The 2007-2008 school year marked the first year Florida's Title I schools that did not made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for five consecutive years entered into restructuring as mandated by the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001. My study examines the perceptions of teacher entering into their first year of school restructuring due to…

In the face of the century-old call for democracy in education by John Dewey, this paper explores how and why teachers have been systemically removed from efficacy within the educational system in which they live and work. The paper examines historical trends that work to limit teachers' institutional power and become obstacles to teacher voice.…

Considerable research has been conducted into teacher retention. Less is known of ex-teachers' circumstances: salary, workload, working conditions, "job prestige". For this study, telephone interviews were used to ask 21 ex-teachers about their journey from teaching, and views on their current working conditions by comparison. This paper…

The application of market-based principles to school management and the onset of heavy-handed accountability represent a new policy direction in education. The new policy direction has led to a reconceptualization of the purpose of education, the redesign of teaching work and attempts to manage teacher identities to align them with the new…

For the past two decades schools and teachers in New Zealand and elsewhere have been the subject of and subjected to intense public scrutiny of their performance and professional activities. In effect, policy solutions have cast teacher and school performance as a "problem" to be solved/resolved via the intervention of the State.…

When state and local standards drive instruction, teachers often worry about compromising their creativity for a prescriptive curriculum with predictable outcomes. It is possible for creative teaching to flourish by using touchstone texts, or mentor texts, that engage both teacher and student in exploratory yet purposeful learning. (Contains 1…

This study presents data from a major national survey of teachers conducted by the U.S. Department of Education; the Schools & Staffing Survey. The authors break down these observational data for public and private school teachers, in order to compare what teachers have to say about their work in each of the two school sectors. These are…

This article reports the third phase of the Froebel Research Fellowship Project: "The Voice of the Child: ownership and autonomy in early learning". Building on the first and second phases of this study, this phase examined early years practitioners' experiences of supporting young children's thinking in relation to the personal…

School-based learning depends on teachers' capacity to engage with each other around central issues of teaching and learning. While such collaboration is readily welcomed by some educators, others remain wedded to an "independent contractor" concept of teaching. Supporting teachers to view themselves as team members and to perform effectively as a…

Online learning can play an important role in engaging language learners and fostering autonomy. The LondonMet e-pack, which provides online interactive language learning materials, is used as a case study to illustrate some of the theoretical and practical issues faced by those implementing online language learning programmes. This article begins…

This paper analyses teachers' attitudes towards the use of textbooks as a means of understanding what happens in a heavily centralized education system. Whilst the research is based on a particular country, the lessons can be applied to many parts of the globalized education system. The research question here is to find out whether the teachers…

School systems in the United States have long been characterized as "loosely coupled systems," in which decisions and events occurring in one part of the system have little resonance elsewhere. Loose coupling has advantages in that classrooms are buffered from outside interference, but it also makes it difficult to bring about change.…

This dissertation was a single case study with Green Dot Public Schools (GDPS) describing their rapid scale-up process. Specifically, it investigates the phenomenon of the inherent tension between maintaining the fidelity of the original model school's design, culture and values with local adaptation of the brand by stakeholders at the expansion…

This article examines the goals and consequences of an educational reform introduced in all Japanese schools beginning in 2002. The Integrated Studies (IS) programme was designed to increase teacher autonomy and to augment student interest in learning. The reform has the potential to alter significantly the way education is organised and delivered…

This paper outlines the main changes that have effected a transformation in the nature of academic work: on the one hand, the increasing diversification and specialisation of academic tasks, and on the other, new forms of control over academic work. An analysis of these trends leads to a discussion of the relationships between the evolution of…