Background: Teachers are important role players in improving literacy; however, they lack the expertise to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies. Studies have showed that when teachers are motivated to explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies in their classrooms, learners' comprehension is improved. Objective: The aim of the…

It is widely accepted that professional learning is a crucial aspect of the ongoing professional practice of educators. But how should this professional learning take place, and what arrangements enable and constrain practices associated with educator learning? In this article, we explore two case studies of action research projects: one…

Despite well-established benefits, the majority of young people around the globe are not sufficiently active. In many countries, including Australia, physical activity (i.e. physical education and school sport) is not mandatory in the final two years of high school (i.e. senior school years). The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a…

The authors report on a study that examined how educators in Austria conceptualise research, how they engage with academic literature and what attitudes they have towards academic development. Growth mindsets, regular engagement with research in a variety of formats and inclusive understandings of research were defined as pre-conditions for…

Inquiry pedagogies provide opportunities to meet learning outcomes linked to developing scientific literacy. Within a European project intended at promoting Inquiry Based Learning (IBL), this paper presents quantitative and qualitative data about teachers' views of IBL and its enactment in England and Spain. Results show that teachers in both…

The primary aim of this study was to evaluate school principals' instructional leadership behaviours based on teachers' views. The instructional leadership model developed by Hallinger and Murphy (1985) was used, and the phenomenological design of qualitative research was employed. The participants were 16 teachers working at public schools in…

Teacher absenteeism constitutes a significant barrier to achieving quality education in many low- and middle-income countries globally, where teachers' school absence rates range from 3 per cent to 27 per cent. Tanzania Mainland has made significant progress in achieving universal primary education and improving the quality of education. Since…

Continuous professional development of teachers plays a crucial role in improving learning outcomes in schools. This study investigated how teaching time is lost when teachers absent themselves to participate in sandwich programmes to upgrade themselves in the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) in Ghana. Using a survey of 475 teachers pursuing…

The University of British Columbia-Vancouver (UBC-V) implemented a campus-wide survey of faculty teaching practices and perceptions. All 11 Faculties participated, resulting in a total of 1177 responses for an overall response rate of 24%. We compared response patterns of faculty who reported spending less than 25%, between 26-50%, between 51-75%,…

In an effort to become more competitive in the global market, Colombia, as many other Latin American countries, has declared English the dominant foreign language to be taught in schools and universities across the country. To support this measure, in the last 16 years, the government, through its National Ministry of Education, has launched a…

The Finnish social pedagogical curriculum for early childhood education directs early childhood teachers to use documentation to assess and develop pedagogy and practise. This empirical study examines the challenges and benefits a group of Finnish preschool teachers experienced when they learned to document their work. Although the idea of…

The Research Excellence Framework has led to increased scrutiny on the volume/quality of writing produced by academics within higher education institutions. This paper describes the initiation of a writing support programme for teacher educators in a new university and analyses its impact. A key finding has been that supporting staff to write is…

This paper reports on the findings of a pilot school-based professional development programme for Tanzanian primary school teachers launched in February 2011 and evaluated in December 2012 by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training with the support of UNICEF. The study set out to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of the pilot…

This paper reports on secondary analysis of TIMSS 2003 data with the aim of explaining the difference in science achievement of Korean and South African learners. The question asked by this research, i.e. which factors at various educational levels influence science achievement in Korea and South Africa respectively, is addressed from the…

This paper describes how new roles for instructors and learners can be integrated into course design and delivery by rethinking course design as part of a process-based staff development program. The goal of incorporating online learning tasks was to engage students with course resources prior to class time through active learning. The staff…