrid Courses for Preparing Elementary Mathematics Specialists

Post-secondary education has seen an explosion of interest in computer-supported collaborative learning as a pathway for teacher education. Hybrid courses potentially provide broader access to coursework while keeping costs manageable. In this chapter, the authors report on the iterated design and implementation of hybrid courses designed to prepare teachers to become elementary mathematics specialists. The authors describe a framework for building face-to-face and synchronous online sessions that complement each other, while attending to community building, the exploration of mathematical and pedagogical content, as well as the development of leadership skills and tools. They discuss how they have addressed the challenges of online coursework in their evolving course design. They present their successes and how they have capitalized on the opportunities these successes offer, and they conclude by synthesizing the lessons they have learned, the implications of our work, and the recommendations they have for moving forward