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Facilitating diagnostic competences is an important objective of higher education for many professions. This meta-analysis of 35 empirical studies builds on a conceptual framework and investigates the role of problem-solving, scaffolding, and context to foster diagnostic competences in learners with lower and higher professional knowledge bases. A moderator analysis investigates which type of scaffolding is effective for different levels of learners’ knowledge bases, as well as the role of the diagnostic context. Instructional support has a moderate positive effect ( g =  .39; CI [.22; .56]; p  = .001). Diagnostic competences are facilitated effectively through problem-solving independent of the learners’ knowledge base. Scaffolding types providing high levels of guidance are more effective for less advanced learners, whereas scaffolding types relying on high levels of self-regulation are more effective for advanced learners.

Abstract Inclusive education is a reform aimed at educating all students in general classrooms, independent of diversity features such as special educational needs, giftedness, or migration. Its successful implementation requires teachers with professional knowledge about inclusive education, skills to address the diverse needs in the classroom, and positive beliefs toward inclusive education. Teachers are provided with professional development opportunities, but are these effective in improving their learning process and positively impacting students’ behavior? We conducted a meta-analysis to address this question. The screening of 12,050 search results revealed 342 eligible studies with more than 155,000 participants and 1123 effects from four outcome categories: teachers’ knowledge, skills, and beliefs and students’ behavior. We observed positive, though varying, effects on all four outcome categories: large effects on teachers' knowledge regarding inclusive education (g = 0.93), moderate effects on teachers’ skills (g = 0.49), small effects on teachers’ beliefs (g = 0.23), and small-to-moderate effects on student behavior (g = 0.37). We also examined factors that might explain the differences in the strength of training effects. The data suggest that long-term training with high practical relevance and active learning opportunities facilitates transfer to schools.

Teaching is a complex and demanding endeavour. Teachers must deal with numerous forces, often face dilemma-ridden and ambiguous situations and have to act under time pressure. In order to accomplish these tasks, teachers must apply professional knowledge differentially (Fairbanks et al. 2009). In recent decades, various studies have focused on defining and investigating the domains of teachers’ professional knowledge. In this respect, much attention has been paid of late to the concept of professional vision. In the present study, we look for indications of professional vision using eye tracking data and post hoc think-aloud verbalisations. We worked with student teachers and teacher educators, who watched a short video clip of a school lesson and described afterwards what they had seen. The video shows an authentic teaching situation and discloses a ‘critical incident’. The results show that there are differences between the two groups of participants, both in terms of eye tracking and post hoc think-aloud verbalisation. However, the differences originate primarily from six teacher educators explicitly mentioning the ‘critical incident’ in the post hoc think-aloud verbalisation. As with other studies, these results indicate differences in professional vision between novice and experienced teaching professionals. Additionally, our analysis reveals that eye tracking data can assist in identifying professional vision.

In teacher education, video representations of practice offer a motivating means for applying conceptual teaching knowledge toward real-world settings. With video analysis, preservice teachers can begin cultivating professional vision skills through noticing and reasoning about presented core teaching practices. However, with novices’ limited prior knowledge and experience, processing transient information from video can be challenging. Multimedia learning research suggests instructional design techniques for support, such as signaling keyword cues during video viewing, or presenting focused self-explanation prompts which target theoretical knowledge application during video analysis. This study investigates the professional vision skills of noticing and reasoning (operationalized as descriptions and interpretations of relevant noticed events) from 130 preservice teachers participating in a video-analysis training on the core practice of small-group instruction. By means of experimental comparisons, we examine the effects of signaling cues and focused self-explanation prompts on professional vision performance. Further, we explore the impact of these techniques, considering preservice teachers’ situational interest. Overall, results demonstrated that preservice teachers’ professional vision skills improved from pretest to posttest, but the instructional design techniques did not generally offer additional support. However, moderation analysis indicated that training with cues fostered professional vision skills for preservice teachers with low situational interest. This suggests that for uninterested novices, signaling cues may compensate for the generative processing boost typically associated with situational interest. Research and practice implications involve the consideration of situational interest as a powerful component of instructional design, and that keyword cueing can offer an alternative when interest is difficult to elicit.

In this discussion paper, teaching and learning are characterized as being situated, complex, and reciprocally interactive activities. Accordingly, a teacher’s pedagogical actions are always action and reaction at the same time. Irrespective of the reciprocally interactive nature of teaching and learning, educational research has sought to identify characteristics of teacher expertise that enable teachers to influence students’ learning in a systematic and positive way. In this respect, the contributions to this special issue offer an innovative research paradigm, because they bring together different and originally separated strands of research: (1) research on professional vision in teacher education, (2) research on the structure and development of expertise in cognitive science, (3) research on cognitive processes by means of eye-tracking technologies in psychology, and (4) research on educational effectiveness and instructional quality in educational science. Following this introduction, a detailed discussion of the rewards and challenges of each of the seven contributions is provided. This discussion leads to the following conclusions: (a) The emphasis on the “reacting teacher” in professional vision research undervalues the role of lesson planning for the flexible handling of sudden events during class instruction. (b) The assumption of professional vision as mediator between a teacher’s knowledge and pedagogical actions overlooks that teachers can sometimes do more than they can tell. (c) Not all of the gaze behavior that is currently studied needs to be instructed. (d) Research should move beyond explorative expert-novice comparisons to hypotheses-driven designs that investigate how teachers can learn to successfully apply evidence-based pedagogical principles.

