Increasingly, educators from all disciplines are using blogs, social networking sites, VLEs and wikis to encourage academic discourse between students. However, a common problem experienced by educators is how these important learning experiences can be assessed and because of this difficulty many are not assessed. For some time now, I have been…

Recent dominant models of student teacher learning include apprenticeship and reflective practice, but these are now being challenged, extended and enriched by broader sociocultural models of learning. These new models direct attention to how learning is shaped by an interplay between the characteristics of the student teachers, their lecturers…

Educationalist Fred Korthagen elaborated a model in the 1980s for the relationship between the teacher educator and the teacher which embraces reflective practice as its guiding principle. In the present study, research was carried out into teacher development among a small group of language teachers working in continuing education in France.…

Background: In a context of significant educational change and financial constraint, this paper explores ways to develop teacher learning. A recent review of teacher education ("Teaching Scotland's Future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland," Donaldson 2011) coincided with two factors impacting on teaching and learning…

The most fundamental reason why teachers are evaluated is because public schools take public money, and the public has a right to expect high-quality teaching. But there are two more basic purposes: (1) to ensure teacher quality; and (2) to promote professional development. The challenge is merging these two purposes of teacher evaluation.…

This article shares an explanation regarding why disciplined study should be introduced to pre-service teachers early in their coursework, specifically through methods courses. Next, it shares two studies conducted regarding perceptions of curriculum: one with pre-service teachers and one with veteran teachers. Then it provides five suggestions…

This article reports a literature review of self-studies by beginning teacher educators examining their experiences of the transition from classroom teaching to teacher educator. The authors conclude that becoming a teacher educator involves several complex and challenging tasks: examining beliefs and values grounded in personal biography,…

The goal of this inquiry was to create a social justice-oriented inclusive and enabling pedagogy by situating traditional individualised views of disability alongside three alternative understandings: a disability studies in education perspective, a First Nations view of disability and one based upon the autism pride/autism-as-culture movement.…

Both writing and math require purposeful teaching. This article describes how one teacher discovered that she could teach math in a way that paralleled how she taught writing by researching what students know and then nudging them ahead to the next level of understanding. Just as effective writers employ creativity, perseverance, and revising,…

University professional programs seek to develop students as reflective practitioners. The ability to critically reflect is often assumed to occur along the way. The explicit development of critical reflective skills among students is challenging. This study describes the utilization of online group discussion for critical reflection and provides…

Scholarly research is crucial to teaching and learning because it keeps the work of teacher educators and the teaching and learning in schools of education dynamic. Research fosters habits of critical reflection, encourages teacher educators to learn throughout their careers, and ensures that concepts in teacher education adapt to current…

This article presents research undertaken as part of a PhD by Carolyn Anderson who is a senior lecturer on the BSc (Hons) in Speech and Language Pathology at the University of Strathclyde. The study explores the professional learning experiences of 49 teachers working in eight schools and units for children with additional support needs in…

Purpose: Chronic health conditions can cause children extended school absences, creating significant barriers for continued education. Out-of-school learning environments, such as hospitals, provide opportunities to maintain children's learning identities during school absences. This paper seeks to present an example of hospital-based teaching and…

The promotion of reflective practice, while widely advocated in higher education settings, nonetheless presents numerous challenges. This is an under-researched aspect of the discourse on reflective practice. A key challenge for those working in the field of teacher education within higher education is to promote a culture of refection in large…

This paper provides a reflective focus on the concept of change to the professional identity of FE lecturers. Traditional perceptions of FE staff as vocational specialists are contested and the emergence of a new professional with an extended professionality is discussed. The changes analysed deal with the emergence of the HE in FE sector and the…