Although Islamic religious education (IRE) has been offered in Austrian public schools since 1982, public opinion and the general opinions of several stakeholders in the school system tend to be negative. One of the main reasons is the shortage of professionals, which led to recruiting personnel from different disciplines, who often lack the…

We present a transformative professional development project with a focus on equity, diversity and social justice (EDSJ) to raise cultural awareness among faculty, increase agency, and promote positive change through transformative projects. Twenty-three faculty members from nine different colleges located at a Research I university were provided…

This paper tells a story of one student teacher's experiences as she considers the choice of fiction texts studied by young secondary learners of English, and how those texts are taught. Based on a series of interviews carried out in the South-West of England and Wales, the narrative provides a perspective on the limitations of current curricula…

Societal, structural, value-based or economic changes and changes related to technological developments necessitate a continuous development process in the field of education. In responding to the changes, teacher agency becomes a key factor. This study explores when the context of reform provides the basis for the growth of agency and when it…

Teachers' commitments, or what is often called fidelity in teaching, are of obvious importance in early childhood settings. Nonetheless, fidelity in teaching young children remains an undertheorized concept. Instead of appreciating the philosophical and socio-political complexities of practice, examinations of fidelity in teaching young children…

In the last decade, demands for greater order and the defense of traditional moral values have grown in Brazil within the scope of what authors have been calling the new Brazilian conservatism. Conservative and neoliberal leaders and religious groups stand out, acting on different fronts in politics and social relations, including education.…

This paper examines contemporary challenges for education and democracy in Brazil. In the past decade, conservative forces headed by the Escola sem Partido (ESP) movement have led a scaremongering campaign against teachers and public education, with Paulo Freire's critical educational philosophies as their main enemy. This study investigates the…

This article reports findings from a small-scale qualitative study conducted in partnership with a group of secondary school English Language teachers in China. The study explored the teachers' perspectives of the role of teacher autonomy in the teaching of English as a foreign language. Using semi-structured interviews, nine teachers from three…

In 2020, the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) within the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education published "What Works Best: 2020 Update (WWB2020)." Drawing on Michael Apple's "simple questions" as a theoretical lens, this paper analyses the first two "Themes, Practices, or Strategies" (TPS)…

Teacher agency is an important topic in educational research, but its theoretical observations have not filtered down into practical Vietnamese teaching contexts. The action research project described here showcases a training-based intervention for teacher educators in various disciplines at eight universities in Vietnam. The intervention aimed…

The proposed Curriculum for Wales 2022 presents a bold new vision for curriculum, teaching and learning. Together with its focus on four key purposes, it affords substantially more flexibility and autonomy to teachers and schools, positions learners as central to curriculum decision making, promotes active forms of pedagogy and…

Children's well-being has received extensive research attention and has a central role in early childhood policy and curricular guidelines. However, the well-being of early childhood educators has received fragmentary research attention and is unacknowledged in policy and curricular documents. Given the seemingly self-evident links between…

Teachers' professional lives and their role in change efforts have always been central to the Journal of Educational Change. Articles have addressed teachers' motivation for and commitment to reform, their belief systems, their professionalism, their networks, and their professional development, among other topics. Unequivocally, teachers are…

Using assessment to inform teaching and to measure learning outcomes is of critical importance in higher education. However, many tertiary educators are not sufficiently knowledgeable or prepared to do this confidently. This paper suggests that tertiary educators could be given tools and encouraged to exert agency in their own assessment literacy…

In this article, we consider Western Standard Music Notation (WSMN) as a normative communication system that, through representing certain cultural frameworks, may pose obstacles to musical learning, particularly in general music education. To focus this examination, we discuss different critical aspects of what we call the "notation…