South Africa lags significantly in mathematics achievement on international benchmarking tests, which has led to several interventions aimed at improving mathematics attainment in the country. Drawing on the theoretical work of Vygotsky, Leontiev and Engeström, this chapter reports on one such initiative that implemented computer technology into…

The purpose of this study was to understand faculty perspectives of institutional change. The context for the institutional change was a shift from a largely traditional student population with a focus on the liberal arts to a range of adult and non-traditional students seeking professional degrees. The three research questions which guided the…

Background: The landscape of higher education continues to evolve in ways that have significant implications for the academic profession, including the shaping of academic identities. In a context of increasing marketisation, it is essential to understand more about the complex relationship between academic identities and structural change within…

In 2008, Iceland launched policy reform in upper secondary education. This paper elucidates how upper secondary school leaders acted when leading reform and confronting teacher responses. The study is based on interviews with 21 leaders from nine upper secondary schools. The data were analysed usingfive response categories to macro-level demands…

Background: As a consequence of government-led assessment reforms, teachers are often tasked with implementing changes in assessment practice. What influences teachers' responses to such reform? Our study considers this question in the context of the recent post-16 educational reform to the national qualifications system in England, which resulted…

The Welsh education system is engaging in a wide-ranging series of reforms and, as part of these reforms, is moving towards an accountability system that aims to work collaboratively with teachers and school leaders in a self-improving system. The aspiration is to move away from accountability structures that are built around high-stakes…

This paper explores tensions and ambiguities for UK HE teachers during COVID-19. It analyses changed behaviours and routines for existing hybrid workers experienced in online pedagogy through three core axes of "precarity and security;" "time and perceptions of time;" and "communication." Twelve participants supplied…

This study explores how six teachers worked up "becoming and being activists" in response to education reforms in the southeastern US. The reforms, which involved increasing student testing and implementing high-stakes teacher evaluations, were enacted following the authorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act, federal legislation…

Second/foreign language (L2) education reforms have triggered increasing research investigating the effectiveness of and teachers' cognitions and practices concerning the reformed curricula. This study extends this line of enquiry by employing a sociological perspective, an undertaking that little prior research has demonstrated in L2 teacher…

School systems have taken on greater roles in guiding and supporting classroom instruction by redesigning their "educational infrastructure" -- the coordinated resources, structures, and norms that support teachers' work and drive instructional improvement. However, teachers often adapt or resist common instructional approaches citing…

School systems have taken on greater roles in guiding and supporting classroom instruction by redesigning their "educational infrastructure"--the coordinated resources, structures, and norms that support teachers' work and drive instructional improvement. However, teachers often adapt or resist common instructional approaches, citing…

Amongst the rapid and continual changes occurring in higher education is a heightened emphasis on teaching and the emergence of a quality teaching discourse. In tandem, we are living through a time where not only circumstances, but also new, more complex technologies continue to disrupt and challenge the ways teaching occurs. Despite various…

This is a critical autoethnography which seeks to weave through the identities of teacher and mother during COVID-19. Using Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Systems Theory to place the experiences of the authors within the concepts of resilience and thriving, coding results suggested that both authors experienced similar emotions and disruptions to…

Historically, Northern Ireland pupils have attended religiously separate schools, however, a movement by parents in the early 1980s to educate them together resulted in integrated schools becoming part of the educational landscape. Some were new and planned (Grant Maintained Integrated (GMI)) and a second group on which this article focuses sought…

The present article discusses the dynamics of system resilience, focusing on the case of a university college in Brazil. It investigates the experience of lecturers of this educational institution in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is exploratory basic qualitative research, aiming at understanding how the university college…