Teacher candidates’ opinions and experiences as input for teacher education curriculum development

Family-school partnerships: a challenge for teacher education

“…However, the rather similar findings of a Dutch-Belgium (Flanders) study (Willemse et al 2016) compared to Epstein and Sanders' study might imply that the struggle of addressing this topic in ITE programmes in Europe applies too. In overloaded ITE programmes hardly any attention is paid to FSP, except for an occasional course on how to communicate with difficult parents, and accordingly pre-service teachers emphasised that they felt unprepared (de Bruïne et al 2014;Willemse et al 2017). Nevertheless, more research about European teacher education programmes seems necessary, especially when it comes to preparing the next generation of teachers to establish FSP.…”

“…As Epstein (2013, 117) emphasises: 'More professors of education should feel comfortable and competent conducting a comprehensive course using an updated text that includes research readings, topics to discuss in class, field experiences, and short and long-term projects ' . de Bruïne et al (2014) also describe the struggle of teacher educators to improve the curriculum in times of already overloaded programmes and Evans (2013, see also Willemse et al 2017) in particular notice a lack of attention to FSP in ITE programmes for secondary education.…”

“…At the same time responding to global and societal developments such as the increase of technology and social media, globalisation and growing diversity, the rise of global citizenship, migration, or the changing issues concerning equality also involves education (inter alia Hanssen 2011; Petko, Prasse, and Cantieni 2018; Veugelers 2011) and the ways in which parents and teachers collaborate (Driessen, Smit, and Sleegers 2005;Meter and Bauman 2018). Teachers' professional roles in engaging with families in these concerns is of significant importance (Pushor 2014;Willemse et al 2017). Hence, these challenges raise the question whether existing approaches are sufficient or whether more developed approaches to prepare pre-service teachers for FSP are needed.…”

“The Voice of the Parent Cannot be Undervalued”: Pre-Service Teachers’ Observations after Listening to the Experiences of Parents of Students with Disabilities

“…Special education teachers working with children with disabilities often have increased interactions with the parents of their students when compared to general educators, but research indicates that teachers are not adequately prepared for the issues specific to living with a child with a disability [6,11,[27][28][29][30][31][32]. Several researchers who examined teacher preparation programs' preparation of pre-service teachers for interacting with parents reported that new teachers are not adequately prepared to collaborate with parents [16,22,24,[27][28][29][30][31]33,34]. This lack of preparation for working with families of children with disabilities extends across disciplines, even in those where disability is a hallmark of the population served (physical therapy, occupational therapy, special education, etc.)…”

“…This is not a problem inherent to the United States. Willemse et al [34] looked at teacher preparation for working with families. Pre-service teachers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the US "did not see themselves as well-prepared for [family-school partnerships]" (p. 795), especially when working with parents from cultures different from their own.…”