Implications of Research on Effective Learning Environments for Initial Teacher
Education
Lindsey Conner (University of Canterbury) and Anne Sliwka (University of Heidelberg)
Abstract
As a result of multi-disciplinary research on learning, a consistent and comprehensive body of
knowledge on effective learning environments is currently emerging (OECD 2010). While
this evidence is increasingly influencing the academic and policy discourse on the
improvement and innovation of schools, its impact on the design principles of effective initial
teacher education has been limited so far. In this paper, the seven transversal learning
principles published in the 2010 OECD publication The Nature of Learning: Using Research
to Inspire Practice serve as a framework for systematic reflections on how learning research
on effective learning environments can inform initial teacher education and how the seven
transversal learning principles can contribute to greater coherence and alignment in initial
teacher education programs. We consider the implications of The Nature of Learning and
other research on teacher education, alongside international examples of next practice,
concluding that initial teacher education should model effective student learning.
Key words: teacher education, student teachers, learning research, innovation, self-similarity.
1
Introduction
The increase in knowledge about how people learn (Hattie, 2012; Bransford, Brown &
Cocking, 2000; OECD, 2010) has far-reaching implications for initial teacher education.
Internationally, there has been an increased emphasis on learning (instead of teaching).
Research from the educational sciences, psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience has
contributed to a broad knowledge base about how learners learn and how learning
environments influence learning for different individuals. The evaluation of learning
outcomes has also been linked to particular types of instruction and the role of teachers in
guiding and designing learning (Gordon et al. 2009; OECD, 2010; Halasz & Michel, 2011).
Frustration with educational reform efforts and the need for future citizens to develop a range
of competencies for knowledge economies, including social and meta-cognitive skills, has
fuelled the desire to improve student learning. The central role that teachers play in this
endeavour, not only in influencing student outcomes (Hattie, 2012), but also in bringing about
both localized changes and paradigm shifts in education systems, should not be
underestimated.
Changes in what is emphasized in schooling go hand in hand with changes in the methods and
tools used for educating people. One example is the relatively recent shift in the way
information and communications technology (ICT) is being used in schools. ICT is moving
from being a mere tool for accessing knowledge and information to the ubiquity and
usefulness as a social connector that can facilitate collaborative learning of students and
teachers in multiple ways (Gooding, 2010). The relatively recent development of learning
analytics in conjunction with learning management systems is enabling teachers to gain
valuable information about individuals and cohorts of learners, but learning analytics can also
provide information to personalize feedback for individual or group instruction.
2
Since the major aim of education is to promote student learning, ideas and theories about
learning and their application to teaching practice should be a core part of any initial teacher
education program (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). The evolving concept of learning
as it has moved from reinforcement of positive learning behaviours and information
processing to more active ways by which learners can make sense of new knowledge using
socially mediated or negotiated ways of learning, can be explored in terms of developing
teachers’ adaptive expertise (de Corte, 2010) to meet the needs of their students and to tailor
teaching approaches to both learning content and contextual variables.
The Nature of Learning has identified the following seven transversal learning principles
(OECD, 2010, pp. 14-17):
1. The learning environment recognizes the learners as its core participants, encourages
their active engagement and develops in them an understanding of their own activity
as learners.
2. The learning environment is founded on the social nature of learning and actively
encourages well-organised co-operative learning.
3. The learning professionals within the learning environment are highly attuned to the
learners’ motivations and the key role of emotions in achievement.
4. The learning environment is acutely sensitive to the individual differences among the
learners in it, including their prior knowledge.
5. The learning environment devises programmes that demand hard work and challenge
from all without excessive workload.
6. The learning environment operates with clarity of expectations and deploys
assessment strategies consistent with these expectations; there is strong emphasis on
formative feedback to support learning.
7. The learning environment strongly promotes “horizontal connectedness” across areas
of knowledge and subjects as well as to the community and the wider world.
3
According to the collated research that substantiates these principles (OECD, 2010) for a
learning environment to be judged as truly effective, all of these principles should be present,
since they are interdependent. This paper considers the implications of those principles, in
particular for initial teacher education in university settings. We consider how the principles
can be modelled as part of the initial teacher education programme and thus make teacher
trainees aware of this knowledge. Teacher trainees can use the seven transversal learning
principles to extend their repertoires of practice. Whether students in initial teacher education
are actually able to understand and apply these transversal principles depends to a large
degree on the extent to which their own learning experiences in initial teacher education are
guided by the application of the learning principles.
