Case of the Austrian university

courses over the new study programme might not support this. The previously mentioned gap between theory and practice returns: most of the pedagogical-psychological module’s courses are planned way before the practice. On the one hand, this means that what student teachers learn at the university can be tried out in practice at one point, but on the other hand the lack of a research methodology course and the fragmentation of learning about different research methods in different courses may hinder student teachers from getting a comprehensive overview of research.

Having a look at the research-related competences indicated in course descriptions, in general, these competences have gained significance: there are more than twice as many course descriptions that included any of the research-related knowledge, skills and/ or attitude components in the new programme than in the old one. However, bearing in mind that in Hungary programme developers are required to include a number of competence items in their course descriptions as defined in the document of Training and Outcome Requirements, and since other parts of the course descriptions (such as the content, goals, or student activities) are not in align with this, raises the question if these competences are really subject of development within the course, or their presence in the course descriptions remains formal.

different type of courses, supervised clinical work integrated with coursework, and proactive relationship with schools for ensuring a diverse learner base and for developing and modelling good teaching. The analysis of the two teacher education programmes including the course descriptions has revealed that the designers of these programmes have made efforts to follow the international trends, however, despite the progressive reform of 2015 on the national, systemic level, some of the traditional features of teacher education are still present (Schratz, 2018):

- too bureaucratic,

- strongly regulated in detail, - hierarchically organised, - lack of output orientation, - too many actors,

- too many parallel structures, and

- too little congruence in task-orientation and responsibility.

The overview of the findings emerging from the document analysis of the educational studies modules’ course description from ITE programmes through a comparative pair of lenses (Appendices 9.,10 and 11.) With the increase of the overall length of teacher education from a nine semester long undivided programme to bachelor and master studies lasting for 12 semesters in case of higher secondary school student teachers, the number of courses in the educational studies module was also increased from 11 to 17.

5.2.2 Research in ITE programmes

As student teachers’ learning when in schools can be described as an organized informal learning, and due to the premise that practicum, although it forms a bounded component of initial teacher education programmes is strongly influenced by other components of the programme occurring prior to it, hereby I do not restrict the discussion merely to the practicum, but I include those courses of the pedagogical-psychological modules, too, that lead the way to the practicum. The adaptation of the teaching-research nexus model as introduced in the Literature Review chapter’s Summary section will be used here as scaffolding for the

discussion; therefore the findings will be discussed according to the four quadrants (research-led, research-oriented, research-tutored and research-based).

According to Healey and Jenkins (2009), the research-led type of integration of teaching and research puts the teacher in focus, students act as the audience, and the research content is emphasised over the research process and problems. Griffiths (2004) described this quadrant as “students learn about research findings, the curriculum content is dominated by staff research interests, and information transmission is the main teaching mode” (p. 3).

Numerous courses can be characterised as research-led due to the ratio of lecture-type courses.

However, as the proposed literature list is not included in the course descriptions, nor the programme suggests thatthe lecturers decide on this based on their own opinion and share it with the student teachers in other forms than the course description. Although this gives space for lecturers to be flexible with proposed literature, on the on hand we cannot say if they incorporate their research findings in their teaching by proposing their research articles, and on the other hand, maybe even more importantly, it is difficult to have a comprehensive overview of the literature-base proposed to student teachers throughout the programme (e.g., it is not visible if there are unnecessary repetitions or missing literature). Then, similarly to the Hungarian case, university courses shall support student teachers in realising the relevance of educational research by providing learning opportunities where the research findings and the content, even if it is dominated by staff research interest, are related to education and practice.

However, as student teachers “just want to survive” the practicum, during their initial teacher education they prefer those courses and lecturers, who manage to present research findings from a practical, useful aspect.

The research-oriented quadrant is still teacher-focused, and students act as the audience, but the research process and problems are emphasised over the research content (Healey & Jenkins, 2009). In this quadrant “students learn about research processes, the curriculum emphasises as much the processes by which knowledge is produced as learning knowledge that has been achieved, and staff try to engender a research ethos through their teaching” (Griffiths, 2004, p. 3). Research-related process and problems are indicated in about half of the courses, and there is an elective course on research methodology. When the students are required to do a research-related task in a school within the framework of a course, the university lecturer briefly introduces the topic, mostly focusing on data collection methods.

Similarly to the Hungarian case, this may lead to difficulties in recognising the relevance of educational research. Moreover, there is another similarity with the Hungarian case: the

methodological palette of student teachers mostly consists of interviews and questionnaires.

Although some student teachers report on the acceptance of the relevance of educational research to practice, in many instances they do not consider those research projects that they conduct relevant.

Healey and Jenkins (2009) described the research-tutored quadrant as student-focused, where students are active participants, and where research content is emphasised over research process and problems. According to Griffiths (2004), this is the quadrant where “students’

writing and discussing papers or essays is emphasised” (p. 3). Having the two teacher education programmes analysed, it became clear that the aspects of this quadrant, more specifically course description elements focusing on student teachers writing about and discussing research have become more explicitly defined, and this implies that the programme developers acknowledge the importance of these in teacher preparation. However, the interviews with student teachers suggest that sometimes these discussions about research are restricted to the lecturers’ research projects; therefore the interviewees expressed a need for discussing research in a broader, international context.

The research-based quadrant puts the students as active participants in the focus, and the research process and problems are emphasised over research content. This is the quadrant where “students learn as researchers, the curriculum is largely designed around inquiry-based activities, and the division of roles between teacher and student is minimised” (Griffiths, 2004, p. 3). The structure of the new, Bologna-conform programme that has strengthened the relationship between theory and practice is a suitable structure for implementing research-based teacher education – every module (a group of university courses) has a related practicum, and the analysis of the course descriptions also suggest that the programme developers made efforts to create a programme that is research-based, e.g., by defining course deliverables and activities such as observations and reflections, research projects, data acquisition, familiarization with the school as a research field, etc. Although there are courses available for student teachers throughout the semesters when they conduct their practicums and implement their research projects, these courses are designed to support student teachers in their whole practical experience. Therefore the time available for discussing the research project is limited, and usually not enough (Pesti et al., 2018).

Moreover, it is more common that student teachers are involved in research projects, research groups within their disciplinary departments, and they value this experience (they can transfer some of the research competences gained during disciplinary research into their

educational research project). However, this is not an intended learning opportunity planned on the programme level, it is more ad-hoc. Moreover, there seem to be vast differences between the different disciplinary departments, not only in the extent of involvement of student teachers into research projects and the work of research groups, but in shaping their attitude towards educational research (e.g., student teachers from a natural science background prefer quantitative research, and they are not open to educational research).

The course descriptions do not include competences, but these are defined on the programme level. Although this helps the readers envision what competences are emphasised, it remains invisible how (through which courses, activities, etc.) the development of these competences happens.