In this article, an approach to the final assignment for a seminar class in early childhood education is discussed. The goal of the project was to give practicing teachers a sense that they could make changes in their thinking and therefore their practices, in the present time and in the future, and see themselves more clearly as leaders of their…

In this paper, the author proposes that a social reconstructionist framework of reflective practice provides an important orientation for preservice teachers to more successfully negotiate the rapidly changing contexts in which they will no doubt teach. She first illuminates the influence others have had on her understanding of reflection,…

An integrated mathematics and science methods course was designed to focus on the knowledge, skills, and beliefs of teacher candidates. Teacher candidates were involved in experiences that would prompt them to consider the influence of their experiences on their beliefs, the influence of their beliefs on their instructional decisions and the…

Teaching reform in higher education has frequently been informed by investigations into conceptions of learning held by students and by teachers. Such work has been extended into research education, with the study of experienced researchers' conceptions of research providing a basis for enquiry into the way research is experienced by the various…

This article discusses a "peer mentoring" teacher education initiative that aims at developing pre-service teachers' capacities to participate successfully in learning communities, both during their initial teacher education and throughout their teaching careers. Peer mentoring utilizes the latest conceptualization of mentoring, that of…

Being a Master of Business Administration (MBA) instructor can be a satisfying, as well as a frustrating experience, but instructors can avoid becoming discouraged if they know and apply some important teaching strategies. In this article, the authors offer four teaching strategies that have made the difference between success and failure in the…

Bechtel and O'Sullivan suggest that teacher change within the context of professional development (PD) is influenced by the design and content of PD initiatives. This paper examines the influence of an initiative designed to stimulate reflection and discussion among experienced teachers. It has been argued in the physical education literature and…

This study briefly reviews Chomsky's and Hymes' ideas on competence and links them to Dubin's notions of autonomous and ideological communicative competence. Based on interviews with high school EFL teachers, the study hypothesizes that some of these teachers have an indistinct view about communicative competence that moves between autonomous and…

This paper reports on a study into course relevance conducted using some of the principles of Exploratory Practice (EP). I wanted to gain an understanding about how relevant the students taking my English courses perceived them to be in terms of their own lives. I also hoped to resolve some of the tensions experienced due to the differences in…

In the Australian vocational education and training (VET) context, attention is often given to what youth work training programs should consist of, resulting in less attention on how youth work education and training programs might be imagined, constructed and implemented. In this paper, a particular South Australian youth work training program is…

Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners' academic language development without losing focus on content. These challenges require new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between language and content as well as new pedagogies that…

This article examines the professional learning accruing from school-based initial teacher education (ITE) within the wider policy debate on school performance. It contrasts the very positive perceptions reported by teachers on the contribution of involvement in ITE to their professional learning with the less than fulsome attitude of school…

The article is based on a practice task, which was completed as part of the Higher Diploma/Masters in Family Support Studies at NUI Galway. The practice task explored in this article was conducted in a residential care unit that specialised in working with children and families. The care team based in the unit strived to provide more than…

This study assessed the influence of guided inquiry and explicit reflective instruction on K-6 teachers' views of nature of science (NOS). Using the Views of Nature of Science Elementary School Version 2 (VNOS-D2), and associated interviews we tracked the changes in NOS views of teacher participants prior to and following a summer professional…

In this article, we share our challenges and positive experiences of using feminist pedagogy to teach an undergraduate course on gender development. We use a developmental contextual, feminist perspective to address issues related to (a) internalized sexism, (b) contrasts in students religious beliefs and sexism, (c) students' developmental level,…