Informed by a conceptual framework on boundary crossing, this qualitative case study explored how a student teacher engaged in professional learning through recursive boundary crossing between her field school and the university programme in a U.S. context. The findings revealed the power of boundary crossing as a cyclical, intense, and…

This article explores teacher training by the alternation of classroom work and work analysis using an approach based on a social conception of meaning and action. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the development of professional activity in preservice teachers (PTs) to be assessed by tracking how the reflective tools acquired in…

This paper is designed to raise issues around how we view teaching and some of the implication that has for thinking about teaching as a discipline. The paper is built around the concept of "noticing" from some of my earlier work and aims to push ideas about teaching in ways that are intended to provoke readers into thinking more deeply about how…

This article attempts to unpack the complexity of teachers' professional knowledge construction in Assessment for Learning (hereafter, AfL). It presents a qualitative study of a school-based AfL Project which took place in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Thirty lessons video-recorded in the AfL Project and nine teacher interviews conducted after…

The construction of a pedagogy of teacher education requires a sustained, systematic, and careful inquiry into one's own practice, predicated on the understanding that teaching is a discipline. This article begins by arguing that it is more appropriate to speak of a basis for knowing, rather than a knowledge base, for thinking about teaching and…

This paper explores an aspect of the knowledge of teaching required by teacher educators and how that knowledge might be developed if teaching (about teaching) is to be conceptualised as a distinct and important field in its own right--with its own forms of knowledge, ways of working and perspectives on the world. The paper focuses on…

How mentors in their role as assessors appraise practice teaching lessons may strongly influence their student teachers' learning of how to teach. It can be contended that an assessment for learning (AfL) perspective on process and criteria of appraisal will support a shared valuation of student teachers' practice teaching and acceptance of…

Analysis of our own experiences teaching in preservice teacher education programs leads us to a range of insights, issues, and questions associated with the potential of seeing teaching as a discipline. We begin with the reality that teaching and teacher education appear to students as easy activities, while those who actually do them see them as…

The "T-MEDIA" project analysed and documented how teachers exploit the use of projection technologies--data projectors and interactive whiteboards (IWBs)--to support learning in secondary-school subject lessons. The research involved collaboration between university researchers and four pairs of UK teachers (of English, mathematics,…

In this article, a contribution is made to the discussion of reflection on the part of teachers. The discussion to date has shown that reflection must be broad and deep. However, just what constitutes broad and deep reflection and the relations between the two remain unclear. After consideration of the characteristics of broad and deep reflection,…

In many teacher training courses, reflection upon practice plays a very important role in learning to teach. A number of strategies have been developed to help student teachers learn to reflect. Current reflection strategies often focus on problematic instead of on positive experiences. Ideas from positive psychology and solution-based therapy…

This paper takes up two important issues in the professional development of university teachers: the controversy surrounding reflective inquiry and its purported benefits for professional development and the lack of research on what teachers learn from reflective inquiry and how that affects and/or changes their professional practice.…

This paper draws on data collected in a one-year research project focusing on elucidating theory/practice relations in learning to teach. As a teacher educator I grapple with the nature and role of teaching methodology. The notion of method, with its implied order and certainty, is confronted alongside prospective teachers throughout their…

This paper considers ways in which trainee teachers can be helped to develop their ability to engage in reflection on their practice. The context for the research is a Block School Experience developed by tutors in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Sunderland. An exploration of the nature of reflective practice…