Awareness of how perceived roles shape how people see themselves and how others see them prompted Cheryl McLean to question how her new label of "teaching assistant" helped or hurt the teaching and learning process. As a teaching assistant, she moved into the dual role of teacher and student. She believes that the labels she adopts…

In this article the status of teaching as a profession and the morale of teachers in Australian schools in the current era provide a framework for the examination of the intent and outcomes of teaching excellence awards. The research study applied an interpretive research paradigm and used both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods.…

What kinds of interaction take place in a history department? What might be their value? Between 1999 and 2003, Simon Letman, then history teacher and Director of Studies at The Royal Hospital School in Ipswich, set out to discover how the rich variety of between-teacher- interactions, so much a feature of the department he had worked in for…

This paper describes an investigation of Australian early childhood teachers' sustainment in their profession, focussing on those factors which enhance professional commitment, job satisfaction and occupational motivation. Utilizing qualitative methodology this study also identified key factors early childhood teachers consider crucial to…

This article discusses inductee music service teachers (to 25 years of age). It explores how their lives, as perceived, shape current identities in teaching and result in several career problems. Respondents were drawn from a comprehensive life history study of 28 Local Education Authority employees. Of this larger cohort, four were age 25 years…

This article explores the challenges of espousing a critical pedagogy within the managerial climate that presently shapes teacher education. Current discourses of professionalism are incommensurate with an understanding of the way that literacy practices are grounded in the social worlds in which both school and university students operate. Such…

This article assesses religion teaching as a profession in terms of selected characteristics that scholars agree are common to all professions. The characteristics that are addressed include essential service, call to serve, special knowledge and skills, specialized and advanced university training, public trust and status, code of ethics and…

The Commission on International Adult Education (CIAE) of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) provides a forum for the discussion of international issues related to adult education in general, as well as adult education in various countries around the globe. The following purposes summarize the work of the…

Instructional designers regularly engage in a process of professional and personal transformation that has the potential to transform the culture of institutions through faculty-client relationships. Instructional designers promote new ideas and understandings in social contexts that include other designers and clients, among others. This research…

In this article some preliminary data from an ongoing exploration of student teachers' development of professional identities are explored. This project uses hermeneutic techniques to develop a set of categories which characterise students' articulation of their understanding. This is related to the Aristotelian categories of "praxis",…

When I had to reapply for my own position as principal I felt as if I was facing the prospect of losing a part of myself. Conversations with other women colleagues confirmed that I was not alone in this response. Taking this as my cue, I explore the notion of principal "identification" practices--that is the continuing process of forming…

This article constitutes an attempt to investigate how student teachers and teacher educators in the context of Swedish early childhood teacher education are invented and reinvented by practices that are inspired by feminist and post-structural thinking. I give examples of practice that explicitly make use of different aspects of the personal,…

Australian librarians have participated in and contributed to international librarianship for over 125 years. Individual and collective practice is well regarded internationally since it is in dialogue with international concerns, is based on shared values and reaches high standards. Many are willing contributors to international initiatives,…

Leadership, like diversity, is often used in education as an all-encompassing notion, applied to a wide variety of situations, or at times, used rather loosely. The danger with such an approach is the lack of specificity. Yet, specificity can set the boundaries so narrow that one is led to believe one approach is better than another or that "one…

The focus of this paper is on the education and training of staff who work in the early education and childcare sector but who are not members of established professions like teaching, social work and health. The paper provides an analysis of the extent to which this group of early education and childcare staff can be considered as a developing…