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…

Background: Policymakers' use of high-stakes exams to improve students' academic achievement affects teachers and their tenure in the field at all levels of schooling. Novice teachers now being inducted into the field have been educated almost exclusively in these high-stakes learning environments. Yet, how their familiarity with these contexts…

Standards-based reform is a trend affecting the educational systems of nations around the world, driven by desires to create educational systems suited to increasing economic productivity. In the USA, The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 includes goals of reducing achievement gaps and getting "highly qualified" teachers in all…

There is now unprecedented emphasis on teacher quality in the USA and in many nations around the world with extremely high expectations for teacher performance. Based on the assumption that education and the economy are inextricably linked, it is now assumed that teachers can--and should--teach all students to world-class standards, serve as the…