As we tentatively emerge from the imposed isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and as the status quo reasserts itself, it seems timely to consider the current state of teacher professionalism. This task seems critical, given the wider backdrop of the neoliberal policy pandemic that has driven the commodification and instrumentalization of education…

Challenges to teaching in the post-COVID classroom plagued schools across the globe. This qualitative study followed two middle-school teachers in a charter school located in the Western United States to identify the changes to classroom teaching and their effects on the classroom environment through the first year of teaching after the 2020…

During the initial period of 'lockdown' in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in England were closed to the majority of pupils for 15 weeks. We examine how during this time schools provided emergency remote teaching in mathematics to lower secondary pupils with different levels of prior attainment and advantage. Drawing on a mixed-methods…

This paper examines how the policy process around initial teacher education (ITE) during the pandemic of 2020 was experienced by the leaders of ITE programmes across England. Education policies, it is argued, are solutions to perceived problems, revealing latent values that drive action. Group interviews with leaders of ITE programmes across the…

School attendance problems and school dropout are recognised as a major concern by researchers, policymakers, practitioners and the wider society. Although research acknowledges the multi-faceted complexity of dropping out of school, only a limited number of studies have focused on the perspective of support workers (e.g., teachers, social…

This study examines the experiences of teachers in the Republic of Ireland, as agents of the pedagogic device, in enacting curriculum policy at the micro level of the classroom. It explores their enactment of policy at a time of significant curriculum reform of junior secondary school education. Drawing upon the findings of in-depth interviews…

This article offers a critical review of the impact of policy-induced changes on school teachers in the Chinese Mainland where educational reform has been an ongoing project for four decades. It addresses three aspects of the current state of teaching and the teaching profession: the contextual factors that have influenced their development; the…

This study attempts to conceptualise English teachers' professional identity based on an understanding of identity in a socio-psychological framework, and thereby reveal the attributes and dynamics of professional identity by investigating Korean English teachers' cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to their national English curriculum…

In recent years, many countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have formulated educational policies aimed at providing better education to more students. However, this may be perceived as constituting dilemmatic spaces, where teachers must make efforts to reconcile coexisting political demands in their everyday…

Studies of teachers' lives and careers rarely include a precise focus on subject teaching. This appears a limitation given the often strong connections there are between subject teaching and professional identity. With the intention of understanding the connections between the two better, the research adopted a case study methodology to describe…

"Teach For" and "Teach First" programs now constitute a significant pathway into teaching in a number of countries. One criterion for selection into these programs is leadership capacity, and evidence indicates that many candidates do move into leadership roles in education, business, and policy in the years following their…