This study used two training sessions and two focus groups with 17 preservice teachers (aged 20-36) completing their first teaching practicum placement during their Bachelor of Education program at an urban research university in western Canada. The aim was to implement ideas from terror management theory (TMT) during their teaching practicum. Participants explored how to facilitate contentious issues so as to prevent defensive reactions when worldviews clash in the classroom. A dramaturgical analysis identified participant objectives, conflicts, tactics, attitudes, emotions, and subtexts as they explored how to anticipate and avoid worldview and self-esteem threat, navigate tense pedagogical spaces, build capacity for expressing uncomfortable emotions, and diffuse threat with humor. Because difficult emotions are central to teaching potentially polarizing content, participating preservice teachers explored when compensatory reactions might emerge and, as a result, developed their own emotional awareness-TMT became both an experience and a teachable theory.

Teacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this paper, we draw on survey data collected in primary schools serving 71 villages in rural Gansu Province, as well as transcripts from in-depth interviews with 30 teachers. Our findings indicate that professional learning communities penetrate to some of China's most resource-constrained schools, but that their nature and development are shaped by institutional supports, principal leadership, and teachers' own initiative.

Mentoring is an essential fixture of teacher education. With growing opportunities for international learning exchanges, there is a need to better understand how cross-cultural mentoring can be characterized by reciprocal learning. This study investigated mentee perceptions of the mentoring relationship in an international, cross-cultural teacher education exchange. We conducted research among 19 Chinese preservice teachers who participated in an international teacher education exchange program, exploring their perspectives on the cross-cultural mentoring relationship and mutual learning. Our findings suggest that learning outcomes are improved in a mentoring relationship when there are strong relational ties, opportunities for reciprocal learning, and a greater awareness of cultural complexity. We contend that there is value in supporting the mentoring relationship directly, which has implications for both international exchanges and teacher education programs.