In other words, it will be important for students in teacher education programmes that these
principles are modelled in practice. Initial teacher education should also model theory in
action about learning processes and adaptive expertise (de Corte, 2010) in that the choice of
teaching and learning methods is neither arbitrary nor based on entrenched habits, but is
adapted and modified according to the needs of the learners. Therefore the choice of teaching
and learning settings in teacher education requires strategic planning and transparency of
purpose: Teacher trainees need to be able to understand why they are being taught in a
specific way in a specific situation and be aware of how they can transfer ideas between
contexts. This paper takes each principle from the OECD research (OECD, 2010) and then
discusses how this principle can be applied to initial teacher education programmes. We are
well aware that there are many different initial teacher education programmes around the
world and some of them are already embracing these principles (to varying extents).
However, we also know that teacher education is in a transition process and that there is a
need to re-align initial teacher education courses and programmes with contemporary research
on effective learning and innovative teaching processes currently emerging in schools. This
4
paper is not a critique of existing programmes. We rather see it as food for thought: policy
recommendations that might translate into practice.
The learning environment recognizes the learners as its core participants, encourages
their active engagement and develops in them an understanding of their own activity as
learners
The balance of different forms of learning should be reflected in the design of learning in
teacher education. Schools have been taking a range of measures to create framework
conditions allowing for a well-balanced mix of instructive and constructivist forms of learning
and teaching (OECD, 2013), such as introducing larger chunks of learning time, self and peer
assessment to support students in identifying what they know and what they need help with
(Conner, 2013). This balance of instructive and constructivist approaches should be reflected
in teacher education programmes which have, in many cases, been trapped in the narrow logic
of university schedules. Longer-term learning projects allow for self-directed learning to meet
the various needs of a diverse population of adults. Adult learners are often capable of
directing their own learning if they are guided and given clear tasks to complete during
contact time and non-contact time (Brookfield, 1986). Non-contact time in particular requires
clear guidelines and specific tasks.
Longer-term learning projects in teacher education can also provide a framework for the
development of complex skills. If we want teacher education students to become reflective
practitioners working in professional learning communities and committing themselves to
longer-term school improvement projects, learning in teacher education requires a variety of
different time frames, such as working on projects over a period of more than one term or one
semester, with time set aside for reflection on a regular basis. Examples of these kinds of
projects can be found in service learning (Sliwka and Klopsch, 2012; Power, 2012) and in
5
mentoring individual students in the care of teacher trainees (Esch et al., 2007). In these
complex settings, student teachers’ development of critical thinking engages and deepens the
understanding of all involved, including teacher educators and the students taught by the
student teachers. Critical thinking challenges the status quo and deficit thinking and generates
improved teaching practices as they are refined through ongoing reflection.
In learner-centred approaches, teachers make room for their students’ acquisition of content,
skills and affective outcomes, they monitor how the learning occurs and collect evidence
indicating how effective the learning has been. Nevertheless, learner-centred approaches still
value teaching highly. In these approaches, it is the teacher’s role to support and manage all
processes associated with learning. Thus, there is likely to be a wide range of activities that
teachers engage in from teacher-directed to appropriately targeted student-centred activities.
In those activities, students are given more freedom to develop their own learning intentions
with a choice about the content and the procedures used for learning. For doing so effectively,
students need to know why and how they might appropriate particular approaches and
activities. Sensitivity to individual differences among learners and indeed special needs
education is a fundamental requirement for beginning teachers in many jurisdictions around
the world (e.g., Finland and New Zealand). Inclusiveness not only requires teachers to know
and understand the individual background of their learners, but also requires an understanding
of how they as teachers may support students, how they might connect with the students’
families and wider communities and how to find the appropriate focus of learning for each
individual student in their care.
To familiarise themselves with learner-centred approaches, student teachers might be
expected to take greater control of their own learning processes through self-regulated
learning behaviours and meta-cognitive skills for developing learning intentions, monitoring
and evaluating their own progress as well as identifying next steps for learning (Conner,
6
2013). Within initial teacher education programmes, it has been common practice to promote
the use of textbooks as a guide or driver for teaching. However, in a truly learner-centred
environment, it is very likely that textbooks cannot adequately predict the needs of different
learners, forcing the teacher to choose learning approaches and resources according to the
specific needs of individual students – a highly personalised process that requires a broad
perspective on part of the teacher. This raises issues about how student teachers reconcile
tensions between their understanding of students’ learning needs, the text-book driven
approaches and learner-centred constructivist approaches to make decisions about what they
do to support individual and group learning (Lloyd, 2007; Anderson & Stillman, 2013). Initial
teacher education needs to make room for deliberation of this issue.
