Leadership development in higher education is of vital importance to South Africa's future. We present a case study that focuses on a leadership development programme (LDP) through action learning and action research (ALAR) for women academics in South Africa during 2000 and 2001. It identifies the effects of the LDP on participants five years…

In their longitudinal study, Kosnik, Beck, Cleovoulou and Fletcher accompanied a group of 22 beginning teachers along the critical period of their first three years in the profession. While the overall tone of this inside-the-classroom-door-study is positive and even optimistic, the findings point to seven key areas where the authors concluded…

In an exploratory study of 12 teacher education programs representing various geographic regions and institutional types according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, this author and a colleague (Goodwin & Oyler, 2008) learned from teacher educators across the country about the many constraints they work within, the lack…

Reflective practice is a major focus of teacher preparation programs (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Zeichner, 1986; Zeichner & Liston, 1987), yet Zeichner (1986) asserts that developing reflective practice in preservice teachers has focused primarily on short-term, less systematic interventions and that interventions must be…

In this paper, the authors present and evaluate a partially web-based Basic Optics course held each year from 2000 to 2003. The course has evolved over the last four years, and we analyse this process based on students' responses to a paper-based questionnaire. Their responses show the difficulty they had in adapting to this new environment, in…

This article considers the issues that are involved in effective choral conducting from an aesthetic dimension. Drawing upon research, theories and practice, it provides some insight into the nature of communication and the significance of gesture on vocal outcome as well as qualities of leadership concomitant with such musical activity. The…

The 2006 ISME Commission for the Education of the Professional Musician (CEPROM) provided a unique forum for a number of important debates surrounding the preparation of young musicians for a professional career in the performing arts. One such debate considered the imperative of ensuring young professional musicians graduated from tertiary music…

The past decade has witnessed the exponential rise of weblogs, or blogs, as popular and influential online publishing devices. Accompanying the advent of blogs is a growing interest in their pedagogical potential in diverse educational settings, and, while still at the initial stage, both theoretical discussions and empirical evidence of…

The focus of this article is on the analysis of reflection and peer learning in the pedagogical environment. The research draws on findings from a three-year Australian study, which aimed to develop and critically evaluate a model of vocal pedagogy influenced by sociocultural theories. The model sought to position Vygotsky's theories in the…

This article describes a journey of exploration in which I take a hitherto unexamined aspect of my teaching practice, the use of disruption, and subject it to interrogation. The journey is an exercise in auto-ethnographic research in that I am my own subject, located within the context of the classroom. My purpose is to surface the beliefs that…

In her book Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua writes of a "Borderlands," which she describes as "a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary....a constant state of transition" (1999, p. 25). In this paper, I explore my own borderlands, between the spaces of my classroom as a…

In this study, 38 preservice teachers enrolled in two sections of a language and literacy course at a small university in Montana were paired as pen pals with 14 fourth graders in Kansas. The purpose of the research project was to determine in what ways and contexts the literate identities of the children emerged through letter exchanges with the…

"Practitioner research" is an ongoing, reflective process in which inservice teachers (i.e., practitioners) ask questions about their day-to-day teaching practice, develop plans of action to investigate these questions, draw conclusions supported by evidence as they gather, and use what is learned to facilitate changes in their pedagogy.…

In this article, the author explores how a group of ten fourth-grade students who were avid readers became a community of inquiry. The primary goal of this study was to document the children's reading engagement: how they created, entered, and sustained the world of the story. This article also reflects the impact of three elements--data…

While Holocaust related activities and educational programs around the world are growing in number, published reports on their impact are scarce, especially on the university level. The free responses of 94 Jewish-Israeli university students who took the course "Psychology of the Holocaust" yielded eight themes. The results reflect a…