Aims: Over the last decade, there has been growing interest in the application of play as a pedagogical approach to support the learning of children within formal education settings. However, existing literature has shown there is significant variation in teachers' understanding of play-based pedagogy (PBP) and how it is applied in the classroom…

A named professional with responsibility for overseeing and coordinating the educational inclusion of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities has become an important school role in many countries. In England, the SENCO (special educational needs coordinator) became a mandatory role in 1994, and associated mandatory training was…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate instructional leadership practices and the degree to which these practices predict the leadership self-efficacy of school leaders while controlling for years of experience as a school leader. With educational reform focused on school accountability, principals must attend to tasks that lead…

Professional development activities offered principals are often a hodgepodge of different types of programs designed to foster the sustainability of leadership practices. While professional development is important for the continual improvement of principals, Guskey (2003) describes professional development activities as generally having a…

With support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Merced Anomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing (MACES) was launched in the summer of 2015 at the University of California Merced (UC Merced). MACES is a research and education center, focused on creating innovative materials-enabled solutions for energy and…

Background: In response to critics' charges that the liberal arts lack practical value, most colleges have incorporated service-learning in their curricula. Ideally, these service-learning activities not only benefit the community but also enhance the course's (a) pedagogical effectiveness as well as the students' (b) civic engagement and (c)…

The disparity in the socio-economic status of South Africa has forced the government to adopt a funding policy for public secondary schools. The policy is based on funding schools considered to be poor because they are in poverty-stricken communities. Most of these schools lack infrastructure, and physical and financial resources to be run…

According to the Teaching and Learning International Survey (2019), the average age for a teacher, across OECD countries, is 44 years old, and the teacher workforce has aged in a number of countries, over the past 5 to 10 years. Given the demands expected from the contemporary teaching profession, the study of possible implications of ageing on…

Teacher professional development (TPD) plays a vital role in enhancing student achievement and the education quality improvement at general education schools. Vietnam is carrying out the general education reforms including the curriculum, teaching methodology and textbook replacement. In order to make those reforms succeed, a lot of things have…

Mathematical knowledge for teaching is a complex web of knowledge domains. In this article, we share findings from an 18-month professional development project that aimed to improve middle school mathematics teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) of proportional reasoning by focusing on the critical analysis of mathematical tasks and…

The current study aimed to examine the perceptions of primary school teachers in different periods of their professional life regarding what constitutes professional development and their experiences with reformed professional development courses. Teachers (N = 45) were enrolled in the study from three professional life periods (entry-level,…

This study focused on the development of the Problem-Solving Team Effectiveness Scale, a measure used by practitioners to assess the professional learning of a problem-solving team (PST) engaging in the technical aspects of intervention selection, implementation, and evaluation. Several best practices by PSTs were initially identified through a…

This paper explores a teacher leadership development programme initiated by a university-based educational innovation centre that convened 40 teacher leaders from 22 different school districts across Florida for an 18-month voluntary professional learning experience. Underpinning this initiative was a theory of teacher leadership development aimed…

The primary purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a critical realist approach can add to our understanding of professional recognition of educators in a pre-school setting. Recognition is a function of personal achievement and social arrangement, and is understood through examining those subjective conditions and objective structures as…

The professional development of principals is a key element in improving the quality of educational systems. Although it is common for the training of educational leaders to be associated to formal pre- and in-service principal development programmes, informal learning opportunities are increasingly common. However, research analysing informal…