Insights into the European portfolio for student teachers of languages (EPOSTL)
2007 saw the publication of the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) by the Council of Europe, the result of a project carried out under the auspices of the European Centre for Modern Languages. The central aim of this project was to produce a document which would contribute to the harmonisation of teacher education in Europe. The EPOSTL is a portfolio intended for students undergoing their initial teacher education which encourages them to reflect on the didactic knowledge and skills necessary to teach languages, helps them to self-assess their own didactic competences and enables them to monitor their progress and to record their experiences of teaching during the course of their teacher education. At its heart are 195 "I can" descriptors of didactic competences, which teachers strive to attain. The EPOSTL has since been translated into 13 languages and is used widely across Europe and beyond. The main aim of Insights into the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) is to explore important theoretical issues, an understanding of which is necessary to support the use of the EPOSTL in teacher education programmes. The first part of the book provides discussions of relevant theoretical areas: the role of reflection, learner autonomy and intercultural awareness. In the second part, the focus is on the relationship between the EPOSTL and other European publications, such as the Common European Framework of Reference and the European Profile for Language Teacher Education. Suggestions are made as to how they can be used together in teacher education. The final section provides case studies on the use of the EPOSTL in three European countries. Whether users of the EPOSTL or not, both teacher educators and their students will find that the discussions of this book provide important insights into key aspects of teacher education.
Milestone in English Language Teacher Education: How to Use European Profiling Grid in the Assessment of Prospective EFL Teachers' Qualifications
This research intends to exemplify one of the new practices that can be used for the assessment of prospective English language teachers' qualifications. Thus, the scope of this research covers the prospective EFL teachers and the implementation of European Profiling Grid (EPG) aimed to be commonly used for language teacher education in Europe. This research is based on a mixed-type research design focusing on both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Thus, it refers to descriptive and experimental research designs. For this purpose, the participants of the study were chosen among the prospective EFL teachers (N=38), their mentors (N=12), course supervisors (N=3), and course registration supervisors (N=3). Totally the research includes 56 participants who reflect the prospective teachers' teaching qualifications in terms of an adapted 7 point likert-type form of EPG. In data analysis process, a series of one-sample T tests, Kruskal Wallis H test for independent samples, one way ANOVA statistics were applied to the data. The results of the study reveal that EPG has significant effects on prospective EFL teachers in that it can be proposed to use commonly in English language teacher education instead of the Council of Higher Education's assessment form for prospective teacher education.
Monte Carlo properties of spatial dependence LM tests
This paper compares the power and size of both spatial one-directional and robust to local misspecification LM test using Monte Carlo techniques under different set ups. Confirming the results found in Anselin et al . (1996), under local misspecification the robust LM test improves its size and power of tests. However, under no misspecification, the robust LM test is severely penalized and the usual one-directional LM test has a much better performance.