Donald Schön’s notions of the reflective practitioner and reflection-in-action have been extensively referred to and have been regarded as important concepts for thinking about professional knowledge and expertise that teachers should acquire in today’s teacher education. Nonetheless, there continues to be conceptual confusion surrounding interpretations of reflection-in-action, and tody it is natural that for those engaged in teacher education take “reflection” and being a “reflective teacher” for granted. Given that a vast amount of educational research and practices is based on Schön’s idea of “reflection”, this word may be becoming a “plastic word”, in Uwe Pörksen’s sense, in that the contents of published papers and suggestions may be outside the range of constructive critiques. In this paper, I construe Schön’s original intention concerning reflection-in-action, by examining his epistemology of practice, which is embedded in theories of philosophy of science and linguistic philosophy. I argue that Schön developed his epistemology of practice through morphological and constructive views concerning situatedness, knowing, and thinking processes, so that we get a better understanding about Schön’s original idea of “reflection-in-action”. This paper suggests that the concept of “reflection” in “reflection-in- action” weaves two meanings together, one of which is a practitioner’s spontaneous response and state towards his/her situation, and the other is the practitioner’s action to think about a subsequent action to take within the same situation. And as“reflection-in-action”arises upon knowing-in-action, it is suggested that being reflective necessitates innovation of his/her knowing-in-action. Such understanding will open our eyes to conventional understandings of “reflective teacher” in research and education practice, and help us to move away from uncriticizable interpretations of “reflection”.

  Given educational policies to prepare future teachers with global Competencies, universities and departments have actively concluded exchange agreements with many universities overseas, encouraging students to study abroad. However, the problem is that these actions attempting to globalize higher education have been adopted often without providing solid empirical evidence (or even discussion about the necessity of providing evidence) to support that these opportunities, such as study abroad and international exchange programs, provide prospective teachers with effective education. To tackle this problem, this paper argues for the urgent need to 1) conceptualize and practice global education as a part of teacher education curricula and initial teacher preparation programs, and 2) build the paradigm of teacher education based on empirical research to ensure the quality of such education.

  This research paper aims to provide statistical data as a foundation to explore effective methods to prepare prospective teachers with global Competencies. The data was collected using online survey from a total of 92 undergraduate students in teacher preparation program who participated in collaborative learning programs between a university in Japan and universities in the U.S. offered from 2014 to 2016. The online surveys included questions asking about participants’ perceptions about their knowledge and skills, their reasons for participating in their programs, and about what they learned from these programs.

  One of the highlighted results reveals that participants who had concrete goals aligned with the purpose of teacher education reported higher levels of learning outcomes, such as gaining a new perspective on education, compared to the participants who either did not have specific goals or had goals that reflected conventional purpose for intercultural exchange programs, such as gaining knowledge about other cultures or languages. This result implies that global education programs provide students with more effective initial teacher education, when the purpose of such programs is set within the teacher education curriculum and shared with participating students.

  The purpose of this study is to compare teachers’ decision making when students express their negative emotions in two class settings: individual instruction and group instruction. One elementary school teacher and second grade students in his class participated in this study.

  Regarding the methodology of this study, in total 21 cases concerning students’ negative emotional expressions were collected through participant observation. The teacher’s decision making in each case was then examined through a stimulated-recall interview. The data collected from interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory approach.

  The results demonstrated that there were two stages in the decision making. The first stage was a process of identifying objectives in which the teacher recognized multiple goals to solve students’ problems in each case. In the individual instruction settings, more emphasis was placed on the individual students, and the teacher tended to identify objectives to increase understanding of others and to improve emotion regulations. By contrast, in the group instruction settings, more attention was devoted to the reactions of other students in the class, and the objectives inclined toward the development of students’ communication abilities and clarification of class rules. The second stage was a process of adjusting objectives. In the individual instruction settings, the teacher modified objectives by monitoring students’ emotion regulation. In the group instruction settings, the adjustments of objectives were more influenced by obligations to coordinate classes.

  The study was successful in dissecting the teacher’s decision making into specific stages and in showing how it was influenced in each stage depending on the different settings. Moreover, the study demonstrated the importance of adjusting objectives by focusing not only on the emotions of individual students but also taking class settings, in which emotional support is expected of teachers into consideration.