The learning environment is founded on the social nature of learning and actively
encourages well-organised co-operative learning
For the most part, effective learning is distributed by a process in which individual knowledge
construction is enhanced through interactions, discussion, negotiation, co-operation and coconstruction with others. Learning together with other individuals is considered a key
competency for the future (OECD, 2010). Teacher education programmes need to reference
the wide range of research on collaborative and co-operative learning approaches (e.g., Slavin
2009), and model collaborative learning processes as part of the course work.
Teacher education is very often based in university settings, where teaching and learning have
been organised quite differently in the past, often through a monoculture of knowledge
transmission: instructional lectures geared at large audiences and teacher-centred seminars.
These approaches are still present in many university subjects and do not necessarily serve the
best interests of developing teachers who would benefit more from experiencing a range of
pedagogies and assessment modes, as modelled in higher-education practice. Cooperative
learning with designated roles and responsibilities within groups (Slavin 2009), for example,
7
offers a range of different micro-methods for organizing learning in groups. Heterogeneous
groups require cooperative learning strategies different from more homogenous groups. In
teacher education, the purpose or intention of a certain method should be explained alongside
a rationale for the composition of students in a group. When the purposes and intentions of
particular methods are clarified and discussed, teacher trainees are more likely to grasp the
need for adaptive decision-making in the choice of teaching and learning methods (Loughran,
2010). For example, sometimes it makes sense to group learners according to similar ability
levels; sometimes better learning is achieved if learners collaborate in mixed-ability settings.
Sometimes the purpose might be to provide student teachers with the experiences of learning
together in particular ways, especially in structured (role-defined) co-operative learning
models. At other times, it may be appropriate to set up collaborative inquiry groups that
support and help develop student teachers’ deeper understandings about theories, applications
of theories to practice or designs for learning. Student teachers should experience and benefit
from learning that is supported and extended by collective contributions. This will help them
to develop the skills and attitudes required of them in the professional learning communities
that they will be part of in their schools once they enter the profession (Dufour & Eaker,
1998; Riley & Stoll, 2004). Collaborative learning groups in initial teacher education may
also extend to include teachers in schools, so that student teachers’ learning is more
intertwined with that of those already in the profession, as both grapple with issues of practice
(Anderson & Stillman, 2013).
The learning professionals within the learning environment are highly attuned to the
learners’ motivations and the key role of emotions in achievement
When teachers are highly attuned to students’ motivations, it is more likely that learning is
effective, since the cognitive and the emotional dimensions of learning are inextricably
connected (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000; Boekaerts, 2010). There are many
8
approaches that have been shown to motivate and thereby engage students in more
meaningful ways. These approaches include a range of technology uses (Meyer 2010), cooperative learning (Slavin, 2009), inquiry-based learning (Barron & Darling-Hammond,
2010) and service learning or community engagement models (Furco, 2010; Sliwka &
Klopsch, 2012). Another reason that these approaches are often successful is that they can
accommodate students’ interests and prior knowledge. Approaches also need to account for
contextual and cultural differences of the learning environment (Buehler, Gere, Dallavis, &
Haviland, 2009). Differences such as ability, conceptions of learning, preferred learning styles
and strategies, self-efficacy beliefs and socio-environmental factors such as language use,
culture and social background all contribute to individual differences among learners. It is the
teacher’s responsibility to understand these differences and work with them, while at the same
time managing groups of students to learn together.
In the past, we have had little knowledge on student teachers’ emotions and motivation in
teacher education. High dropout rates in some teacher education programs as well as evidence
of burnout and attrition of practising teachers have led to more research on teacher trainee’s
motivation and emotions (Schaarschmidt, 2004). International research (Severiens & Wolff,
2009; Wolff, Severiens & Meeuwisse, 2010) has shown, for example, that comparatively
large numbers of students with immigrant backgrounds dropped out of teacher education
because the initial teacher education programmes failed to respond to their specific learning
needs. Teacher educators need to gain more knowledge about the motivation and emotions of
students in initial teacher education programmes. Suitable approaches might be the inclusion
of mentoring schemes and regular reciprocal feedback on the courses themselves as well as
their own learning progress. In multiple-year teacher education programmes, there is the
possibility of including peer mentoring from advanced students.
