Professional school cultures, which can be characterized by teachers who take an inquiry stance and in which exchanging knowledge and collaboratively developing classroom material is common practice, receive increasing attention. However, teachers in many schools still often work in isolation and generally do not critically examine their…

This article uses edvertising as a vehicle through which to examine autonomy and control for key agents in education when market-like reforms are combined with privately led management of schools. We begin by outlining the philosophical foundations of school choice from the perspective of autonomy and control, and then lay out the case of…

Teacher agency is enacted when teachers attempt to control or influence curriculum in an effort to achieve their desired outcomes. This article presents the results of a longitudinal qualitative case study which explored teacher agency using the Triadic Reciprocity Framework Core Agency Concepts (TRFCAC) model. The current study identified teacher…

Spurred by "Race to the Top," efforts to improve teacher evaluation systems have provided states with an opportunity to get teacher evaluation right. Despite the fact that a core reform area of "Race to the Top" was the use of teacher evaluation to provide on-going and meaningful feedback for instructional decision making, we…

A basic premise of teacher education is the value of teacher agency, that is, the teacher's capacity to take responsibility for one's knowledge, beliefs, judgements, and relationships. How can teacher educators sustain a commitment to agency in light of critiques of western modernity, specifically in relation to the existence of a rational…

Within the past two decades, federal and state governments have increased the frequency, number, and importance of standardized tests in elementary and secondary American schools. These tests are characterized by recognition-based frameworks that privilege "best" or "correct" answers, processes, and understandings which remain…

Severe teacher shortages, caused by high attrition rates, have been the focus of attention for school districts and policy leaders for over two decades. Teacher attrition accounts for approximately 40 to 50% of new teachers leaving in the first 5 years of service. High teacher attrition rates in the United States impact tomorrow's leaders,…

There is a growing understanding that teacher education should not be handled either exclusively by the University or in School settings. Nevertheless, the issues on how to foster a fruitful partnership between these two different institutions remains an open and challenging point. The practicum is a critical point in the pre-service teacher's…

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the decisions two teachers made about how to engage with a five-year school-university collaboration that used professional development (PD) to foster changes in language instruction for teachers of multilingual learners. Design/methodology/approach: A longitudinal case study was used to examine the…

The purpose of this study was to compare the psychological wellbeing of public and private university teachers in Pakistan. Psychological wellbeing is generally conceptualized as an interaction of positive effects such as happiness and optimal functioning of people in social and individual areas of life. Using multistage sampling technique, 437…

Grounded in the Self-Determination Theory, this study examines the relations between teacher educators' experienced work pressure and opportunities for professional growth, their work related basic needs satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness) and their researcherly disposition (i.e. being a smart consumer of research, being able…

Higher education institutions in Portugal, as in many developed countries, have undergone deep transformations affecting their organisational structures and professionals. These reforms framed by new public management are said to induce changes in the traditional jurisdictional field of the academic profession with the administrative power being…

This study argues that teachers are disempowered and demoralised moral agents. Specifically, it uses a qualitative study of Hong Kong teachers to show that teachers' agency in the pursuit of the moral goal of education is socially disempowered. The study shows that although teachers are committed to the moral goal of education, the obstacles to…

This paper seeks to recommend a democratic model to curriculum development in Algeria that involves teachers by combining top-down government directives with bottom-up teachers-based creativities. More explicitly, the paper aims at exploring and identifying perceptions of secondary school EFL teachers' on their implementation of 2003 curriculum…

Quebec's Ethics and Religious Culture program (ERC) requires teachers to adopt a professional stance of pedagogical impartiality. This article examines the complex regulatory framework surrounding the impartiality requirement from the perspectives of teachers' legally recognized right to professional autonomy, their constitutional rights to…