This article provides a vignette to exemplify how the training of teachers in primary schools in England was adapted in one context during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the key challenges the HEIs and schools faced was how to continue to assess the practicum of trainee teachers while trying to maintain the integrity of classroom 'bubbles'. A fast…

Training early years practitioners to facilitate the language development of young children is a widely used intervention. Evidence to support the effectiveness of training in terms of the impact of children's language development is limited. The Elklan Talking Matters programme is an accredited training programme for early years practitioners.…

This paper uses the theories of practice architectures and learning to teach to study in-service teachers' practice of learning to teaching within a further education (FE)-based initial teacher education (ITE) classes at one further education college (FEC) in England. It seeks to answer two research questions: How do in-service teachers learn how…

One of the key problems to be solved in mathematics education in England is that the demand for mathematics teachers is far in excess of the supply. Acknowledging that there are simply too few mathematics teachers, the UK government has invested significantly in retraining programmes. These programmes 'retrain' out-of-field teachers, that is,…

Where a high proportion of teachers who practice in primary and secondary schools are trained in a pre-service university setting, further education (FE) colleges train the majority of their teaching staff on an in-service, part-time basis. This paper discusses the experiences of eleven new teachers, based in two FE colleges, during their first…

Background: In England, instruction in systematic synthetic phonics is the first approach to teaching children to read words. There is little research exploring what makes successful training for phonics teaching despite evidence teachers' subject knowledge is limited. There is a persisting problem of underachievement in reading in some regions of…

This article presents the background to and rationale for a practice-focused model of educational change and improvement. In contrast to autocratic top-down models, this democratic and pragmatic approach begins with the educational concerns of teachers. In this model, responsibility and accountability for educational improvement is shared between…

Unlike their counterparts on school-based Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes, 'newly qualified' teachers in further education in England do not have the entitlement to support conferred by Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) status. Yet there is an expectation that ITE providers support former trainees' progress in employment, with little…

The authors of this article each present the current situation of their respective educational systems regarding music teacher education, schools and professional development: all of which have undergone massive changes in the last decades. In the UK, this lead to a shift of teacher education away from universities toward school-based training and…

In this paper, we propose the Social Semantic Server (SSS) as a service-based infrastructure for workplace and professional learning analytics (LA). The design and development of the SSS have evolved over eight years, starting with an analysis of workplace learning inspired by knowledge creation theories and their application in different…

This article addresses the issue of in-service teacher education, which has become a focus of international education policy attention in recent years. Professional learning (PL) is often envisioned by policymakers as a mechanism by which the professionalism of the teaching workforce can be remodelled and refreshed. It offers a means to enhance…

Recent changes to English national assessment policy have resulted in primary school leaders adopting new frameworks to evaluate pupil progress. This study examines the role of expansive workplace characteristics and staff meetings to support teachers to change their assessment practice at a schoolwide level, following engagement with a new…

This paper advances the discourse on school-university partnerships by considering the challenges of implementing a project to support the professional development of teachers through the use of video-mediated lesson observation within such a partnership network. The project discussed here was initially established by teacher-educators and located…

This paper explores the professional needs of pre-service teachers, their university tutor and in-service teachers in terms of their subject and pedagogical content knowledge. It does so through an examination of these professionals' participation in the learning experiences of children. The context for this participation is the children's…

Despite strong support for inclusive education in principle, many teachers and administrators still demonstrate mixed responses to the inclusion of certain students in their classrooms. Students with specific learning difficulties (SpLD) form a large group of students in inclusive classrooms yet some provincial, state and national jurisdictions…