Abstracts - Earli

Layers of change at a teacher education college in Israel: Declared and in-action storiesHanna Ezer, Levinsky College of Education, IsraelMiriam Mevorach, Levinsky College of Education, IsraelThis study examines processes of change at a large education college during an era of change inteacher education in Israel. The research tools included protocols documenting college decisionmakers’formal meetings and narrative interviews with twenty teacher educators, analyzed throughqualitative content analysis. The results indicate the importance of the declared stories of decisionmakers,who are influenced by external events and relate to critical changes at the college, and ofthe in-action stories of teacher educators, who operate within their own set of critical events. Theirself-centered stories focus on personal and professional agendas, and partly reflect the declaredstory.The follow-up and evaluation of initial teacher education in FinlandUlla Kiviniemi, University of Jyväskylä, FinlandThe Finnish Ministry of Education launched in 2001 a development programme for teachereducation in order to provide guidelines for initial and in-service teacher education. Therecommendations for initial education development concerned student selections, pedagogicalstudies, teaching practise, status of the teacher education and co-operation needed. The Institutefor Educational Research conducted in 2005 a national follow-up and evaluation study over therecommendations of the development programme described above. This paper gives an account ofthe findings related to initial teacher education at universities. The study of initial teachereducation was done in spring 2005 as a web-based survey. There were responses from the teachereducation units of all the Finnish universities. Of the respondents, 301 (20 %) were teachers and 1169 (80%) teacher trainees. The findings show that the pedagogical studies have already beendeveloped in study areas relating to community-building as well as to individuality and diversity.However these areas should also be addressed in further development efforts. The extent ofteaching practice was considered adequate; but more flexibility, choice and alternatives, and eveninternational experience, should be available. In addition, individual counselling was still seen as avery valuable focus of development. In student selections the aptitude of the candidates and theirlevel of motivation should be emphasised in the evaluation. The number of trainees at universitiesis reaching its limits and cannot be increased without further resource allocations. The resultsshow that the educational recommendations of the development programme have been taken intoaccount in the development of initial teacher education. Teacher trainees at universities have goodopportunities for widening their expertise through various studies. The recommendations of theTeacher Education Development Programme are still topical.Teaching Presence at different stages of developing an online community of teacher educatorsLea Kozminsky, Kaye College of Education, IsraelOlzan Goldstein, Kaye College of Education, IsraelThis study examined indicators of "teaching presence" (Anderson et al. 2001), as expressed inmessages posted by the moderators of an online activity of a community of teacher educators. Thestudy focused on one community that demonstrated parameters of a "successful learning" model(Rosenfeld et al. 2002): High degree of participants’ satisfaction, persistent activity and mutualcommitment. A mixed method study was conducted to answer the following research questions:(1) Which of the teaching presence indicators appeared in the moderators’ messages? (2) Werethere distinctive teaching presence indicators that appeared at the different developmental stages of– 432 –