Staff participation in professional development is critical for the success of divisions of student affairs and institutions of higher education at large. However, mandating participation can lead to adverse effects and hostile workplace climates. This study examined what individual and organizational culture factors predicted participation in…

Despite the popularity of online course and degree offerings in higher education, a lack of data persists on the unique challenges and opportunities online faculty face. Gaining insights about these experiences is important to ensure the quality of online teaching as colleges and universities continue expanding e-learning programs. Therefore, the…

This qualitative case study investigated why and how a teacher used his agency in curriculum-making. The study uses in-depth interviews, classroom observation, and teaching artefacts to understand the socio-cultural perspective on the interplay among agency, resources, schema, and structure. It finds that in this case, teacher agency was triggered…

This article presents the results from a survey investigating 708 Swedish and 1583 Finnish teachers' perceived autonomy with a focus on the teachers' perceptions of who makes the most important decisions in school. Teacher autonomy is seen as exercised at different levels; by teachers individually in the classroom or by teachers as a collective in…

This study explores a school leaders' perspective on teacher professional agency. Tensions may arise when teachers feel hindered in their professional agency and try to negotiate their 'space' with other stakeholders (colleagues, students, management). School leaders are expected to empower and support teachers, but how do they perceive teachers'…

Purpose: Much of prior research focused on the dimensionality of the part of Job Diagnostic Survey that measures the core job characteristics, with mixed findings. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate an instrument assessing core job characteristics. Design/methodology/approach: Public school teachers (n=685) serving in elementary…

We examined the role of gender in teachers' perceived autonomy support (PAS), relatedness with students, workplace buoyancy, and organizational commitment. With 276 Australian secondary school teachers, structural equation modelling showed predominant similarities across gender in associations between PAS, relatedness, buoyancy, and commitment.…

Charter schools are the most popular alternative to traditional public schooling in the United States. The majority of research indicates positive effects of charter schools on student performance in traditional public schools. Most studies use the share of charter school students enrolled as a measure of the competitive pressure of charter…

School leadership is a key component of successful school environments and academic performance strategies. Among school-related factors, school leadership is second to teaching in its impact on student learning. In addition, research shows that strong leaders contribute significantly to successful school turnaround. To ensure that school leaders…

The teacher shortage in the nation's public schools--particularly in high-poverty schools--is a crisis for the teaching profession and a serious problem for the entire education system. The Economic Policy Institute's (EPI's) teacher shortage policy agenda plots a course to return teaching to a profession in which teachers are compensated on par…

Paraeducators play an important role in the classroom supporting students and certificated teachers. However, literature on the actual roles of paraeducators has revealed that paraeducators are rarely included in the teaching team (Patterson, 2006). Paraeducators are frequently asked to perform difficult or unpleasant jobs and may not be…

Purpose: The growing body of knowledge on language teacher agency highlights the positive contributions of agency for teacher identity construction. However, teachers may face challenges in effectively exercising agency, and their agentive actions may be impeded by multiple contextual factors. The present study adopts a narrative inquiry…

Considering the broad context that there is a growing number of international students seeking English teacher education in the Western TEOSL programs and the majority of them will eventually go back to their own countries to teach, these international TESOL trainees face the challenge of integrating two different language education systems.…

Following recent analysis by "We The Educators", a joint project of the Alberta Teachers' Association, the Canadian Teachers' Federation and Education International, the global proliferation of education technologies is inseparable from "the privatisation and standardization of education occurring around the world" (We The…

This study investigates to what extent the characteristics of effective face-to-face professional development hold in a MOOC designed for statistics development of secondary teachers and the nature of teachers' and others' interactions with materials and with each other in this online professional development. Social theory of learning and…