Based on the prerequisite role of teachers' professional development for students' progress, our study aimed to shift the DeSeCo (Definition and Selection of Competencies; OECD, 2002) theoretical model from students' competencies for life challenges to teachers' professional context by creating a reliable, valid questionnaire based on the three…

Middle schools often turn to computer-assisted reading intervention programs to improve student reading. The questions guiding this study are (a) in what ways are computer-assisted reading intervention programs utilized, and (b) what are teachers' perceptions about these intervention programs? Nineteen secondary reading teachers were interviewed…

Adopting self-determination theory and the perceived characteristics of innovation as the theoretical background, this study investigates the school teachers' willingness to adopt and reuse an e-learning system. Three hundred and eighty-eight valid questionnaires were collected for analysis using structural equation modelling. The results…

The government of the Sultanate of Oman actively promotes the value of English as a global "lingua franca" to support modernization and national economic growth. This policy, however, creates difficulties for many teachers, who find themselves implementing certain practices that conflict with a vision of English language teaching (ELT)…

During recent years, we have seen an increase in the complexity of school leadership as knowledge work. The new forms of knowledge available to school leadership, such as performance data and survey-based data, raise the expectation that leaders make relevant use of these knowledge resources. Theory and policy claim that new knowledge is of…

This article analyses and critiques the discourse around widening participation in elite universities in the UK. One response, from both university administrators and academics, has been to see this as an 'intractable' problem which can at best be ameliorated through outreach or marginal work in admissions policy. Another has been to reject the…

More than 20 years into the implementation of public charter schools, the U.S. experience can inform policymakers and others about how to achieve the best possible results through charter school policies. This paper describes the history and current state of the charter school movement, presents a conceptual model of the charter school system, and…

This article is based on an interview conducted with Mark Olssen in October 2014, and the subsequent discussions. These conversations invited Olssen to reflect on his experiences of neoliberalism as a practising academic who has worked in the UK for some 14 years, and also to comment as a researcher and writer who is well known for his work on…

Academic work has traditionally been seen as relatively stress free. However, a growing number of studies have reported increases in occupational stress experienced by university researchers. In order to explain stress among this group, we build on a new perspective in occupational stress research: the so-called stress-as-offence-to-self…

This paper points to the necessity to conduct researches of contextual conditions of teachers' behavior in classroom, using the framework of the self-determination theory, according to which styles of teachers' behavior toward students is correlated with their satisfaction of psychological need for autonomy in school. We analyzed different…

This article examines the dramatic implications of the turn towards neo-liberal education policies for teachers' professional identities. It begins with an analysis of some of the key features of this policy shift including marketization, metricization and managerialism and the accompanying elevation of performativity. This is followed by a…

Educational systems, schools and school leaders are caught in the global crossfire between two sets of political expectations: students' academic outcomes must be at the top of league tables, and students must acquire excellent innovative and creative competencies. It is timely to reflect on the effect of this dilemma. We need to find out if basic…

Australian government concern for improved governance in the higher education sector over recent years has driven the implementation of governance protocols. However, there has been little evidence of any evaluation of the impact of the governance structures on the performance of universities. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of the…

In this paper, we report findings on the contemporary idea of a university as defined by the relative importance of teaching, research, service, and collegiality in teaching-intensive universities. We also investigate Boyer's model of scholarship relative to the research--teaching--service nexus. Our findings show that while research is embraced…

Experiential learning (EL) projects require planning, patience, and commitment on the part of the organizing and facilitating instructors. Language, culture, time zone, and institutional diversity exacerbates the inherent difficulties in conducting virtual, international EL projects. This manuscript discusses an ongoing multi-country project…