The authors argue that the professional learning practices of teachers in precarious employment may have a significant impact upon their understandings of specific policy reforms. The analysis considers a teacher's understandings of learning about a new policy in light of the various 'epistemological resources' he brought to bear to his learning…

As we enter the sixth great mass extinction event, an event that points to humanity's exploitative attitude towards nature, posthumanist ethics offers a different way of engaging with the world, a way which has clear and extensive implications for the way environmental education is taught in South African schools. However, given the official…

Sharing teachers' professional knowledge remains challenging. Teachers' development often remains ad hoc or local, and attempts to scale this up have proved problematic. To address this, research in areas such as 'learning design' has explored the use of formal representations of practice. This proposes that educational practice can be improved by…

This article discusses how subject knowledge development should be conceptualised in the preparation of new secondary school teachers. It is written at a moment of national curriculum revision in England and a "knowledge turn" in education, bringing questions of subject knowledge development to the fore. The authors argue that the…

This literature review focuses on the e-use of video in teacher initial and continuing professional development. There is evidence that video technology used synchronously, and particularly asynchronously, can extend the quantity and quality of classroom observation experience, which in turn supports the development of observation, analysis and…

This article explores a two-year professional development initiative with four state geographic alliances. Professional development planners, whether planning for a large- or small-scale initiative or one with unlimited or limited funding, will benefit from learning about this successful professional development activity and how the impact in the…

There seems to be a continuous flow of new and revised books to support the teaching and learning of research methods in education and related fields. At one level, this is to be welcomed in an area such as research methodology where there is no single, widely accepted and coherent overview of the subject. The availability of diverse voices and…

Good preschool education requires professionals whose training is both solid and updated. This article presents the results of an evaluation of the continuing training received by teachers in the preschool educational sector in Spain, and discusses the level of implementation. The authors examine factors such as culture and motivation, and look…

This paper explores the perceptions of student teachers regarding the extent to which they consider a constructivist approach supports their learning in science. The research was carried out in two phases and drew on questionnaire and interview data. In Phase 1 a questionnaire was used to collect the views of 34 students regarding the…

The need for knowledge and understanding of inclusive practice is now required in higher educational contexts as increasing numbers of students with special educational needs enter the university system. This has implications for university teachers whose background knowledge and experience of teaching students with special educational needs is…

This paper considers the nature of teacher professionalism in England today, tracing how it has changed and developed according to the impact of government policy and the introduction of standards for teachers. It examines the recently published Teachers' Standards with their emphasis on classroom practice together with the requirement for…

Practitioners are often faced with the national legislation's influence at the school-based curricular level. In the United States, the federal government No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates reading instruction at the early primary grade levels. The position of "literacy coach" was created to support this curriculum change by…

Research suggests that pre-service teaching students embarking on practice placements encounter affect both in a personal and a professional sense more acutely than at any other time during their professional careers. A few studies emphasise the use of electronic communications in facilitating effective peer and tutor support during these…

This study seeks to understand how university supervisors and cooperating teachers approach giving feedback during the practice teaching experience to pre-service English language teachers and the nature of feedback they give through post-lesson conferences and written evaluations. The data for the study come from field notes of classroom…

This paper presents the analysis of two representative lessons drawn from a cross case study of K-12 classrooms in which students and their teachers engaged in a collaborative dialogic inquiry process (data-driven dialogue) to co-construct meaning from assessment results. The representative lessons illustrate a significant shift from…