With a continuing disconnect between structural changes to the work of teaching and the work of teachers engaged with students in classrooms, this paper addresses a growing need to attend to the way teacher professional development (TPD) is enacted in today's schools. Specifically, drawing from theories of teacher learning and numerous models of…

This article examines the potential benefits of possessing the personality traits of determination and perseverance (often referred to as "grit") in an academic setting. Previous studies in Western individualistic societies have emphasised the advantages of possessing this attribute of grit; but, to date, very few investigations have…

Place-based education (PBE) is a situated, context-rich, transdisciplinary teaching and learning modality distinguished by its unequivocal relationship to place, which is any locality that people have imbued with meanings and personal attachments through actual or vicarious experiences. As an observational and historical science, geoscience is…

Distributed leadership, while an established concept in the international literature on education leadership, is slowly gaining prominence in post-apartheid South Africa. This is primarily due to its normative and representational appeal. However, of concern is that the concept has become a catch-all phrase to describe any form of devolved or…

Intractable conflicts are usually defined as long-lasting, violent, intergroup ones perceived as having no foreseen solutions. Such conflicts heavily affect the societies involved, which invest massive resources in all issues related to the conflict, including various educational elements. Regardless of the context of national conflict,…

In this article, I will discuss the idea of teachers as knowledge translators, not in a pedagogical or didactical sense, but in a "professional" one. A professional practice is supposed to be theoretically informed by academic research. In the name of effectiveness and efficiency, current policies in teaching and higher education…

How the child develops and learns should be an integral part of pre-service teacher education programmes. This article argues that for foundation phase teachers to teach young children effectively, course content in initial teacher education (TE) should cultivate a thorough understanding of the developing child by infusing theories of childhood…

Traditional art foundations models focus on teaching freshman level art students strategies of visual composition through the use of the elements and principles of design. These visual qualities are presented as the fundamental basis for all art compositions. Rooted in the early 20th century modernist concept of formalism, the elements and…

This chapter presents the theoretical and practical implications of research conducted on online learning communities at Purdue University using the Community of Inquiry lens. Specifically, highlights of eight studies conducted from 2013 to 2015 are presented. The context of the majority of the studies is the online Learning, Design and Technology…

Teacher preparation has been widely criticized for over 50 years. Scholars in the 1950s attacked programs for being too practical and non-intellectual (Popham & Greenberg, 1958), yet recent critiques claim that teacher preparation is overly academic, with insufficient attention to teaching practice (Carnegie Corp. of New York, N., 1986;…

This case study considers how educational researchers and practitioners can work together to engage in "participatory knowledge building," a process rooted in both empirical research and the lived practices and expertise of on-the-ground educators that produces knowledge relevant to both educational theory and practice. The method shared…

Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes have been critiqued widely for failing to connect educational theory with everyday practices in schools. More meaningful collaborations between schools and teacher education providers have featured prominently among key recommendations addressing the traditional theory-practice divide. This paper traces…

We discuss findings from a survey of sociology students in Germany and consequences for teaching. We focus on the de facto formation of a sociological canon, the relation between theories and methods, and effects of social and political characteristics on student's scientific preferences. Our findings suggest that irrespective of an agreement of…

Reconceiving relationships between universities, schools, and community organizations through research-practice partnerships, and building capacity for partnership work, necessarily entails rethinking the mentorship of graduate students. In this article, we describe our findings on what mentorship looks like in a now 9-year RPP focusing on…

A body of literature on students as partners (SaP) in higher education has emerged over the last decade that documents, shares, and evaluates SaP approaches. As is typical in emerging fields of inquiry, scholars differ regarding how they see the relationship between the developments in SaP practices and the theoretical explanations that guide,…