When the Connecticut State Department of Education published its first district report cards in 2003, it was obvious that the Hartford Public Schools district was struggling. Fewer than half of its students were proficient on the state reading exam. Math performance was better, but 63 percent of 10th-graders and 43 percent of younger students…

In Portugal, as elsewhere, the rhetoric of managerialism in higher education is becoming firmly entrenched in the governmental policymakers' discourse and has been widely disseminated across the institutional landscape. Managerialism is an important ideological support of New Public Management policies and can be classified as a narrative of…

It was the aim of this pilot study to investigate ELT student teachers' and teacher trainers' views on the use of the EPOSTL in pre-service language teacher education of a Turkish state university. Upon the implementation of the EPOSTL as a reflection tool for the second semester of 2010, 25 student teachers and 4 teacher trainers were interviewed…

This article aims to share preliminary results of an ongoing research project named "Towards a Pedagogy for Autonomy" carried out at the Languages Department at Universidad Central in Bogotá, Colombia. The final goal of the project is to create a teacher development programme whose emphasis is on pedagogy for autonomy and whose…

Since Finland emerged in 2000 as the top-scoring Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), researchers have been pouring into the country to study the so-called "Finnish miracle." How did a country with an undistinguished education system in the…

Four years ago, a group of teachers lingered after a district meeting, sharing a conversation about encouraging social responsibility in the school district of Tenafly, New Jersey. That conversation led to the eventual formation of a teacher study group, a grassroots professional learning community that has impacted its members and the school…

This longitudinal study examined how the approach leaders in two schools took to implementing the Common Core State Standards shaped the way that two first-year teachers constructed meaning related to being a teacher. Instructional leadership constructs and threat rigidity theory were used to analyze qualitative data gathered over a nine-month…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify the various factors contributing to teacher attrition at Alston Middle School and the ones that may reduce it. The participants in this study were fourteen teachers presently at Alston Middle School in Summerville, South Carolina. Teachers that were employed at Alston during the 2009 to 2010…

This paper focuses on one teacher team and the university facilitators who supported their collaborative action research within a province-wide professional development initiative designed by the provincial elementary teacher union to bring together teachers and university faculty in teacher-directed action research. The paper is collaboratively…

Current teacher accountability initiatives such as those included in the "No Child Left Behind" legislation in the United States create particular difficulties that impact deleteriously on the performance of professional educators. The quality of public education is undermined when teachers are held accountable to an external authority…

What is the role of the teacher in developing learner autonomy? The limited research in this area is seldom situated in theory and often based on self-reported data. This study is situated in sociocultural theory and draws on two constructs, the zone of proximal development and imitation, to explain the teacher's role in developing autonomy. The…

Since the 1990s, many states have started implementing standards-based reforms and developed their own accountability systems. Each state established academic content and performance standards, implemented test for all the students in grades 3 through 8 annually, and set up annual measurable objectives in reading and mathematics for districts,…

Charter schools have been studied from numerous perspectives. One topic that remains under-researched, however, is charter school leadership. Therefore, we examine how charter administrators define their leadership roles and their ability to lead. Results indicate that charter principals see three primary functions in their leadership--building…

Host universities of Intensive English Programs (IEPs) commonly found on university campuses as a means to preparing English language learners (ELL) for tertiary education are being targeted by for-profit educational service providers for privatized partnerships. Partnership agreements generally include provisions for assumption of international…

Data on intradistrict funding inequities in many large school districts confirm what most would guess--high-poverty schools actually receive less money per pupil than more affluent schools. These funding inequities have real repercussions for the quality of education offered at high-poverty schools and a district's ability to overcome the…