Academic development has emerged as an important new site of practice in higher education internationally over the past 40 years, and has been influential in shaping the terms of debate about teaching and learning in higher education. Academic development has shifted its focus from the individual teacher to strategic interventions at institutional…

This article addresses the issue of how to monitor and develop the quality of teaching in schools by identifying the international lessons of teacher appraisal, monitoring and support systems and by interrogating the recently introduced South African Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS). The aim is to show why teacher monitoring and…

Teacher clusters represent a recent experiment in the field of teacher professional development in South Africa. Increasingly, teacher clusters are being used as a substitute for the traditional approaches to professional development in helping teachers reshape their professional knowledge and change their classroom practices. What underlies this…

This article reflects on six key themes that emerged from a teacher development conference whose theme was "Developing Teachers for Rural Education". The six themes are the concept "rural" in the South African context; the notion of "rural education"; beyond access, towards success; the practitioner-academic…

Examine resources and their use in school mathematics from the perspective of mathematics teacher education with a view to the practice of school mathematics. Provides examples of resource use within an in-service teacher education research project in South Africa. Concludes that mathematics teacher education needs to focus more attention on…

This paper provides guidelines for implementing a formal mentoring program for South African school principals. Based on a review of literature, the following steps are discussed in detail: (1) declaring intent; (2) determining the role players; (3) forming a planning committee; (4) implementing the program; and (5) evaluating the program.…

This paper examines the need for a mentoring program for school principals in developing countries where, as in South Africa, no formal structures for principal mentorships exist. Following an overview of mentoring and a review of literature, characteristics of a successful mentoring system and effective techniques for observation and feedback are…

In this article, the author argues for a central and critical role for "reflexivity in research" with the aim of developing and strengthening not only everyone's understanding of what everyone does in environmental education research, but also how, and why everyone does it. In a narrative account of methodological issues that occurred…

A study was undertaken to ascertain the position of inservice training for librarians in South Africa and to determine what adjustments were necessary for inservice training practice in South African libraries. An examination of the literature on inservice training revealed current trends, and the literature in the field of library science was…

The following essay explores aspects of my professional identity as a teacher of English, presenting a focus on "the reflexive project of the self" (Goodson, 1998). I argue for the way rich professional learning can occur by keying into a discourse that values penetrating reflection on classroom practice, teacher identity, self and…

We reflect on methodological issues arising in two of our own research projects as a form of practice, as a way of engaging in a praxis of project research. The projects chosen for this purpose are themselves concerned with teacher education and curriculum development in environmental education: they include participatory "reflective…