Schools have long been identified as important sites in terms of instilling values within the next generation. In order to develop our understanding of values, this paper sets out to explore how values are understood in Irish educational legislation, policies and curriculum. Irish Legislation, policies and curricula were searched systematically.…

This article offers a critical review of the impact of policy-induced changes on school teachers in the Chinese Mainland where educational reform has been an ongoing project for four decades. It addresses three aspects of the current state of teaching and the teaching profession: the contextual factors that have influenced their development; the…

Approached as an epistemology, implementing a constructivist workshop approach to literacy can challenge the traditional paradigm of teacher-focused instruction and transform to one where students construct knowledge together and learn through active engagement in authentic reading and writing. This study illustrated how two third-grade teachers…

Previously, research about teacher expertise has adhered to relatively fixed notions of teacher expertise. However, in this study, we share data from teacher study group (TSG) meetings, which demonstrate a dynamic understanding of teacher expertise. In these meetings, teachers discursively positioned themselves, their colleagues, and the research…

Fundamental for mentoring a preservice teacher is the mentor's articulation of pedagogical knowledge, which in this research draws upon specific practices, viz.: planning, timetabling lessons, preparation, teaching strategies, content knowledge, problem solving, questioning, classroom management, implementation, assessment and viewpoints for…

At the heart of many current debates about curriculum and curriculum policy is an inadequately conceptualized and articulated notion of teachers' professional discretion. This paper begins to detail a normative and descriptive theory of the social and individual conditions required for the development of professional discretion. A better…

This article outlines the experiences of educators in three teacher education institutes in the USA, Australia and the UK as they experiment with carrying out programmes based on ideas of action research. The emphasis is on experiences with programmes of initial education for secondary school teachers. A descriptive case study aimed to find out…