National standards that centre on the underpinning epistemic practices of the discipline has emphasised the need for teachers to focus much more on knowledge generation approaches to learning. Adopting a complexity perspective, we attempt to understand how teachers shift over time by examining their epistemic orientation to knowledge generation…

The sociopolitical turn in science education calls for transgressing/trespassing boundaries, troubling the hermeticism of the field that has avoided seeing itself under the lens of social, critical, or philosophical theories. As such, the purpose of this article is to show a provocative way in which I organised my thoughts and analysis during my…

What are the attitudes, mindsets, and capacities that promote the full flourishing of individuals as well as our collective society? Based on a review of the literature on democratic education, the researcher posits a humble theory (i.e., a local theory in educational research) of the dispositions of democracy and then asks educators from…

Purpose: This study explores the achievements and process of a group of Chinese primary school teachers learning from a research-based school-university collaborative project. Design/Approach/Methods: We used qualitative methods to construct our research design, collecting data through participatory observations of weekly meetings, teacher…

Instructor discourse, defined as verbal interactions with students in the classroom, can play an important role in student learning. Instructors who use dialogic discourse invite students to develop their own ideas, and both students and the instructor share ideas in back-and-forth exchanges. This type of discourse is well-suited to facilitate…

This study focuses on the integration of protocols into elementary school English teacher's professional dialogue and discusses the influence of protocols on teacher's teaching and learning. Based on the analysis of documents, observations, and interviews, this study concludes that the introduction of protocols to elementary school English…

In 1999, the western concept of 'Learner-Centred Education' (LCE) was nationally mandated for schools and universities across Thailand. Most early research into this mandate portrayed Thai teachers in deficit terms, suggesting they were unwilling or unable to implement government policy. Such studies often underappreciated the range of cultural,…

This research involves two case studies, one in Melbourne, Australia the other in Gothenburg, Sweden, that focus on how using observation tools to gather classroom evidence of teaching and learning promoted opportunities to discuss and develop professional practice. We found that dialogues between pre-service teachers and more experienced…

This book contributes to our understanding how teachers can improve classroom dialogue and thereby boost student learning. The book reports the results of intervention research based on professional development program for teachers. Participating teachers strived, with the help of the researchers, to instigate a rich and authentic dialogue in…

Research into classroom dialogue suggests that certain forms are especially productive for students' learning. Despite the large number of studies in this area, there is inadequate evidence about the prevalence of the identified forms, let alone their productivity. However, scarcity is widely presumed. The overall aim of the study reported in this…

This study endeavoured to awaken mainstream teachers' awareness of language, specifically related to teaching emergent bilingual children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) in the Republic of Ireland. Because EAL learners spend the majority of the day in the mainstream classroom, mainstream teachers' language awareness may…

In the wake of new educational initiatives for professional development, interest in how, when, and what teachers learn is growing. Traditionally, most research into teacher learning has been located in pre-service and in-service interventions and in studies of classroom practice. Few studies investigate how teachers learn in informal settings,…