This article explores the relationship between the freedom granted to teachers to shape curricula and the function of national standards. In recent years, many countries have begun to introduce standards-based reforms in education, such as standardized curriculums and high-stakes tests. As cultural diversity within schools increases, the tension…

Music teachers seek imaginative openings to expand the reach and scope of the music curriculum, particularly by engaging more students in creative production and culturally relevant offerings. This article describes the work of a high school choral music educator who implemented new courses in Hip Hop Production by strategically navigating the…

Indigenous dances in communities that underwent European colonialism and Christianization are currently practiced in environments that still carry colonial legacies. Without formal dance teachers' training programs and frameworks, individuals in postcolonial Africa have leveraged local resources, social experiences, and individual innovation to…

Data from English primary school teachers in 1995 and 2017 illustrate the sustained value they place on outdoor learning in a period of curriculum and governance reform. With emphasis on a prescribed curriculum, metrics and performativity, and decreased expertise, these data show the strength of teachers' aspirations and values for developing…

Academics have always been endowed with the privilege of autonomy, but the diffusion of evaluation systems based on publication outcomes potentially jeopardizes the benefits deriving from behaviors that address other pillars of higher education. Besides research and teaching, academic citizenship, i.e., the service behaviors carried out within and…

Background: High quality tertiary teaching is important for maximising the impact of tertiary education for students, employers and society, as well as for institutional reputation and accountability. Varied interpretations exist regarding what counts as 'innovative' tertiary teaching.Purpose: This study sought to explore the deeper drivers of…

This article considers teacher agency in teachers of English in Ontario (Canada) and England, based on interviews with and lesson observations of teachers in three high schools in Ontario and four in England. Our research looks at the way policy impacts on their practice. We found a greater sense of agency amongst teachers in Ontario that may have…

Although the past two decades have witnessed the substantial development of sex education in mainland China, Chinese society at large is both conservative and silent in addressing sex-related issues, especially with children and adolescents. Against this background, how do Chinese sex educators understand gender, sexuality and sexuality education,…

As higher education in the United States has experienced a proliferation of internationalization activities, there has been a steady stream of studies directed at understanding institutional rationales for internationalization. Further, an emerging body of research seeks to understand faculty motivations of international involvement. However,…

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, how do specific HRM practices such as faculty job security, compensation and job autonomy relate with commitment behaviour which, in turn, affects quality education? Second, how does faculty commitment behaviour play a mediating role in the links between those specific HRM practices and quality…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are considered ideal contexts for teachers' professional development and school improvement. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the interplay between PLC characteristics (i.e. collective responsibility, reflective dialogue, and deprivatized practice) in secondary school departments, and understand what…

Background: The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2020. The historical study of speech and language therapy (SLT) has been very limited. A small number of publications have traced the changes in the profession over time, but to date there has been no comprehensive work undertaken to gain an…

Musicians nowadays need to be able to work both creatively and collaboratively, often in a wider range of artistic, social and cultural contexts. A strong vision on conservatoire pedagogy is needed to reach this goal and at the same time align with the demands of higher education. At the start of the 21st century, renewal of curricula concentrated…

Critical pedagogy in the UK has traditionally been practised in the Lifelong Learning sector. However, the sector has become constrained by funding cuts, instrumental curricula and accountability measures, and teachers can feel that they have little room for professional autonomy and therefore the practice of critical pedagogy. Yet some do…

Just as schools receive charters to run independently of districts, this brief proposes that teachers could receive charters to run classrooms independently of schools. In addition to providing teachers with more autonomy, charter teachers would give families the opportunity to select not the school their child attends but the individual who…