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The present study aims to analyse how school leaders perceive their activities in creating and developing a collaborative school culture that promotes the school learning process. The data were collected in semi-structured interviews with nine school leaders and analysed using thematic content analysis. The results revealed that only three of the school leaders focused on the shared values and shared leadership necessary for creating a systematic and analytic approach to organisational and teacher development. The school leaders understood the importance of leading the development of the learning process, but this did not take place as expected in practice. Organisational and teacher development seemed to be unsystematic or not based on the continuous monitoring of processes. The findings of our study indicate that development programmes for school leaders should concentrate more on shaping the views, knowledge and skills needed to develop a collaborative and learning-centred school culture.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to discover topics in history education in Estonia that are perceived to be controversial, and to analyse how teachers' epistemic cognition is reflected in the teaching of issues perceived to be controversial. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative research based on group and individual interviews with 12 teachers, plus data from lesson observations among 10 participants. Findings: Issues perceived to be the most controversial are topics from the 20th century. The reflection of epistemic cognition in practice is a result of a complex interplay between knowledge and knowing related beliefs and processes. Research limitations: The small number of participants (12). Developed categories must be considered with caution as exploratory findings.

Integration of technology in schools rests on effective teacher education programmes that help teachers create new teaching and learning methods and adopt them for classroom use. Social learning processes play a key role in this, but there is a lack of understanding of their role in technology adoption and in evidencing them in teacher education programmes. Using the knowledge appropriation model, we propose a self-report questionnaire instrument to evidence knowledge creation and learning practices during training. With a sample of N = 109 in-service teachers participating in the Teacher Innovation Laboratory, a teacher professional development programme that is built around school-university co-creation partnerships, we demonstrate the instrument to be reliable and to differentiate between groups who completed different programmes. The instrument predicted intended adoption of technology-enhanced learning methods beyond individual level constructs, highlighting the important role that social practices play for the eventual adoption of technologies in the classroom.

This study investigates how moral virtues create purpose for ethical leadership. Four exemplary principals, two from Estonia and two from Finland, were interviewed to study their perceptions of critical incidents in their work and how moral virtues are manifest in their reflections. The results of qualitative content analysis showed that the critical incidents were related to themselves as principals and to their work with teachers, students and families, and their communities as a whole. The principals demonstrated the virtues of wisdom and knowledge in creating long-term visions for their schools and building the schools for future generations. Other leading virtues were humanity, courage and justice, indicating caring and honesty and involving teachers and parents in decision-making. Based on our study, virtues seem to motivate principals to achieve their desired goals and solve challenging situations in morally sustainable ways. The study confirms that principals' work is value-based, and thus, reflection on moral virtues and the moral dimension of leadership should be integral parts of principals' education.

We focus on assessing whether newly qualified teachers' professional outcome expectations and their beliefs about students' intellectual potential are associated with teachers' self-reported classroom management and instructional practices. One hundred and eighteen novice teachers participating in the induction year programme were studied during their first years as full-time teachers. Results attest to a salient association between teachers' more optimistic views of the malleability of students' intellectual potential and teachers' confidence in themselves as positive change agents in student outcomes. Also, teachers' belief-set in the beginning of their career was shown to be associated with significant differences in the level of using instructional practices promoting mastery goal orientation in the classroom as well as offering students emotional support during the learning process. In the light of the significant belief-behaviour links demonstrated, more explicit attention to the sophistication of teachers' ability beliefs in teacher education programmes is recommended.

Despite Estonia being ranked among the highest performing nations in the world-wide testing of students, these encouraging results are somewhat overshadowed by the challenge to overcome the divided school system with different languages of learning that impacts crucially on students' social, academic and professional paths. The study examines teachers' (N = 312) attitudes to languages of learning and teaching through various components from a sociolinguistic perspective. The findings, gathered from a correlation and hierarchical clustering analysis, point to a strong connection between the affective (situational variable), conative (operational variable) and cognitive (situational variable) component of an attitude. The results indicate how attitude direction varies in four sub-groups of the sample when interpreted through the element of the cognitive component. The exploration of the latter underlines the necessity to consider the complexity in teachers' attitudes, as almost two-thirds of the participants share a monoglossic vision of learning and teaching languages, giving preference to either Russian or Estonian. Further research is needed to investigate how to enhance a positive attitude towards both languages of learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research focuses on Estonian university students' emerging teacher identity and their interest in becoming teachers. Five hundred and sixty-five first, third and fifth year students participated in the survey. The results suggest that pedagogical reasons for entering teacher education and clear motives for studying are significant indicators of teacher potential. Pedagogical reasons for entering teacher education or the teaching profession and the wish to function as a change agent in the society were related to academic self-efficacy beliefs and the belief that the teacher expertise is mainly pedagogical in nature. However, at the point in their studies at which the students are able to choose their masters programme and entry into teacher education, their likelihood of choosing teacher education remains low, indicating that there is a need to develop pedagogical content, study counselling and career guidance services to encourage students' continued interest in and entry to teacher education and the teaching profession. (Contains 4 tables and 4 figures.)

