This study was developed in response to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) position statement elevating the use of nonfiction literature in the K-12 curriculum. Using an intersectional, critical multicultural lens, we examined award-winning picturebook biographies for their potential to invite examination of the concept of power…

This research applied the perspectives of volition theory and goal setting theory to analyze the effects of teachers' volitional strategies and task value on goal commitment in remedial teaching. The samples were collected from 92 elementary schools and 460 teachers with remedial teaching experiences were invited to participate in this study.…

Since the ratification of the 1981 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) the role of Voice of the Child (VoC) in education has gained significance. Despite various VoC models and methods existing to collect and understand it, it is often critiqued for being tokenistic, rather than meaningful. Personal Construct Psychology…

This article examines the limits to children giving research consent in everyday school contexts that emphasises their conformity to comply with adult expectations, and highlights children's competence and agency in navigating this conformity through different practices of dissent. It draws on research into children's agency, using a multimodal…

This research was aimed at examining the influence of teachers' psychological empowerment on their commitment to the school in the case of private schools in Antalya province, Turkey. Data were collected twice, first 297 teachers for scale development; second, we collected data from separate 297 teachers for the main analysis. A correlational type…

The movement towards inclusion comes together with a neoliberal audit mentality whereby individuals are held responsible for the transformations. The Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) are seen as 'change agents' whose task it is, to support teachers in adapting their approach to optimise the chances for children with special needs in…

Background: This article casts the analytical spotlight on the practice of within-class homogeneous (same) ability grouping where learners are placed in small groups for instruction based on their perceived performances, reading levels and interest. Very few studies have focused on within-class ability grouping, especially in a South African…

The impetus to move to a new generation learning environments places a spotlight on the relational dynamics of classroom spaces. A key feature is the notion of learner agency. A complex notion, learner agency involves both compliance with and resistance to classroom norms and therefore is far more sophisticated than acting in acquiescence to…

In this paper, two case studies of elementary school teachers in the Republic of Cyprus are constructed to discuss how curriculum making relates to teacher biographies and sense of professionalism, as those are shaped at the intersection of their professional history and projections for the future, informed by and informing their constitution as…

The study aims to gain a better understanding of the complexity of teacher learning by exploring the elements of teachers' sense of professional agency in the two primary contexts of teachers' work: the professional community and the classroom. Moreover, the relationship with agentic learning in these contexts is studied. A total of 2310 primary…

This case study examined how the agency of a fifth-grade pupil appeared across different learning environments in the primary school context. In this study, agency is defined as the initiatives taken by an individual in interactive situations. The research question is: how does a pupil's agency manifest and vary through taking initiatives across…

This concurrent multi-phase mixed methods study investigated whether indicators of Social Cognitive Theory could be observed in Grades 3-5 classrooms and if these indicators could be used to describe teacher effectiveness in high poverty schools. The conceptual framework drew upon Bandura's (1997) measurement of the individual self-efficacy of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how primary school principals in Israel cope with the gaps between authority and responsibility in their work, deriving from partially implemented decentralization processes, and how this relates to school-based management (SBM) and accountability principles. Design/methodology/approach: Using…

The interaction analysis presented by Kim and Roth examines nine students, their teachers, the learning task and materials in a mixed second and third grade science classroom during the school day. In the research narrative readers are introduced to two resourceful and creative groups of students as they work on a task assigned by their…

Language teaching has undergone many changes for several decades and is still changing within this complex dynamic system. Teaching is recognized as both individually practised and socially shaped phenomenon with lots of constraints imposed by the society. The concept of agency has been theorized from an interdisciplinary approach incorporating…