Teacher education in Finland has followed a research-based approach for decades, but the approach has rarely been investigated from the viewpoint of in-service teachers. This study explores how in-service teachers experienced the meaning of educational science, research and theory (ESRT) and how teachers engage with educational research as part of…

Bandura's influential theory has been used to argue that teachers with high self-efficacy will be more effective at increasing pupil achievement--and a voluminous empirical literature has repeatedly documented associations consistent with this claim. However, few studies have considered whether these correlations reflect an underlying causal…

This research project sought to comprehend how a group of graduates from an Initial Foreign Language Teacher Education (IFLTE) programme in a national teacher education college in Uruguay constructed a personal stance towards social justice as a result of having completed a curriculum intending to promote such a stance. Data were collected through…

This study examines theoretical principles and models of music education to promote interpersonal and social relations. It focuses on the primary and secondary stages of education in Spain. To this end, relevant national and international figures in education, music or critical thinking were consulted. Their responses to the consultation were…

In recent years, a significant problem that has manifested in the quest to capitalise on the pedagogical potential of technology in schools is that veteran teachers are unwilling to integrate these resources into their practices. Given that veteran teachers comprise up to 40% of teachers, their lack of use is important. This paper aims to shed…

This article reports on a study into student teachers' perceptions about their professional development during practicum. Framed within a symbolic interactionist perspective, the study examined to what extent, and how effectively, one group of student teachers was able to integrate theory and practice during a three-week practicum in the first…

Whilst recent decades have seen significant progress in research on inclusive education, many teachers still feel that the research literature does not fully address their professional concerns about how to enact a policy of inclusion in their classrooms. To help to bridge this gap, we drew on the concept of craft knowledge to undertake a detailed…

Drawing on previous research that focused upon the formation and mediation of teacher professional identity, this paper develops a model for conceptualising teacher professional identity. Increasingly, technical-rational understandings of teachers' work and "role" are privileged in policy and public discourse over more nuanced and holistic…

In a national contest of story writing in Israel, first-year teachers from all educational sectors were invited to write a story that mirrors their first year of teaching experience. The narrative analysis of the stories sheds light on the hostile and adverse sides of teaching, surfacing novices' sense of impotence in their capacity to act. The…

This research draws on sociocultural theories of learning and activity theory to explore the challenges faced by an innovative community of teachers in Central Finland. The aim of the teacher community was to develop a stream of foreign-language (FL)-mediated teaching and learning in the locality from kindergarten to upper secondary level. To…

This paper presents a theoretical critique of citizenship education in England and Wales, as a means of raising pedagogical considerations for teachers, and policy issues for curriculum makers and planners. Drawing on a range of recent empirical studies, we construct an analysis of practice and suggest that differences between dominant models of…

Most people think of the arts in education as a way of teaching arts skills, and in times when the emphasis is on achieving literacy and numeracy (necessary, but not sufficient, educational goals) the arts can often be seen as "fringe." This article makes the case that study of artworks in the service of developing perceptive and…

The connection between teacher inquiry, professional development and school improvement was recognised 30 years ago by Lawrence Stenhouse. Stenhouse contributed many valuable insights into the role of practitioner enquiry in creating and utilising knowledge about teaching and learning, much of which is still to be applied systematically in teacher…

The stress and anxiety of new teachers is a pervasive problem that impacts upon teacher preparation and retention. Although new mainstream teacher concerns and experiences have been readily discussed in the literature, the same attention has not been invested for new Aboriginal teachers. In Ontario, Canada, in excess of 60% of the Aboriginal…

This research project began as an effort to redesign a learning theory course as transitional space and evolved into an analysis of how unresolved conflict from younger learning selves influence graduate preservice teachers' acquisition of teacher identity. The study draws upon work by Elizabeth Ellsworth on transitional space and Deborah P.…