9
The learning environment is acutely sensitive to the individual differences among the
learners in it, including their prior knowledge
In many teacher education programmes, all students accepted into the programme undergo
more or less the same course work with little differentiation based on prior knowledge. In
reality, students in teacher education programmes differ with regard to prior experience in the
field of education and the domains they plan to teach. They also enter teacher education with
different attitudes to teaching and learning (Schaarschmidt, 2004). While some can look back
on a wide variety of experiences working with children and young people, others have little
reflective pedagogical experience. The same is true of domain-specific knowledge: Some
students choose a career in teaching after having worked for several years in the domain they
want to teach, whereas others lack the expertise that comes with experience in a field.
More comprehensive ways of diagnosing prior learning are needed in order to customize
teacher education to students’ individual experiences and learning needs. This helps to decide
which courses they should enrol in but also which tasks are to be completed in their courses,
allowing flexibility to develop knowledge, skills and dispositions differentially. Additional
ways of differentiating instruction in teacher education are provided through the use of on-line
diagnostic assessments and verbalized formative assessments during a programme of study.
Learning analytics and prompts for next steps and progressions in learning, which is an
emergent practice in schools, should therefore also be practiced in teacher education.
Furthermore, options for self-paced and group studies and the use of individual programme
plans and learning contracts, as well as communities of inquiry, should be made available in
teacher education (Sliwka 2008; Jones & McLean 2012). So far, research on individualised
assessment in teacher education has mostly been limited to aptitude tests and qualifying
examinations held to recruit teacher training candidates. While there is some reported research
on teaching about formative assessment in teacher education (Shavelson 2006), there seems to
10
be little evidence on the uses of formative assessment in initial teacher education. Our
assumption would be that students who experienced formative assessment in initial teacher
education and reflected on its effectiveness, would be more likely to apply formative
assessment in their own teaching in schools.
The learning environment devises programmes that demand hard work and challenge
from all without excessive workload
The fact that learners enter teacher education programmes with different backgrounds calls
for a much stronger assessment of knowledge, skills and attitudes than in the past. It is more
likely that the motivation to learn is fostered and sustained when learning tasks fall within
individual students’ zones of proximal development. This means, of course, that all students,
regardless of their prior knowledge with regard to both content and processes/skills/metacompetencies (Conner, 2013) should find their work challenging. Complex and open-ended
approaches like problem-based and project-based learning are most likely to result in
challenging learning situations, thus mirroring the messy pedagogical practice that lies ahead
for teacher trainees.
The learning environment operates with clarity of expectations and deploys assessment
strategies consistent with these expectations; there is strong emphasis on formative
feedback to support learning
Often it is through gathering evidence of learning that teachers know how their students have
progressed (Hattie, 2012), and this information can inform the iterative process for next steps.
Thus both informal and formal assessment practices are used in schooling, and by implication
need to be applied or modelled in teacher education programmes. There are several
considerations for assessment within initial teacher education courses and programmes.
Firstly, courses within initial teacher education programmes may include assignments for
student teachers that require them to gather evidence of the learning of students in their care.
11
That is, they are expected to utilize the assessment practices that are commonly used in
schools and use the information from these assessments to make decisions about their own
teaching practices. Forms of this evidence can be quite varied: essays, problem sheets, lab
reports can all be used, alongside transcriptions of classroom discussions, quotes from
students and descriptions of the body language or other student behaviours, revealing
students’ cognitive, social-emotional and metacognitive development. Student teachers should
describe the context of their pre-service teaching experience and be required to analyze the
evidence of learning in relation to their goals for the learning process and their respective
instructional actions.
Secondly, it does matter how we model assessment practices and feedback, and in particular
how we gauge the development of competence in student teachers and use this information to
support their development as teachers. Baer et al. (2009) indicate that both subjective selfassessments of competence and assessments by others (through vignettes, video analysis and
direct observation) over at least two time points tend to show problematic variances.
Therefore, there is a cautionary note about using evidence of progression in competencies to
inform teacher education practices. This is in part because pedagogy is closely aligned with
content and context and because there are real differences in the professional experiences
student teachers make (Loughran, Berry & Mulhall, 2012).
