Sharing Teacher Training Methods

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the value of international collaboration. The research, which originated in Israel, arose from a study aiming to enhance teachers’ awareness of their pupils’ thinking processes by exposing them to cognitive theories and to authentic Problematic Learning Situations (PLS). For that purpose, we detected and analysed PLS and used them as video clips in a yearly course for pre- and in-service junior high school teachers. The universality of these learning situations was then pilot-tested across cultures. We provided some of the material on difficulties in geometry to U.K. students training to be elementary school teachers in an effort to learn how these materials affect student teachers in a different country. We were interested in the value of using these materials, differences in Israeli and British reactions to the materials, and the feasibility of conducting such a collaboration. The findings show that viewing the Israeli video clips triggered a change in the U.K. students’ reactions to teaching episodes: it was the first time they took the pupil’s side rather than the teacher’s. However, the findings also show that the dominant influence on the responses of both groups of student teachers (from Israel and the U.K.) was the content of the course in which the video clips were presented.