Professionals make decisions, problem-solve through experience, skill and cognition, while providing a unique community service. For the government-employed professional teacher, professional associations, standards, identity and their employer contribute to professional development (PD). Meanwhile, continuous PD, or professional lifelong…

Students' perceptions are one of the sources that can be used to capture teachers' PCK. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a scale to determine secondary students' perceptions of their teachers' PCK. Validity and reliability studies were conducted with 659 students. Both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis…

Recording technologies have been used in teaching practices. The emphasis on the quality of teachers and teaching in a recent White Paper in England and the need to optimise teaching resources due to the current global recession have prompted a re-assessment of recording technologies in pedagogic practices. In this article, the application of…

The phenomenon of "hidden stories" is presented here through an exemplary story told by a woman teacher, who revealed it for the first time in a seminar work, employing narrative analysis to examine its long-term effect on her. Through that intimate narrative and its analysis, this study seeks to understand how narrative analysis…

This article explores a two-year professional development initiative with four state geographic alliances. Professional development planners, whether planning for a large- or small-scale initiative or one with unlimited or limited funding, will benefit from learning about this successful professional development activity and how the impact in the…

This paper examines teachers' experiences of autonomy as they undertook Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the form of Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs) to develop Assessment for Learning (AfL). Participant teacher interview data were used from two parallel TLC projects, one in Hong Kong and one in London, UK. Autonomy was defined in…

Informed by an amalgam of notions drawn from constructivist, socio-cultural, metacognitive and self-regulation theory, the discourse created to describe assessment to enhance learning has gone through a number of iterations or discursive shifts. As a result, the current discourse is both ambitious and complex with the roles and responsibilities…

"Learning how to Learn--in classrooms, schools and networks" is a four-year, multi-site project funded under the Economic and Social Research Council Teaching and Learning Research Programme and concerned with the development of formative assessment practice. This article describes how analysis of a large double-scale questionnaire…

This article is about a small-scale research project which investigated changing the authors' classroom practice at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level and how that change impacts on both teachers and students. This project emerged out of earlier classroom research funded and supported by the National Union of Teachers and…

Notes the growing interest in analyzing academic expertise in British higher education, defining key terms; discussing purposes and approaches (central government, universities, academic staff, and external influences); examining difficulties in undertaking analysis (e.g., diversity and being definitive about academic activity); and discussing the…

The study investigated the general attitude of Nigerian secondary school teachers toward peer evaluation of teachers. It also sought to determine whether teacher characteristics such as gender, school geographical location, academic qualification and teaching experience affected Nigerian teachers' attitude toward peer evaluation of teachers. To…

Suggests that becoming an expert teacher and judging teaching quality are complex and situational, exploring the use of a conceptual framework for analyzing eight teaching portfolios submitted by new university teachers as an assessment and qualification requirement. The study made a case for analyzing portfolios by asking whether teachers held…

Highlights problems associated with pen-and-paper testing, recommending a computerized adaptive testing system which measures students' abilities against the levels of the United Kingdom National Curriculum in mathematics. The current prototype of this system can be used on a school's network. Results are issued at the time of testing, and…

Investigated Finnish kindergarten teachers' evolving information and communications technology (ICT) capabilities in the construction and use of digital web portfolios. Teacher surveys indicated that access, competence, and motivation in ICT use intertwined during diverse cycles of portfolio development. Teachers had an enormous need for formal…