The three aspects of teacher change--ontological, epistemological, and sociocultural--are traditionally regarded as independent. Usually only the epistemological aspect is highlighted in formal teacher education. In this paper, I argue that a holistic and interdependent view of these aspects is needed. Thus, this paper aims to explore the process…

This paper presents an approach to planning academic courses for pre-service teachers and for researching development of teacher identity. The approach was implemented in a course, conducted in an Israeli Master Teach program, designed to foster pre-service teacher identity transformation. The research described here addresses two questions: (1)…

This article aims to broaden the scope of language teacher identity research by investigating the emotional demands on teachers-in-training and nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in particular. We examined how our focal NNEST participant, Puja, was confronted with and successfully negotiated numerous emotional challenges in her first…

This article argues that prospective teachers who have the most productive experiences within pre-student teaching field experiences are those whose field sites allow them to become members of communities of practice, the conditions of which, according to Wenger (1998) include joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. Employing…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits of higher education in mid-life from the perspective of life course agency. Studies concerning the benefits of degree-oriented higher education have been mainly conducted using survey questionnaires and quantitative methods. In order to gain a more comprehensive picture, this qualitative…

This qualitative phenomenological study was an investigation of the individual and collective experiences of a group of teachers in one rural elementary school. The study served to discover how one group of teachers interpreted and defined professionalism in education. Stratified purposeful sampling was utilized to select the 12 participants. Two…

Postgraduate study provides teachers with opportunities to become critical consumers of research as well as generators of their own knowledge, enabling them to fulfil the mandate of teaching being a research informed and evidenced based profession (Robinson, 2003). This article pays attention to 18 practicing teachers' reasons for undertaking a…

This study investigated changes made to the Childhood Studies placement journey of one post-1992 University in England. The Childhood Studies degree includes "practitioner options" that requires students to complete 200 h placement experience, including 50 h in year one. In 2014, the participant university responded to this expectation…

This study investigated the first-person accounts of eight international counseling graduates (ICGs) upon re-entry to their home country to work after earning a university counseling degree from a program accredited by the Counsel for Accreditation and Counseling Related Educational Programs (CACREP) in the United States. An assumption of the…

Careers advisers in the UK have experienced significant change and upheaval within their professional practice. This research explores the role of postgraduate-level professional development in contributing to professional identity. The research utilises a case study approach and adopts multiple tools to provide an in-depth examination of…

In conditions of continuous education reform teacher self-development is indispensable to provide high quality of teaching as well as simply to maintain the job. The goals of the paper are to analyze the intrinsic and extrinsic motives for teachers to be engaged in self-development, to show the difference between the terms "development"…

Teacher education provides the central forum for student teacher learning. Student teachers are advised to learn about teaching and undergo professional transformation during this instruction. However, research on student teacher learning often focuses on a certain time period and on how students "should" learn instead of analysing what…

This article discusses some issues related to the professional development of Religious Education (RE) student teachers in initial teacher education based on empirical results on the development of the pedagogical thinking of Finnish RE student teachers during their teacher education. The article begins by describing the concept of professionalism…

The effectiveness of writing centre interventions on student writing in higher education has been well-documented in academic literacies studies. This paper changes the focus of investigation from student to consultant and, consequently, explores the way in which an academic writing centre can function as a mentoring environment for young…

This qualitative research explored how the retelling of a life story influenced teachers' self-understanding. Informed by the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, and philosophy I constructed a conceptual framework of life as a continuous narrative, reflected and focused by past and anticipated experiences. This framework was informed by…