The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate teachers' perceptions about the impact of the McREL Teacher Evaluation System on their professional growth. The sample comprised 15 teachers of students in Kindergarten to Grade 4 in a suburban New Jersey school district who participated in Year 1 implementation of a new standards-based…

This manuscript explores how one teacher educator worked to facilitate preservice teachers' (PSTs) learning across field- and university-based settings. Using socio-cultural learning theory as a lens, the analysis draws on case study data gathered for two PSTs from the same teacher education program (TEP), who experienced proximal, but…

This article details the results of an action research study which investigated how teachers used online learning community spaces to develop and support their teaching and learning of the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), a web-mediated, character-playing, simulation game that engages participants with social, historical and cultural curricula.…

Despite tertiary institutions acknowledging that reflective practice is an essential component of undergraduate dance teacher training, there is often a disparity between the tertiary students' reflective skills and the more sophisticated reflective ability needed to navigate the twenty-first-century workforce. This paper charts the evolution of a…

The number of English language students in American schools has dramatically increased in recent years, creating a greater awareness of cross-cultural issues and considerations in education. Globalization as well as an increase in international exchange student programs has proven that pre-service teachers can benefit from traveling abroad and…

Developments in the education field are affected by numerous, and often conflicting, social, cultural, and economic factors. With the increasing corporatization of education, teaching and learning paradigms are continuously altered. "Deconstructing the Education-Industrial Complex in the Digital Age" is an authoritative reference source…

Garth Boomer's democratic and often provocative vision for English teaching continues to play an important part in the professional development of English teachers. In particular, Boomer's work is often used by Teacher Educators in preservice degrees to introduce emerging English teachers to key ideas such as curriculum negotiation and…

Learning walks can be defined as ongoing, structured classroom visits by senior teachers and other colleagues intended to gather data about teaching and learning through observation and interaction with students. Used in areas such as classroom teaching, learning walks are designed to support professional learning for educators and encourage…

This paper presents preliminary data from a mentoring program, initiated in response to widespread Government reform policy that targeted early childhood teachers who were new or professionally isolated. It was implemented over a period of two years (2011-2012) in the state of Victoria, Australia. The paper focuses on the voices of these future…

The purpose of this study is to examine teachers' reflections of their early childhood special education work in Finnish day care. Work contents and work roles have faced many challenges in Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE), and therefore general reflection and research need to be developed. Teachers ("n"?=?218) evaluated, via an…

The role of a teacher as an action researcher in Croatia is still insufficiently appreciated and promoted in initial teachers' training, school students learning and in the employed teachers' professional post-qualification development. In this country, teachers are most frequently perceived as mediators or technicians whose task is to prepare and…

Despite the push for fostering reflective practices in teacher education in the last 20 years, true reflection remains rare (Farr, 2011). Based on a detailed analysis of four mentor-teacher meetings in a graduate TESOL program, I show how specific mentor practices generate teacher reflection without explicit solicitations. Findings of this study…

Research and practice is presented on the use of student assessments as part of reflective practice to evaluate teaching. Case studies are presented in the delivery of Engineering modules across a number of years at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Both student performance in continuous assessment and student feedback on assessments…

This article describes the theoretical principles underlying the research component of the Bachelor's program of Basic Education with an Emphasis in English at a public university in Bogotá (Colombia), and an exercise of syllabus revision that served to link theory and practice through the research component of the program. The aim of the exercise…

Required courses in teacher education programs can sometimes prompt less-than-positive responses from pre-service teachers. Multicultural teacher educators, in particular, may face resistance from prospective teachers who, believing that they do not harbor prejudices, question the need to examine their attitudes toward culturally and…