In both Australia and Malaysia where there is strong central oversight of education, reflective thinking is promoted as integral to an effective pedagogy that leads to good quality learner outcomes. Besides providing tools and resources for teachers and pre-service teachers to use, increasing the systemic procedures for teacher advancement and…

Within the field of education, reflective practice has become a very popular concept within teacher education and development programs. The general consensus is that teachers who are encouraged to engage in reflective practice can gain new insight of their practice. There have been similar developments in the field of teaching English to speakers…

This paper reviews Participatory Action Research as an approach to teacher professional development. It maps the origins of Participatory Action Research (PAR) and discusses the benefits and challenges that have been identified by other researchers in utilizing PAR approaches in conducting research. It draws ideas of combining the features of…

Two different strands of evidence coalesce to give rise to the issue of concern in this paper. Firstly, proposals for educational reform assert that teacher-agency is necessary for "effective" reform. Indeed it is argued that it is agency which drives the construction/reconstruction of professional knowledge, to influence and transform…

The paper reviews recent psycho-educational literature to identify features of teacher thinking which enable learners to acquire meaningful knowledge. The review establishes that one powerful mechanism to improve teaching in higher education turns on exploiting adults' epistemic beliefs: beliefs about the nature and the acquisition of…

Considerable attention has been paid across international contexts to structural factors affecting the sustainability of the early childhood workforce. While attention to these elements is vital, it can nevertheless overshadow less tangible elements that may contribute to, or assist in addressing, problems of workforce sustainability. In…

This is a conceptual review of the literature variously referred to as faculty development, educational development, instructional development, and academic development in higher education. Previous empirical reviews covering more than 30 years of published literature could draw only tentative and weak conclusions about the effectiveness of…

Pasifika learners, along with Maori, continue to experience high disparities in New Zealand's education system. Furthermore, it is predicted that over the next few decades, the majority of students in New Zealand primary schools will be Maori and Pasifika. The implications for classroom teachers are enormous. In reviewing a range of literature,…

Explores the idea of critically reflective teaching in general, and in particular, teacher decision-making and classroom assessment. Asserts that in community college settings-the ultimate in diverse, open-entry, mixed-ability classrooms-critical reflection on core assumptions can ground teachers in a moral, intellectual, and political vision of…

There is a strong international trend for governments to move teacher training away from the universities into the schools. In effect, this is a challenge to the expertise and effectiveness of university-based teacher educators. This paper examines the role of fashions in research in the destruction of teacher educator credibility. Reflective…

This article examines the community of practice model as a framework for integrating educational research and practice. In addition to defining communities of practice and reflective practice, it describes two researcher-teacher partnerships and offers suggestions for transforming traditional methods of conducting research on educational practice.…

This paper highlights some emerging trends in rethinking the teacher education practicum in North America. The paper discusses several major obstacles to student teacher learning that persist even in many of the new inquiry-oriented practicums that focus on the development of reflective teaching practice. While teachers praise the value of the…

This book reviews the literature on reflection, explores the relationship between reflection and learning, and discusses how reflection can be used to improve learning and professional practice. The following are among the topics discussed: (1) common-sense and developmental stage approaches to reflection; (2) the philosophies of Dewey and…