In the past, assessment cultures in many education institutions were based on social reference
standards, where student achievement was compared with the average achievement of the
class. As a result of standards-driven reform in education in recent years, many teacher
education programs have made the shift to criterion-based forms of assessment and use
professional standards and rubrics as a basis for formative assessment in teacher education.
Portfolios, in which teacher trainees document and reflect upon their own learning, have
become more common (Hascher & Schratz 2001). In many cases, however, it is not clear if
the work documented in portfolios is sufficiently assessed and acknowledged by teacher
12
educators, given the often limited resources for teacher education programmes at public
universities.
To create more cohesion in professional development, several countries are currently
developing frameworks of professional standards that comprise the different stages of teacher
development, beginning with initial teacher education (Mayer, Pecheone & Merino, 2012;
Goodwin, 2012). Frameworks of standards promise to contribute to a better alignment of the
different modules and stages of teacher education programmes, which teacher education
students in the past have often perceived as rather fragmented. Whereas standards can
scaffold communication processes among key stakeholders in teacher education and
contribute meaningfully to quality assurance, they also risk emphasizing conformity over
diversity and have to be used wisely when acknowledging individual strengths of teacher
trainees.
The learning environment strongly promotes “horizontal connectedness” across areas of
knowledge and subjects as well as to the community and the wider world
Well-structured and well-designed programmes for learning are coherent by nature in that
there is a developmental sequence for learning complex knowledge concepts. Horizontal
connections enable knowledge to be transferred across contexts. A coherently structured
teacher training programme will foster adaptive competence, which “involves the ability to
apply meaningfully learned knowledge and skills flexibly and creatively in a variety of
contexts and situations” (de Corte, 2010). This competence is essential for applying creative
and critical thinking to novel or complex situations, a skill that many employers seek in
today’s labour market (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). However, students do not
often make such cross-links between disparate ideas, nor do they transfer ideas between
contexts naturally. This is also the case in initial teacher education. In the past, knowledge and
key concepts acquired in different courses from domains as broad as educational science,
13
psychology, sociology and subject didactics did not offer a common conception of teaching
and learning and were thus perceived as not sufficiently connected by teacher trainees. A
number of studies referred to by Darling-Hammond et al. (2005) provided evidence that there
was a greater positive impact on prospective teachers when initial teacher education
programmes integrated teaching and learning strategies across courses and field placements.
Exemplary programmes were those that had well-integrated courses and coherency of
learning strategies within the programmes. Therefore, a deliberate effort to make visible the
connections between the different domains contributing to initial teacher education will
strengthen the professional expertise of beginning teachers.
The same is true for making connections between theory and practice: Alternating phases of
university-based seminars and structured school-based experiences do not guarantee that
theoretical and empirical knowledge taught and learned in the university setting and practical
knowledge gained in schools are properly connected or that theory is integrated into practice.
Exemplary programmes have been shown to be built on a strong vision of good teaching
practice, including shared knowledge and beliefs about good practice among both university
and school-based faculty (Hammerness & Darling-Hammond, 2005). Further, student
teachers need guidance in terms of reflecting on why they used particular approaches and to
link those reflections to what they have learned about learners and learning at the university.
University faculty and master teachers in schools can act as mentors of reflective learning that
integrates theory and practice.
However, one of the problems with this approach is the mixed messages by mentor teachers
in schools and university teachers in education departments, owing to their different
perspectives. In successful programmes, teachers in schools and university faculty discuss
approaches and use contemporary research findings as a “community of practice”. To do so
more effectively, new forms of university-school-partnerships are emerging, such as the
14
“training schools” on Finnish university campuses (Sahlberg, 2012), service learning (Sliwka
& Klopsch, 2012; Boland & Keane, 2012; Power, 2012) and project-based learning
approaches (Hammerness, Van Tartwijk & Snoek, 2012). All those approaches bring together
teacher trainees in professional learning communities that link practical experiences in
schools with a university seminar providing them with a space for reflection and with a sound
theoretical and empirical foundation for their work in schools. Teacher trainees complete
school-based projects in teams and discuss their thinking, progress and advise each other
(Hammerness & Darling-Hammond, 2005). Other strategies used in teacher education
programmes are the extensive use of case study methods, teacher research and performance
assessments that include portfolios of reflections on teachers’ learning related to practice
(Darling-Hammond, 1999; Loughran, et al., 2012).
