This paper comments on strengths and weaknesses of the papers on communities of practice in this special issue of "Technology, Pedagogy and Education." First it discusses the character of communities of practice and the question of whether schools are environments that are conducive to the development of teacher communities of practice. It then…

In spite of the relatively long history of formalized music teacher preparation in the United States, surprisingly little research has focused on the question of how teachers learn to teach music. The authors of this article have proposed a theory of situated learning, building on the idea of apprenticeship. Several models of music teacher…

Instructional designers regularly engage in a process of professional and personal transformation that has the potential to transform the culture of institutions through faculty-client relationships. Instructional designers promote new ideas and understandings in social contexts that include other designers and clients, among others. This research…

I clarify in this chapter what Iran can learn from Japan's experience of jugyou kenkyuu(lesson study) model, and what we can apply to the Iranian educational context. The chapter also discusses the process, progress and challenges of incorporating jugyou kenkyuu into Iranian teacher training. I examine how Iranian teachers and school…

Mindfulness meditation is increasingly recognized as a health promotion practice across many different kinds of settings. Concomitantly, contemplative education is being integrated into colleges and universities in order to enhance learning through reflection and personal insight. The confluence of these trends provides an opportunity to develop…

This article draws upon and integrates a number of distinct but overlapping areas of inquiry in the literature on teaching: teacher inquiry, reflective practice, spirituality and education, and contemplative practice. In it, we examine the implementation of a particular phenomenological form of teacher inquiry, the Descriptive Review, in an urban…

The article reports on a project conducted with a group of MA-ELT students during their teaching practicum. Many student-teachers, like many teachers in general, rarely see and hear themselves or experience the lessons they conduct from the other side of the fence. When teachers themselves are asked to do the things they normally assign to their…

In this article, the implications of international students undertaking teacher education in Australian universities are discussed as an example of global teacher education and its consequences for teacher educators and students. Increasing numbers of international students come to Australia to qualify as teachers and this has consequences for the…

The focus of this paper will be one of the authors' transformation from reluctant teacher-researcher to empowered teacher-researcher. The authors will describe Shayla's journey through action research because it was this journey from circumspection to empowerment that strengthened her in ways that she had not foreseen or anticipated. It allowed…

Continuing professional development as it is pursued through the interacting paradigms of reflective practice and action research can be facilitated through the disciplined use of non-judgemental discourse. A framework for such purposeful interaction, "cooperative development", has been established for face-to-face use among TESOL professionals…

Set against an organized school reform backdrop, this inquiry features four challenges I faced as a result of working alongside teachers and principals whose urban schools were awarded major school research grants for a 5-year period. In addition to teasing out the origins of the dilemmas I encountered and showing how they impacted my teaching…

This study reports on the impact of mentor teachers using an explicit pedagogy with their student teachers. Seven mentors participated in workshops before the school year started and received ongoing support throughout the year about how to explicitly teach student teachers the strategies and skills needed to be an effective teacher. Observations…

This article describes an action-learning project that helped teachers to rethink their approaches to children who challenge. The project enabled and encouraged teachers to reflect critically on why and how particular children challenged them and then to use their critical reflections to strengthen their capacity to work with those children. The…

This book presents a feminist pedagogy of multiculturalism developed from Paulo Freire's theories on the politics of literacy. Freire has argued that literacy is the precondition for not only forms of social and political agency, but also social transformation and emancipation. In his view, teachers and students must refuse to be either experts or…

The changing world requires an improvement in school education, part of which involves the creation of self-renewing educational organizations to assist that implementation. This paper argues that the quality of teacher education can help to produce these self-renewing organizations and describes East Carolina University School of Education's…