This qualitative study aimed to explore Hong Kong pre-service teachers' beliefs about the potential benefits of a short-term study abroad programme and their practices. Pre- and post-programme semi-structured interviews and reflective journals were employed to collect data. The findings suggest that the transformation of beliefs into practices…

Research on teacher professional development is extensive but there are fewer studies about the practitioners who facilitate professional development. Here we report on a pilot programme for professional development facilitators rooted in a cycle of action research. Informed by a categorisation of professional knowledge and skills of facilitators,…

The nature of the education offered in prisons varies greatly. Provision can be focused narrowly on limited objectives, such as training for employment or seeking to "address offending behaviour." On the other hand, where prison education follows the policies of the Council of Europe or the European Union, which are drawn from the…

Peer observation of teaching (POT) is a reciprocal process where a peer observes another's teaching (classroom, virtual, on-line or even teaching resource such as unit outlines, assignments). Peers then provide constructive feedbacks that would enable teaching professional development through the mirror of critical reflection by both the observer…

This chapter provides an overview of key principles and practices in executive coaching. Coaching is discussed as a reflective learning opportunity and offers the theoretical grounding, strategies, and case studies for each of four key elements of a coaching engagement.

Preparing competent multicultural educators involves a dynamic process requiring constant self-reflection and assisting pre-service teachers to sharpen their cultural vision as they learn to be responsive educators. Reflections on lessons learned as a teacher educator are shared through personal experiences that are identified as keys to prepare…

This article focusses on the transformative role of knowledge in student learning, paying particular attention to the mechanisms that facilitate the "enrolment" of students into their prospective expert cultures. It is vital for educational policy and practice to develop an understanding of how students enter a specialised knowledge…

This paper reports on the first year of an innovative Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Advanced Education Practice, designed to meet the specific staff and development needs of one school in the North West of England. The programme is underpinned by three strands of practice based learning: learning about practice (theory), learning in…

Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate how transformative learning is key to innovating sustainability education in the built environment in the region's universities, in addition to reporting on the research project undertaken to integrate sustainability thinking and practice into engineering/built environment curricula in Asia-Pacific…

This article presents a case study on the role of spirituality in adult education at a suburban senior center located in the southeast region of the country. The purpose of the case study was to understand the deeply personal role of spirituality in adult education as seen through teaching seniors and examine the personal manifestation of…

People's true selves comprise a life story that may be considered as a narrative. With that idea in mind, the purpose of this article is to report on a pedagogical intervention that bridged life stories and a narrative perspective to examine nine, out of eighty, pre-service English language teachers' (re)construction of their true selves while…

The author, a school principal with significant classroom responsibilities recounts his journey towards authenticity as an independent teacher-researcher. His career as a researcher began in the scientific-knowledge tradition and then moved into the practical-knowledge tradition. He describes how Donald Schön, the father of reflective practice,…

Contemplative practices support transformative learning processes but can be difficult to identify in a higher education environment. Advocates of contemplative approaches to education see this void as a concern. When topics like these are ignored, especially when desired by students, staff, and faculty, the holistic, transformative, and deep…

Further education typically represents the vocational, technical and practice-based forms of education, but this is now being repositioned in a neo-liberal era that is driving a performance-based and market-orientated vision of education in the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere. The implacable drive of neo-liberal economics in everyday practice is…

This article interacts with a recent article by Denise Cush and Catherine Robinson in which they call for a new dialogue between religious studies in universities and religious education, and identify a number of developments in religious studies that have implications for the practice of religious education in schools. Cush and Robinson are…