Journal of Social Research & Policy, Vol. 7, Issue 1, July 2016

Pusztai, G., & Engler, A. (Eds.). Comparative Research on Teacher Education. Ruzomberok: Verbum, 2014, 173 p. Book review Education has been and will always be a hot topic both for professionals, those directly involved in the act of education or educational policies, but for laymen too, for those upon which the changes or the new trends in the field reverberate. More than ever, I find myself extremely interested and intrigued by what happens in education since I find myself in the ingrate position of being on both sides of the barricade, as a parent and as a teacher within a Department of Educational Sciences. All around, I see and feel the need for a change in the way children are educated and taught as well as I can see that educational (institutional) endeavors are not very well put together, that school curricula are autistic and that they do not work together in order to develop future happy or well-trained adults. But all of these are common sense observations, while a specialist in the sciences of education knows extremely well that any kind of change in the educational policies needs to be grounded on rigorous research and scientific testing. All this subjective and personal introduction has a meaning: in the light shed by the thoughts above, Comparative Research on Teacher Education comes as a model for good practice, an excellent start into prospecting possible changes in education and the way we form future teachers. Editors Gabriella Pusztai and Agnes Engler have put together a collection of studies and research aimed at revealing the way in which educational training of future teachers takes place in Central-East Europe (more precisely, in Hungary, Poland, The Czech Republic and Slovakia). I find it remarkable that the editors show a constant concern in creating collaboration opportunities for specialists in this part of Europe, their previous research (in which they included almost every ex-communist country) being focused on the role of confessional orientation on education (Pusztai, 2008; Pusztai, 2010). The present volume is structured in two major parts; the first, Teacher Education Systems and Social Context, includes four studies which contextualize educational policies, values, curricula, prestige and the social construction of the teaching profession in the Central-Eastern European Space. The second part of the volume, Present Students in Teacher Education, shows aspects of the education of future teachers. The first study drawing our attention is that of Marek Wasielewski și Eszter Varga: Educational policy aspects of teacher education in Central Europe – the case of Hungary and Poland. It shows the deep connection between political events and changes in education, more precisely the changes in the way future teacher training and education was thought in Hungary and Poland. The Authors report the history of the educational systems of both countries, clearly highlighting the way in which teacher training was conceived over time, including the ups and downs caused by imposing new educational policies. Also, the authors show the ways in which Hungary and Poland adapt themselves to international educational trends, but the efficiency of the new ways of training teachers will be measurable only in the next 6 or 7 years. The second article represents a joint venture of some researchers from Slovakia, Hungary and The Czech Republic, having as a result an analysis of the curricula and values involved in future teacher training from the three countries. The authors reveal the characteristics of teacher forming systems, the problems they face, and the way the Bologna system was implemented in their own countries. Also, we are being presented with the values transmitted to future teachers,

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Andra Perțe

and the attempt to increase the curricular significance of particular didactics and practical training. The ferrymen of music culture reveals, as it promises in the title, the way in which educational training for music teachers takes place in Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. The authors highlight the importance of music in the life of children and the way in which the education of future music teachers has changed over time in the three countries. The last article in the first section approaches a more sensitive problem – that of the social prestige and construction of teachers in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Without spoiling the results, it is obvious that all three countries face a decline of teachers’ prestige, determined mostly by the fact that those who want to become teachers are members of the middle class. The social status of teachers is contradictory due to the incongruity between the level of knowledge they need in order to practice teaching, their low income and reduced career progression possibilities. The second part of the volume consists in three international studies which approach different aspects of future teachers’ life. The first of them, Parallelism and differences in recruitment for teacher training in Hungary and Poland, presents, as expected, the sociological portrait of the future teachers. Their number, their social background, their values and aims, the gender, origins or the education of their parents are some of the variable studied by the authors. Overall, this particular research proves to be a very interesting insight in the typology of the students which hope to become teachers. The second study is a more complex one investigating the Pedagogical knowledge of prospective teachers. An international comparison. Results and implications of TEDS-M. The author, Ulrike Stadler-Altman, interprets the results of a previous international research conducted in Taiwan, Germany, and U.S.A. regarding the three domains of teacher knowledge: content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge. The volume ends with the valuable contribution of the editors, where Gabriella Pusztai, Klara Kovacs, together with Katalin Kardos, show us The role of social networks in the wellbeing of teacher education students. Analysis of the campus contacts of teacher education students from two countries, more specifically from Romania and Hungary. The main goal of this study was to investigate the protective factors that contribute to the professional wellbeing of students and future teachers and to assess the teacher education students’ institutional integration. Overall, Comparative Research on Teacher Education deserves the attention of specialists in education, but also that of practitioners. The studies included offers important information and valuable perspectives, opening new research horizons, while they invite to their replication in other Central or Eastern European countries (and not only). More specifically, I’m thinking here of the deficit of educational policies research in our own country, where the proposals for changes in education raised mostly through political channels fundamentally lack rigorous and comprehensive scientific research in order to support them. Andra Perțe University of Oradea