Decisions about assessment are often built on myths about teacher professional judgment and subjectivity that prioritize standardized assessment over classroom assessment. Ken O'Connor and Matt Townsley discuss some of the most common myths and explain how to dispel them by developing clear guidelines in which teachers can exercise their judgment,…

Principal autonomy has been identified as an important ingredient in effective and healthy schools. However, little is known about the various dimensions of the phenomenon and how it takes form in different contexts. This article presents an analytical device contributing to further understand the complex nature of principal autonomy. The device…

Building on Umberto Eco's concept of Ur-Fascism, this essay examines how authoritarian traits permeate mathematics education. Through a reflective analysis of my prior research within the context of Cyprus, I discuss troubling patterns of centralised control, rigid traditions, and hierarchical structures shaping the educational landscape. These…

Early hype cycles surrounding new technologies may promote simplistic binary options of either adoption or rejection, but socio-historical analyses of technologies illuminate how they are worked into shape by human actors. Humans enact agency through many choices that result in adaptations and contextual variations. In this piece, we argue that…

This article presents the development and application of a model that can be utilized to compare the autonomy of principals in various historical and national contexts. Drawing on former conceptual work on autonomy in education, the model conceptualizes principal autonomy as two-dimensional. The first dimension is the decision making expected from…

This article explores how teachers in Finland, Norway, and the United States reflect on their professional space for decision-making when planning. Various planning activities are at the core of teaching practice, and contextual factors are also at play. Teachers' reflections on decision-making when planning might therefore be expected to vary.…

Finnish education has received worldwide attention due to the country's performances in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Research investigating Finland's positive outcomes in the assessment has highlighted not only the strength of teachers, but also the rigour of Finnish teacher education. Finnish student teachers must…

The Soviet period is described as a highly centralised top-down system where schools and teachers had little to say about managerial topics. Instead, change was initiated by the resolutions and decisions of the Ministry of Education. This article aims to shed light on the establishment of Foreign-Language Subject Councils in Soviet Estonia in the…

There is much alarm about the current teacher shortage resulting from the pandemic and its aftermath. But teacher shortages have long been a perennial issue in K-12 education. Researchers Richard Ingersoll and Henry Tran analyzed data from the National Center of Education Statistics to compare rural schools to urban and suburban schools to…

Forty-six interviews of French and Finnish Junior High School teachers clearly show a strong will to link professional commitment to common progressive values. However, the interviewees have to adjust these political or philosophical views when confronted with the reality of their professional everyday life and to the development of widely…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to theorize teacher agency as enacted through a P/policymaking lens in three elementary classrooms. Big-P Policies are formal, top-down school reform policies legislated, created, implemented and regulated by national, state and local governments. Yet, Big-P policies are not the only policies enacted in…

Drawing on the capability approach to human development and Bourdieuan reflexive sociology, this paper explores the interplay of teacher agency and professional practice. The paper names five facets of teacher agency. It shows that teachers with a strong sense of agency actively seek learning opportunities--inquisitive agency; think effortfully…

Debates over which historical content should be compulsory for study in the school curriculum are a common feature of education systems across the globe. These debates invariably weigh the perceived benefits to social cohesion of a 'common core' of knowledge against the perceived risks to democracy of government-sanctioned 'official knowledge'.…

Evidence from intervention evaluations suggests that achieving meaningful and lasting social, behavioural and attitudinal change from relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in schools requires more than just a curriculum. Whole-school approaches appear particularly promising since they work at multiple levels. For instance, they may:…

Employing Jurgen Habermas's notions of communicative and strategic action (1984), this paper draws on case studies of principals' decision making practices in three sites of Finland, Australia and Jamaica. The research examined principals' understandings of educational autonomy as a part of their practices of decision making. The paper argues that…