This paper compares conceptions of teacher quality in two education systems -- Singapore and Hong Kong -- that consistently perform well in international assessments of student achievement. Both systems constantly refresh their expectations of teacher competencies, with recent iterations, which offer a just-in-time opportunity to learn from how…

This article addresses my professional development as a teacher and political scientist throughout the span of a 15-year career in political science. Also included are reflections on graduate education and the compatibility and necessary dual focus on both political science and teaching in the academy today as it relates to my present-day…

It is now more than 10 years after the publication of the monograph, "The Activist Teaching Profession," which, at the time, could be described as a call to action for the teaching profession. I reflect here on how far has the profession progressed in responding to that call to action. The idea of a "call to action" could be…

"How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?" asked Donald McIntyre in his 1996 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. Still pertinent to consideration of the direction in which the British educational research community ought to…

The article focuses on the policy rhetoric of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). This is a new degree being launched in the summer of 2010 aimed, initially, at teachers who have just joined the profession. The degree presages the aspiration for a Master's level teaching profession in England. Professional development as conceived in the…

Teacher professionalism in England may be considered to have been shaped by the set of professional standards, and the accompanying statutory performance management system, introduced by the Labour government in 2007. More recently the coalition government's 2010 White Paper, "The Importance of Teaching", announced reforms that will…

This article considers the marginalization of internationally educated teachers (IETs) as occasional teachers. In particular, it explores the experiences of three IETs as they try to gain access to full-time teacher employment within the Ontario, English-speaking public school system. Data used in this article was generated from a qualitative…

This article argues that leadership knowledge should be included in teacher education curricula. The authors discuss the political realities that affect teachers and how these realities are best met with teacher leadership knowledge. Failure to include ideas of educational leadership in teacher education denies teachers an understanding of the…

A substantial body of literature has highlighted many factors that impede faculty change, the most common of which are a lack of training, time, and incentives. However, there may be other barriers--unacknowledged and unexamined barriers--that might prove to be equally important. In particular, the tensions between a scientist's professional…

Professional standards for the teaching profession have received considerable attention over the last decade in Australia and internationally. Teachers of languages and cultures in Australia have been active in this period in developing their own professional standards, supported by a series of nationally funded projects arising from federal…

The educational discourse in recent years in Australia, and in particular NSW has been on advancing the status of the teaching profession through the development of a framework of standards, and by supporting the nature of teachers' work in addition to improving student-learning outcomes. The close link between student learning outcomes and…

This article presents an inquiry into conversations that academic teachers have about teaching. The authors investigated to whom they talk and the forms that these conversations take. The findings indicate that most teachers rely on a small number of significant others for conversations that are characterised by their privacy, by mutual trust and…

In this study, we investigate the interplay between context and agency for three early-career academics as they seek to develop their teaching. Our analysis is conducted in light of Archer's realist social theory, framed by critical realism. We argue that it is possible to see ways in which Archer's account of the interplay between structure and…

Although Missouri has had a Career Ladder program for teachers since 1987, very little research has been carried out to measure the program's effects and what has been studied has not been comprehensive. This paper examines the program's effect on student achievement across the state, using longitudinal data on district math and reading scores for…

This article explores the development of teacher identity in the 21st century. The simple way to describe this discussion of identity is that it is complex. In an attempt to unpack this complexity, this article begins with a discussion of definitions of teacher identity; then links that discussion to the literature on how 21st-century web 2.0…