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Care and relationality are important foundations for dealing with young children and their families in early childhood education and care settings. Little is known, however, about effective ways to teach and assess care and relationality in teacher education. Care and relationality rarely appear in university outcomes, professional standards for teachers or assessment criteria. Teacher educators assume a significant level of responsibility for the personal professional developments of others in early childhood education. In 2011, the teacher educator in this study embedded seven characteristics of relational teacher education to help early years pre-service teachers experience the importance of care and relationality. This self-study explored the impact of pedagogy by examining the actions of the teacher educator and the resultant actions of pre-service teachers in the learning process. Zeichner (2005) conducted this self-study research was intended to make teacher educators and others more conscious about one's role in educating future teachers. Findings revealed three themes, providing evidence of the effectiveness of the teacher educator in implementing care and relationality. An appendix outlines the seven characteristics of relational teacher education.

In the middle years of schooling, spanning grades four to nine, it is common practice for generalist teachers to deliver integrated arts education. Research confirms that teacher effectiveness with the arts is influenced by their sense of efficacy, which is derived from a coalition of factors including confidence, competence, subject mastery and past experience. This paper investigates one of the factors contributing to teacher self efficacy--their past experience of arts education, at six key life stages, culminating in their current experience as an arts educator. Two hundred and one beginning teachers in the middle years completed a questionnaire with open-ended questions designed to investigate past experiences as one of the factors contributing to teacher self-efficacy. Teachers were located in Queensland, Australia. Responses were analysed and categorised with a positive or negative valence. The results reveal that the cohort of respondents reported profoundly divergent past experiences with the arts over the life stages selected, ranging from a predominance of positive valence experiences during childhood, to predominantly negative valence experiences during pre-service teacher education and in the early months of teaching. The relationship between past experiences and the formation of teacher efficacy beliefs is outlined, and implications for teacher education shared. (Contains 1 figure.)