National and international education policies acknowledge the importance of the quality of teachers. Research literature emphasises the teacher profession as an dynamic and extended profession, driven by a moral perspective and a collaborative identity across the profession. In this paper the question is raised to what extent this understanding is…

Equity is an important topic in school context globally because international migration is rapidly diversifying schools and classrooms across the world. Teacher quality is seen strongly related to student outcomes than demographic characteristics of students, and therefore important for achieving equity. This explorative study investigates the…

Providing differentiated instruction (DI) is considered an important but complex teaching skill which many teachers have not mastered and feel unprepared for. In order to design professional development activities, a thorough description of DI is required. The international literature on assessing teachers' differentiation qualities describes the…

Developing instruments to assess teacher competence requires a model of competent performance which can guide both the collection and appraisal of evidence in task situations. Following Kane (1992), the validation of statements about teachers' competence is regarded as the evaluation of interpretive argumentation. Based on contemporary insights…

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the knowledge base of prospective science teachers. An important part of their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) consists of concerns about teaching. Most of the research on these concerns is focused on rather general teaching issues, and little is known about their concerns dealing with…