  The purpose of the research is to clarify the effect of OJT (On-the-Job-Training) on young teachers from initial recruitment until their third year by constructing and analyzing hypothetical models. Based on this research, I propose effective knowledge for solving problems involving human resource development in elementary school teacher organization.

  In the article, I first overview previous studies about trending topics in OJT research, such as the formation of competence, the influence of various conditions, and the validation scales of effect. Next, I discuss issues with the survey population and conditions for enhancing the effect of OJT. Then, I present a hypothesis and an effect model of OJT for the task, establishing measurement scales concerning OJT type, performance (task performance, contextual performance), and supervisor’s attitude toward training their subordinates. Based on the hypothesis and model, I conducted, a questionnaire survey for teachers ranging from their first year to third year. I applied exploratory factor analysis to the questionnaire data in order to clarify conceptual schemes about measurement scales. With the data from the survey, I verified the hypothesis model by simultaneous analysis of multiple populations.

  From the above steps, four important points emerge: first, depending on the young teacher’s year of experience, OJT types show different direct effects on performance; secondly, OJT types also show different indirect effects depending on supervisor’s attitudes toward training of subordinates; thirdly, there are total effects that combine direct and indirect effect; and finally, I conclude that OJT needs to be implemented effectively according to OJT types and year of experience.

  This study devised a teacher education program that encourages straight masterter’s students (graduate students who entered from faculties directly) to alternate between theory and practice. The program is intended to help graduate students gain experience in linking theory and practice concretely, and to reflect on the development of their own 'knowledge' through their education.

  In order to realize the program, we formed a 'five-step procedure'. This procedure consisted in pre-structuring, using experience, structuring, focusing and theory with a small 't', and learning contents of the professional graduate school with practices and arranged learning contents based on three relations between theory and practice. For the procedure's last step, students were required to form a 'Gestalt' with the description of their own life history and their awareness of internal 'knowledge'.

  This academic year, we carried out part of the program to examine our graduate students' learning processes. We concluded that some graduate students tried to interrelate different leaning contents with one another and to reflect consciously on the development of their own knowledge. Some other graduate students, however, failed to bring themselves into such self-reflection on their knowledge development. Further studies will be necessary to diagnose more specifically each step of 'five step procedure' and to link theory and practice more clearly to enrich instructional methods.

  This study concerned a form of reflection among community of teaching colleagues in order, to clarify how collaborative reflection improves teaching abilities. To observe collaboration, written reflections were implemented. Grade school teachers with 1st grade students had a 5-month period for their reflections.

  Following this period, changes were found in beliefs, an element of teaching abilities. The study thus shows that collaborative reflection by grade school teachers is effective to develop their.

  Further research is needed on the role of the coordinator of the colleague community.

  Mock lessons and review sessions have been used in teacher education at universities sometimes aiming to promote students’ reflection. In most cases, the review sessions proceed in this way: “learner-role” students simply judge the lessons and give advice, while “teacher-role” students improve their lessons based upon the feedback. However, the reflection through this type of review sessions can be shallow because it tends to be action-oriented. To make reflection deeper, inquiry into the meaning behind a lesson’s process is essential. In review sessions of mock lessons, learner-role students can present the thoughts and feelings that they experienced during the lessons in which they participated. This can produce dialogue between a teacher-role student and learner-role students. The differences that emerge in such dialogue contribute to inquiry into the meaning and deeper reflection.

  The authors launched a teacher education program centering on dialogue-based review sessions of mock lessons. Dialogue in this type of review session has two features: various understandings and feelings from learners’ perspective can be expressed, and implicit assumptions and values of teacher-role students can be extracted.

  In the program, the reflection cycle in review sessions is connected with educational practicum. Firstly, students perform a mock lesson and a review session in university; secondly, they revise it and put it into practice in school; finally, they give a practice report and discuss it in university again. Through this program, students make progress in the depth of reflection, as well as enhance their facilitation mindset.

  The authors’ study addresses not only the procedure of dialogue-based review sessions of mock lessons, but also aims to challenge some common assumptions of teacher education. This contributes to three changes in teacher education: changes from a focus on improvement of action to inquiry into meaning, from a hierarchical relationship to a more equal one, and from an emphasis on planning and preparation to “thinking through creating”.