Teachers, Education Administrators, Education Experts and Students’ Opinions on Teacher Education Programs for Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

Secondary school teacher education in Spain has paid no attention to the fundamental principles of teacher education to educate all adolescents. The conditions under which this training has been implemented in the Spanish context have created a complex panorama of political and professional resistance, and a multitude of "gaps". The aim of this study was to define the conditions that this type of teacher education must fulfil to contribute towards developing the pedagogical elements that this training has been lacking and which are necessary to make it a quality education experience, accessing particular and shared meanings to master students, secondary education teachers, master principals and teacher education experts (researchers). For this research, both in-depth interviews and open-ended questionnaire questions were used. These were used to acquire the opinions and assessments of the participants. Afterwards, a content analysis was carried out in order to collect the evaluations provided for each single elements, extracting characteristics that define them as desirable. Findings advocate elements such as meaningful relationships between university institutions and secondary schools, and training agents who believe in training and who know how to transfer real practical knowledge to training. From these results, it is concluded that the implementation of the model to be introduced requires the creation of shared meanings and beliefs towards training. This requires effort and political will at all levels.