Social-emotional learning can lead to better social- and self-awareness, more skilled self-management, as well as a higher quality of personal and social decisions (Weissberg et al., 2015). In Estonia and internationally, PAX good behaviour game (PAX GBG) has demonstrated positive results in students' social-emotional skills, as well as academic achievement (Bradshaw et al., 2009; Kellam et al., 2008; Streimann et al., 2020). However, it is known, that programme outcomes depend on the quality of the implementation process (Durlak & DuPre, 2008). In Estonia, research examining programme implementation quality and the contextual factors that support or hinder the quality implementation of PAX GBG has yet to be carried out. In order to understand better: 1) how programme coaches see programme implementation quality of PAX GBG in the Estonian context; and 2) what teacher- and school contextual factors coaches consider to contribute to the quality implementation, it was decided to interview 11 experienced PAX GBG coaches. The coaches that were chosen had up to four years of experience involved with different teachers at different schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life, property, and the effectiveness of efforts involved in saving the environment depend upon the situational awareness of incident commanders. However, so far, the impact of situational awareness training for working rescue incident commanders has not been studied in Estonia. This study aims to evaluate situational awareness training that has currently been implemented as an overall part of the dynamic decision-making model for all rescue incident commanders in Estonia. The new training curriculum, plus training materials and methods, were developed for situational awareness training using the virtual reality software, XVR On-Scene, and the Moodle e-learning environment. Assessors were trained and certified to apply the effective command behavioural marking framework to measure situational awareness. The Kirkpatrick training programme evaluation model was adopted to measure the SA training outcomes. Based on the Kirkpatrick model, Level 1 trainee reactions indicated that Estonian rescue incident commanders were able to accept a new approach to their decision-making training as a purposeful and engaging way of completing their attestation. Their basic psychological needs were supported during the training process, and participants achieved higher-than-threshold results in all SA levels, as is shown in Level 2 of the Kirkpatrick model. Training programme evaluation model Level 3 behaviour, and Level 4 results, need to be further studied. Suggestions have been provided in improve the virtual simulation-based training and assessment of situational awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modern world, teachers are expected to be ‘learning professionals’ who constantly expand their knowledge and skills and share both practical and theoretical insights in a community of colleagues. Teacher professional competence‐based standards could be an instrument to support teachers' professional learning if they are integrated with broader assessment and evaluation frameworks and if their evaluation, professional development and career advancement are in line with the standards. In Estonia, teacher professional standards were first developed in 2005. Currently, they support initial teacher education, the evaluation of teacher competences and the design of continuous professional learning. They also allow teachers to progress to the senior teacher and master teacher qualification level. According to our findings, the standards are successfully used to design pre‐service education and award certificates at the end of the studies. However, they do not support building the teachers' career ladder and only in some schools do they support planning of professional learning. In this article, we give an overview of the changes in the professional standards of teachers in Estonia and analyse why they have not found the desired degree of use in teachers' career advancement and professional development in the school context and why they have not had a significant effect on teacher status in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first year of work is critical in novice teachers’ development and learning. This study examined differences in novice teachers’ reflections about cases of classroom challenges between the beginning and the end of their first year of teaching. In addition, we analyzed their reflections at the end of their first year about one of their own classroom challenges. The results of this study illustrate several findings. First, their reflections on other teachers’ challenges changed from the beginning to the end of the school year in that they became more authoritarian in attributions of causes of challenges. In addition, in classroom challenges they experienced themselves, they demonstrated very little in terms of reflection beyond simply describing the events. The use of questions as tools of scaffolding teachers’ reflections about others’ challenges increased the depth of novice teachers’ reflection and helped them to be aware about teachers’ roles and responsibilities. However, when asked to reflect on their own experiences, their reflections were primarily descriptive and did not reach the level of their reflections on others’ practice. We suggest that increased engagement of peers and mentors in guiding and modeling reflection can be effective in increasing the depth of novice teachers’ reflections about their own practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]