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Empathy, being multidimensional in nature, addresses cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioural components of interpersonal interaction. It is considered a core element of global competence. As schools become more diverse, empathy, which expresses the ability to observe social situations from other people's points of view plays a critical interpersonal and societal role in the educational arena. Using the Delphi technique, this study developed and validated a practical tool for identifying empathic behaviours through a deep discourse analysis of complex emotionally charged interactions, practiced in simulated encounters. The Empathic Patterns in Interpersonal Communication (EPIC) practical tool, presented in this paper, was developed and validated through a structured instrument validation process that enabled the multifaceted and complex phenomenon of empathy to be addressed in a concrete way. The EPIC practical tool offers a new approach to developing awareness to cultural differences and diversity among teachers while refining the communication and the emotional skills which are significant components in teachers' socio-emotional learning.

The study presented here sought to determine how student teachers' personal characteristics, attitudes, knowledge, experience and skills for using collaborative learning influence their willingness to use this demanding pedagogy in their classes. A structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis model based on data from questionnaires emphasized the direct effect of experience on attitudes and skills, but showed no such effect on knowledge. There was no difference in research variables based on gender, age and degree in respondents' willingness to integrate collaborative learning. One major conclusion of the study is that teacher education programs should include a study of the theoretical and strategic aspects of collaborative learning, as well as active experience with this pedagogy.

One of the most important goals of discussing controversial issues in the classroom is to educate students to possess an inclination towards reason, open mindedness and fairness. However, research tends to show that teachers are not adequately trained to lead fruitful discussions about controversial issues and do not possess the necessary skills to perform such a task. This paper refers to one aspect of teaching controversial issues in environmental education, namely, the inclination of teachers towards ambivalence (agreeing to some extent with both favourable and unfavourable arguments concerning a proposition) and its potential consequences. The aim of the current study is to assess teacher college students' ambivalence concerning environmental issues, to explore their readiness to adopt a stance and when doing so to check their tendency to adopt a stance in favour of the environment. The findings showed that ambivalence was less common than non-ambivalence, although it varied across the issues. Most of the ambivalent students voted for a side. Furthermore, ambivalence did not prevent pro-environment decisions. The implications of the findings on environmental education are discussed.

The article presents a system-wide change initiated in the faculty of education at a major teachers' college aimed at developing students' reading, and written and oral communication proficiencies, while focusing on clarity and coherence, and the use of rich, correct and precise language for purposes of studying, teaching and research. The "philosophy" section introduces the theoretical basis of the process, defines the essence and the nature of the academic change and explains its context and timing. The "process" section reports on the survey, which addresses students' perspectives on the subject of academic writing, describes how the agenda was implemented and how the commitment among the faculty members was developed. The "outcome" section presents the characteristics of the agenda as were designed by the steering committee and the analysis of the discourse that took place during the faculty seminar sessions. The advantages of a participatory action research approach when implementing a broad academic-pedagogical change are discussed.

The study described here analyses a faculty-wide change designed to foster the communication proficiencies of students in a large teacher education college, gathering data from various sources over three years of the new agenda's implementation. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis revealed that implementation was progressing on two distinct levels--organizational and pedagogical--the first of which was working successfully and the second less so. The study concludes that instructors need specific pedagogical content and metacognitive knowledge to successfully integrate deep pedagogical changes in their students' learning experience and elaborates on the ways this content and knowledge can be applied.

The purpose of this study is to compare alternative teacher education programs in English as a foreign language (EFL), biology, and mathematics to traditional programs in the same subjects. To do this, we analyzed data on all of the students who studied in the aforementioned programs during 2009 and 2010 in the largest college of education in Israel--a total of 91 students from the alternative and 74 from the traditional programs. The study used administrative data provided by the college and by the Ministry of Education. The study examined the following aspects: performance during initial training, success during the induction period, retention rates in the first 5 years of teaching, and the characteristics of their placement in schools.

During 2009, three alternative teacher retraining programs in English as a Foreign Language, mathematics and biology were launched for the first time in one of Israel's largest teacher education colleges. The programs, which offered varied economic incentives to participants, were initiated by the state owing to shortages of teachers in these disciplines and the economic crisis in the hi-tech industry. After hundreds of candidates responded to the program's advertisement, 90 candidates were accepted and enrolled following rigorous screening. The purpose of the research reported here was to examine the demographic, academic and occupational profiles of the candidates and students in each of the three programs in comparison with applicants and students in traditional teacher education retraining programs. The research population included a total of 611 candidates who had applied to all the teacher retraining programs offered in 2009. The study's findings indicate that not only did the alternative programs make the teaching profession more accessible to potential candidates; they also attracted students with impressive demographic, academic and occupational profiles that varied considerably from the profiles of the students in the traditional programs. Longitudinal follow-up studies are needed to investigate the adjustment, success and retention rates of these new teachers in the educational system.