This paper reports on findings from a broader piece of research aimed at investigating the ways in which head teachers experience a new teacher evaluation policy in Portugal, particularly in regard to the challenges and perceived effects of the policy on school and on teacher development. Data were collected through a questionnaire with open and…

The field of second language teacher education has recently focused on issues of social justice through different interventions in language teaching preparation programmes and the analysis of the identity formation of pre-service and in-service language teachers. However, little is known about the identities of teacher educators in second language…

Our aim in this article is to examine the relationship between theory and practice in Finnish teacher education from the 1960s to the present. We identify four different periods to represent this relationship based on our analysis of national committee and evaluation reports. Theory and practice gradually converged, culminating in a research-based…

Teacher education exists today in a context of rapid globalization, which affects the systems in which future teachers will work, the governance of teachers' work, the students teachers will be teaching, as well as the policies, programs, curricula and students in teacher education itself. Several ideas recently have gained traction…

The aim of this article is to explore similarities and differences in teacher candidates' perceptions of their opportunities to enact practice in university courses in five teacher education programmes, located in Norway, Finland, USA, Cuba, and Chile. Paper and pencil surveys were distributed among candidates (N = 488) to measure their perception…

Teacher change involves the transformation of beliefs, knowledge and practices. While research has highlighted significant facilitative conditions as well as barriers to these changes, insufficient attention has been devoted to examining influences derived from existing practices perpetuated by institutional factors and teachers' personal…

Many researchers in the field of teacher education have proposed the formation of partnerships between teachers and teacher educators, without explicitly stating what additional roles teachers might play in the teacher preparation process. This article describes how some pre-service teacher education programmes have increased the involvement of…

Background: Policymakers' use of high-stakes exams to improve students' academic achievement affects teachers and their tenure in the field at all levels of schooling. Novice teachers now being inducted into the field have been educated almost exclusively in these high-stakes learning environments. Yet, how their familiarity with these contexts…

This paper reports on case studies of three teachers managing an education reform focussed on assessment, during a busy period of curriculum change in an Australia state Participants attended multiple professional development opportunities including a number of state-wide, systemically-facilitated assessment workshops. The most significant finding…

This paper describes the signature role played by accomplished, experienced teachers in professional learning communities, and the importance that these practitioners make their teaching public and shared. In so doing, the authors describe how accomplished practices can be shared between classrooms and between practitioners with varying levels of…

This paper focuses on the Teachers Network Leadership Institute (TNLI), an initiative designed to bring the voice of teachers into the educational policy arena through teacher action research. We view teachers' research on teaching and on school processes as an important means through which to expose the various sources of tension between policy…

While the politics of curriculum reform occupy adults, high stakes get played out in crowded classrooms. As a component of democratic inquiry, how might teachers engage students in a study of those agendas shaping their education? What sorts of conceptual resources could help? To begin to answer these questions, I briefly review scholars who…

The present paper describes a project that emphasized the use of case-writing by teachers engaged in an educational innovation. The aims of the paper are threefold: to provide a somewhat detailed description of the case-writing process, to explicate the varied functions of cases and case-writing by teachers, and to discuss an important feature of…