This article investigates the activities of teacher unions in some Gauteng secondary schools in South Africa. The methods used in collecting data were questionnaires, interviews and a literature study of appropriate educational and labour law journals, books and newspapers. An interpretive paradigm was used in analysing the data. In this article,…

Discrimination against lesbians and gay men has been endemic throughout Australia's history. However, in twenty-first century Australian society there are signs of growing sophistication and acceptance of sexual diversities. Despite this, schools continue to be organisations where sexual "difference" is marginalised and silenced, having…

As multimedia and technological savvy continue to expand existing notions of contemporary literacy, the need to prepare teachers to use a variety of classroom technologies has never been greater (Author1 & Author2, 2008a; Author1 & Author2, 2009). In order for teachers to be prepared to use such technologies, the structure of teacher…

This paper reports the results of an experimental study investigating the impact and the one-year sustainability of the effects of the Dynamic Integrated Approach (DIA) to teacher professional development. Teaching skills of the participating teachers and their student achievement in mathematics were measured at the beginning and at the end of the…

Drawing on research investigating the impact of health imperatives around obesity, diet and exercise on the actions of teachers and pupils in schools, this paper offers a reflexive account of the relationships between the "noise" of obesity discourse in the public domain, policies forged to tackle health issues and the realities of…

In educational settings, substantial scholarly interest has focused on student engagement as an antecedent for educational development and positive school outcomes. Very limited research, however, has focused on the engagement of academic staff members. This may be a crucial oversight because engagement has been argued to lead to more satisfied,…

The study was designed to develop and factorially validate an instrument for measuring teaching practice skills of chemistry student-teachers in University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Two research questions guided the study. The design of the study was instrumentation. All the chemistry student-teachers in the Department of Science Education, University…

The role of autonomy in the student experience in a large-enrollment undergraduate introductory physics course was studied from a Self-Determination Theory perspective with two studies. Study I, a correlational study, investigated whether certain aspects of the student experience correlated with how autonomy supportive (vs. controlling) students…

Feedback orientations refer to students' perceptions of instructional feedback utility, retention, sensitivity, and confidentiality. In this paper, we report three studies that investigated the relationships among feedback orientations and communication traits. Specifically, we examined the associations among communication adaptation traits (Study…

Pay-for-performance is a popular public education reform, but there is little evidence about the characteristics of a well-designed incentive pay plan for teachers. Some of the literature suggests that effective incentive plans must offer relatively large awards to induce behavioral changes. On the other hand, the experimental economics literature…

The purpose of the current study is to explore the effects of learning strategies on Mathematical Literacy (ML) of students in higher and lower achieving countries. To address this issue, the study utilizes PISA2002 data to conduct a multi-level analysis (HLM) of Hong Kong and Israel students. In PISA2002, Israel was rated 31st in Mathematics,…

This multiple case study investigated how teachers implemented motivational teaching strategies and the impact of these strategies on students' motivation in an Indonesian high school context. The participants were four teachers and four groups of their students. The data were collected from teachers by conducting semi-structured interviews,…

The purpose of this study is to determine frequency of approval and disapproval behaviors of teachers working in inclusive classrooms during lessons and to investigate whether teachers' approval and disapproval behaviors differ in terms of their demographical characteristics. The study group consisted of 45 teachers who worked in three public…

Reform efforts that are designed to increase student achievement often include in-service teacher professional development (PD) as a foundational component. However, the content and activities included in PD sessions varies greatly. Guided by Desimone's (2009) Core Features of Professional Development, this study sought to describe agriscience…

A broad communicative repertoire can help university lecturers to motivate and engage diverse student populations. The aim of this study is to develop and explore the usefulness and validity of a tool to identify patterns in lecturers' verbal repertoire. Speech act theory is presented as a framework to study lecturers' verbal…