Contextualized learning emphasises that both the content and processes of learning must be
relevant and appropriate for the learners. Learning about or trying to solve real-life problems
that matter to students or people they know can play a key role in making learning relevant. In
teacher education, contextualized learning requires students to experience teaching and
consider professional issues that have arisen during their teaching experiences. Issues of
context and culture are of central concern in this form of learning. How do teacher education
programmes address standardized versus pluralistic and contextualized teaching approaches?
This is associated with what Anderson and Stillman (2013) identified as the replication versus
the selective adaptive instructional models. Anderson and Stillman (2013) discussed how
many initial teacher education programmes helped to develop student teachers’ capacities to
choose and enact particular instructional strategies. They found that even though many initial
teacher education programmes were based on socio-cultural approaches to teaching and
learning, student teachers’ views of teaching as performance favoured a replication model of
learning about instruction rather than an adaptive model responsive to socio-cultural factors.
15
The adaptive model requires an openness and willingness on the part of beginning teachers to
modify what they do to meet the needs of the different learners they are working with. This
presents a huge challenge for initial teacher education programmes of reconceptualising how
beginning teachers gain knowledge and skills to adjust their approaches to different settings,
to different purposes and with different students. According to Anderson and Stillman (2013),
there is little evidence to suggest that student teachers graduate knowing how to facilitate
learning amongst diverse learners. Therefore, initial teacher education programmes should
provide a range of pedagogical approaches so that student teachers can select and
contextualize approaches for learning that are appropriate for their students. More attention
must be given to how context and culture can influence learning – a prerequisite for
graduating as an “adaptive expert”.
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Conclusion
A new coherent body of research, embodied in seven transversal principles on learning
(OECD 2010), is emerging to describe effective learning environments. So far, this body of
knowledge has mostly been applied to the design of learning environments in schools. We
argue that pedagogical approaches used in initial teacher education provide a powerful
backdrop from which beginning teachers consciously and subconsciously draw ideas and
concepts that shape their own practice of teaching in schools. Teacher education therefore
needs to reflect the emerging principles of effective learning environments. The concept of
self-similarity, which has been developed in the natural sciences, might help us to grasp how
transversal principles of learning in schools should also serve as design principles in initial
teacher education. Schools that expect students to learn by co-operative learning, problembased learning, community-based learning, inquiry learning or project-based learning should
also expect initial teacher education to use those very learning approaches when training
teachers.
We have used the principles as indicated in the OECD (2010) publication to highlight areas of
renewal and re-emphasis in initial teacher education programmes. There are a number of ways
in which these changes could materialize. It is clear that initial teacher education programmes
must be based on a range of different experiences that enable graduates to appropriate the
range of approaches available for learners in their care. Anderson and Stillman (2013) have
called for more research about what constitutes “rich clinical experiences”, but this research
needs to have methodological rigour and to take account of the complex context and culture
that influences learning. As Zeichner (2002) has shown, initial teacher education programmes
often fail to base instruction on research related to evidence of practices leading to more
effective learning – mostly because there has been a lack of evidence. However, sometimes
even “messy” accounts of practice provide valuable insights. When student teachers are
17
critically engaged in such hands-on research, they are more likely to challenge themselves and
their colleagues to reflect and refine their practices as an on-going professional undertaking
(Loughran et al., 2012). Basing changes in practice on evidence will allow teachers to be
more persuasive in their approaches and advocacy of changes. The development from novice
teacher to expert teacher is a complex process, involving the integration of prior knowledge,
theory and experiences of practice. This complex process is supported when teacher educators
model adaptive expertise, i.e., use different methods, approaches and forms of scaffolding,
depending on the student teachers’ individual learning needs. Unlike teachers in schools,
however, teacher educators also need to explain why they are using specific forms of
instruction and scaffolding.
The same is also true of more elaborate forms of assessment: What is assessed is what is
valued by both the student teachers and the teacher educators. For example, if the
development of attributes and habits is important, then this is what should be assessed.
If teachers are to be effective in the complex learning environments in which they will be
expected to teach, then significant changes are needed in initial teacher education to adhere to
the seven transversal learning principles. More than any other field in academia, teacher
education has an obligation to model excellent teaching to enable effective learning in a range
of learning contexts.
18
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