Prospective teachers

Transmission-based teacher education programs have mostly dominated the field of teaching English as a foreign language. Considering the prominent position of critical pedagogical principles in prospective teachers’ perceptions of their professional roles and responsibilities, there is a need for detailed investigations of teacher education programs informed by the tenets of critical pedagogy in prospective teachers’ professional identity. There has been a paucity of research that addresses the impact of such programs on prospective teachers’ professional identity in an EFL context; therefore, this study intends to address the gap. This qualitative study was conducted to examine the role of a critical-informed teacher education program in influencing prospective EFL teachers’ professional identity construction. Participants were 19 prospective teachers whose process of professional identity construction were analysed through reflective journals, class discussions, and semi-structured interviews before and after the program. Results of the study revealed three major shifts in prospective teachers’ professional identity: “from a student’s voice to a teacher’s voice”, “from an uncritical attitude to developing agency”, “from a narrow view of ELT to a broad view”. To foster critical ideas in EFL prospective teachers, the study recommends the use of dialogic discussions and written reflective tasks in teacher education programs.

The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which academic admission criteria predict prospective teachers’ competency during teacher education program. To this end, a total of 186 prospective teachers majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Teacher Education University in Iran were selected as the convenience sample of the study. They completed two questionnaires, Prospective Teachers’ Professional Attitude and Prospective Teachers’ Professional Identity. The participants’ high school GPA, university entrance score, and university GPA were also obtained. The results of Pearson product-moment correlations indicated a significant positive correlation among academic measures of high school GPA, university entrance score, and university GPA but no significant correlation was detected between these academic measures and nonacademic measures of professional identity and professional attitude. The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that the two admission criteria had just predictive validity for university academic achievement; however they could not predict prospective teachers’ professional attitude or their professional identity. Based on the findings of this study, it would be concluded that the academic measures used for admitting candidates into the program have low predictive validity for predicting non-academic attributes of teacher competenc