Strengthening pre-service teachers personal professional and social skills through the Islamic Iranian model of effective teacher educator training

Abstract

This qualitative case study explores the execution of an Islamic-Iranian model of the effective teacher educator (ETE) and examines participants’ perceptions of its role in the holistic development of pre-service teachers’ personal, professional, and social skills. Conducted at a teacher education center in Tehran, the research used semi-structured interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis with five teacher educators and ten pre-service teachers. Participants reported that the model’s perceived effectiveness was embedded in teacher educators’ representation of the role of an integrated moral and instructional exemplar (Murabbi), who ‘live’ Islamic-Iranian principles and engage in ‘epistemic integration’ by weaving Qur’anic wisdom, Persian literary heritage, and modern pedagogy. According to participant accounts, this approach was associated with reported transformation in pre-service teachers, including stimulated personal identity and spiritual resilience (tazkiyat al-nafs), a value-laden professional repertoire oriented toward moral intentionality, and an activated social consciousness framed as a duty to the Ummah and the marginalized members (Mustaz’afin). Key supporting institutional practices included policy as a visionary scaffold, collaborative reflection sessions (Shura-e-Amuzeshi), and a reformed practicum as a moral apprenticeship. The study additionally identifies inherent tensions in negotiating tradition and modernity, which functioned as catalysts for reflective practice instead of weaknesses. Within the bounded context of this single-institution case study, participants perceived the Islamic-Iranian ETE model as a practical and transformative framework for teacher preparation. While findings are not generalizable, they offer a theoretically transferable illustration of how a value-based model may, from participants’ perspectives, bridge the policy-practice gap. This contributes an indigenous paradigm to the worldwide discourse on value-based teacher education, pending replication across diverse Iranian institutions.