Educational research within the curricula of initial teacher education: The case of Slovenia

Abstract

Professional learning is a continuum starting in initial teacher education and persisting throughout the teacher’s career. Initial teacher education programmes should therefore prepare prospective teachers for professional learning via research. There is, however, little knowledge about how initial teacher education programmes educate students about this important subject. The aim of this study was to identify how initial teacher education programmes in Slovenia address the question of empowering prospective teachers with research competence. We analysed all of the initial teacher education programme curricula and established that: (i) overall, more than half of the initial teacher education programmes do not include acquiring research competence as an aim of their study programmes; (ii) the majority of bachelor initial teacher education programmes include courses aimed at gaining research competence, but half of the master’s initial teacher programmes do not provide any courses related to research; and (iii) there is a variety of European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System weightings for educational research courses across initial teacher education programmes in Slovenia.