While formative assessment is a widely valued instructional approach to support meaningful learning, putting it into classroom practice remains a challenge, also because the time resources required may conflict with other goals. In a cluster-randomized controlled intervention study with 29 teachers and 604 students (mean age 15.6 years) at secondary school level, we examined the yield of formative assessment with regard to students’ conceptual understanding and quantitative problem-solving skills in physics. Ten teachers applied formative assessment (FA group) in a 14-lesson curriculum on kinematics after having undergone a training that focused on the implementation of multiple-choice concept questions together with monitoring tools, clicker sessions, and reflective lessons. In the frequent testing group (FT group), ten teachers had no training on formative assessment but implemented the same concept questions as those used in the FA group. Nine teachers taught kinematics in their traditional way (TT group). The results revealed that students in the FA group outperformed students in the other two groups in a test on conceptual understanding immediately after the intervention as well as 3 months later, whereas students from the FT group and the TT group did not differ. Importantly, a better conceptual understanding in the FA group was not at the expense of performance in quantitative problem solving, as students of this group better integrated both kinds of knowledge. Our study has shown that a short but well-structured formative assessment teacher training could unfold its potential in terms of students’ learning of challenging content.

The importance of introducing evolution in primary schools has been highlighted in evolution education research, but few studies have approached the understanding of evolution of prospective teachers who are being prepared to teach at primary school level. The present exploratory study aims to answer three research questions about the ability of Portuguese prospective teachers to apply evolution to two real-life situations: 1) Are prospective teachers able to identify evolution misconceptions in online newspaper articles? 2) What misconceptions are expressed by prospective teachers when explaining real-life evolution situations? and 3) Which key evolution concepts do prospective teachers apply to make sense of real-life evolution situations? Twelve prospective teachers participated in the study. In the first situation, the prospective teachers were asked to identify statements from a newspaper article that would reveal evolution misconceptions and justify their choices. In the second situation, they were asked to read a text about SARS-CoV-2 and explain why scientists were worried about uncontrolled outbreaks of the virus. The prospective teachers' answers were analysed through content analysis. Regarding the first research question, our results show that only half of the prospective teachers were able to identify teleological misconceptions in the newspaper article. Concerning the second research question, some of the prospective teachers either identified misconceptions in information in which there was no misconception, or revealed their own misconceptions in their explanations. Regarding the third research question, although more than half of the prospective teachers identified at least two key evolution concepts, some of them found it difficult to explain how evolution is related to the situation described. Although this is an exploratory study, it shows which key concepts of evolution the prospective teachers mobilised and identifies their misunderstandings, thus highlighting dimensions that should be addressed in their evolution education. (DIPF/Orig.)

There is a general consensus among researchers and teacher educators that classroom video can be a valuable tool for pre-service teacher education. Media such as video are not, however, in themselves effective. They have to be embedded in an instructional program to be useful. Yet, little empirical research examines how specific instructional approaches might effectively exploit the potential of video in teacher education. In this study we explored the use of two video-based university courses, one representing a cognitive instructional strategy integrating video, the other representing a situative strategy. Using data from learning journals we analyzed the effects of the two strategies on pre-service teachers' (N = 28) ability to reflect on classroom video. We found that the two strategies have distinct impacts on the kinds of reflection patterns that are fostered. Our findings suggest that the learning goal and purpose at hand should determine which instructional strategy should be employed when embedding classroom video into teacher education courses.

Person-Environment fit theories claim that students choose their academic path according to their personality. In this regard, teacher candidates are of special interest. On the one hand, they all make the same choice to enroll in a teacher education program. On the other hand, they make different choices with respect to the subjects they are going to teach. If the Person-Environment fit approach also applies to the selection regarding teacher candidates’ subject areas, teacher candidates from different majors might have different personality traits and as a result, different starting conditions for becoming a successful teacher. Such differences need to be taken into account by teacher education in order to create programs that allow teacher candidates from different majors to equally succeed. Therefore, the current study investigates to what extent personality group differences across majors occur within the population of teacher candidates. Using data from a large-scale study, the Big Five personality traits of 1735 female and 565 male teacher candidates were analyzed, with teacher candidates compared to male (n = 1122) and female (n = 1570) students who studied the same major but who did not intend to become teachers. Unlike previous studies, academic majors were not grouped into few broad categories, but eight different majors were distinguished. The results indicate that teacher candidates are more extraverted than their non-teaching counterparts. In addition, personality trait differences between teacher candidates from different majors could be observed. The results are discussed as they relate to the recruitment and training of future teachers.

This study investigates if collaboration and the level of heterogeneity between collaborating partners’ problem-solving scripts can influence the extent to which pre-service teachers engage in evidence-based reasoning when analyzing and solving pedagogical problem cases. We operationalized evidence-based reasoning through its content and process dimensions: (a) to what extent pre-service teachers refer to scientific theories or evidence of learning and instruction (content level) and (b) to what extent they engage in epistemic processes of scientific reasoning (process level) when solving pedagogical problems. Seventy-six pre-service teachers analyzed and solved a problem about an underachieving student either individually or in dyads. Compared with individuals, dyads of pre-service teachers referred less to scientific content, but engaged more in hypothesizing and evidence evaluation and less in generating solutions. A greater dyadic heterogeneity indicated less engagement in generating solutions. Thus, collaboration may be a useful means for engaging preservice teachers in analyzing pedagogical problems in a more reflective and evidence-based manner, but pre-service teachers may still need additional scaffolding to do it based on scientific theories and evidence. Furthermore, heterogeneous groups regarding the collaborating partners’ problem-solving scripts may require further instructional support to discuss potential solutions to the problem.