Assessment literacy (AL) empowers teachers (Grabowski & Dakin, 2014) by helping them make better decisions about the development, administration, and use of assessments (Harding & Kremmel, 2016; Popham, 2009). This is crucial because when teachers make erroneous interpretations, which lead to incorrect decisions, students can suffer…

Background: International achievement studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have an increasing influence on education policy worldwide. The use of such data can provide a basis for evidence-based policy-making to initiate educational reform. Finland, a high performer in PISA, is often cited as an example of both…

This article reviews research relating to the concept of "the professional" then considers "the teaching professional" and in particular the "post-compulsory education (PCE) teaching professional" in more depth. Recent positive models of the teaching professional are analysed, including the expansive professional and…

The construct of the "good teacher" has teacher knowledge as a fundamental component; but teacher knowledge is contested. Policy makers offer one version, articulated through such documents as Teachers' Standards. However, it might be argued that this version of teacher knowledge, largely defined by national curriculum and assessment…

The Federal Government in Australia has recently established Centres for Excellence in Teacher Education. These Centres represent a power shift towards schools in teacher education and away from centralised bureaucracies and university faculties of education. Given this shift, it is interesting to examine other historical and current school-based…

This paper proposes a theoretical model to explain trainee withdrawal and persistence within higher education (HE) based initial teacher training (ITT). Within ITT, attrition and persistence are under-researched and under-theorised, thus providing the rationale for this study. Within HE more broadly, a number of models have been proposed, most…

This paper reviews barriers associated with the use of ICT tools by teachers in their classroom teaching at "technical," "teaching" and "school" levels. The aim of this review is to highlight the fact that there is currently less research work on the kind of technology teachers need for adopting ICT tools in the 21st…

As a new teacher educator of beginner teachers on the Graduate Teacher Programme in a large School of Education in a UK university, I have reflected on how I have been able to develop the effectiveness of modelling good professional practice to student-teachers. In this paper I will present ways in which I have made modelling more explicit, how…

This article draws upon research undertaken with 28 teacher education mentors, managers and trainee teachers within the SW Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (CETT) in 2008, following the introduction of the new revised Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) standards. The first part of the article locates and contextualises the policy context in…

UK-based teacher educators formed the core membership of the History of Education Society when it was founded in 1967, and they were frequent early contributors to the Society's journals. Given these origins, one might imagine that the history of teacher education would have featured more prominently in the pages of the first 40 volumes of the…

The relationship that exists between students and science and technology (S&T) is a complex and important one. If it is positive, then social, economic and environmental consequences are to be expected. Yet, many problems of interest/motivation/attitude (I/M/A) towards S&T have been recorded. A lot of research has been conducted on this…

The new requirements for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses for the Learning and Skills sector mean that mentors now have a more significant role in the formal assessment of their mentees' practical teaching. This research looks at the emerging dilemmas and challenges and investigates the changing and complex relationship in institutions…

Set mainly in a UK context between 2003-2007, this article presents selected findings from a doctoral study, Companionable Learning: The Development of Resilient Well-being from Birth to Three; and from a series of subsequent studies carried out in English settings. Two questions have been explored: firstly, what are the interdependent components…

The nurture approach is a form of educational intervention for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). Utilising a unique example of a state-run, special "nurturing" primary school, Corinne Syrnyk, of St Mary's University College, Calgary, presents a case study of the experience of being a "nurture…

It is ironic that the management of education has become more closed while learning has become more open, particularly over the past 10-20 years. The curriculum has become more instrumental, predictive, standardized, and micro-managed in the belief that this supports employability as well as the management of educational processes, resources, and…