This study examines Finnish apprenticeship training stakeholders' perceptions of vocational expertise and experiences of workplace learning and guidance. The semi-structured interview data was collected in 2015 in two vocational fields: the social and health care services sector (five workplaces) and the technology sector (five workplaces). The…

The aim of this study was to explore lower secondary school students' experiences of using the school grounds as a learning environment. School grounds were used on a regular basis during two to three years, mainly in mathematics and German as a third language. Fourteen students were interviewed about their experiences. The way outdoor learning…

This article shows how a group of language teachers use Twitter as a tool for continuous professional development through the #MFLtwitterati hashtag. Based on data collected through a survey (n = 116) and interviews (n = 11), it describes how this collective of teachers use the hashtag and evaluates the impact of their Twitter network on their…

This paper is based on some key findings of an original research carried out to explore the issue of inequitable access to education within caste-based social structures in rural Punjab, Pakistan. Data from 36 interviews with low and high caste parents, school heads and four key informant focus groups in two villages in southern and central Punjab…

This study focuses on the everyday operation of primary schools in Czechoslovakia during the so-called Prague Spring and the subsequent communist political clampdown after the invasion by the Warsaw Pact forces. The authors focus primarily on the experiences of teachers, how events in this complex period affected their professional lives, and how…

Background: This work is based on the idea that young children benefit from early introduction of scientific concepts. Few researches describe didactical strategies focusing on physics understanding for young children and analyse their effectiveness in standard classroom environments. Purpose: The aim is to identify whether didactical strategies…

This qualitative study investigated Chinese and German teachers' and parents' conceptions and understanding of learning at play. A total of 28 teachers and 12 parents took part in this study. Among the participants, 12 kindergarten teachers (6 German and 6 Chinese) were interviewed to obtain their perspectives on learning at play. These…

Over the past 2 decades, as part of reforms to the National Health Service and with it organizational changes to ambulance work in the UK, paramedic education has undergone a process of academisation and a shift from in-house, apprenticeship weeks-long occupational training, to university-based undergraduate programs. While the professional…

In this paper, I share the results of a study of teachers' ideas about student decision-making at entry into a professional development program to integrate engineering into their instruction. The framework for the Engineering Design Process (EDP) was based on a Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) model. The EDP embedded within the CBL model suggests…

This study presents an 'education for sustainability' curricular model which promotes science learning in an elementary classroom through equity pedagogy. A total of 25 fourth-grade students from an urban, public school in Denver, Colorado participated in this mixed-methods study where concept maps were used as a tool for describing and assessing…

The diversity of the student population in the United Kingdom's higher education sector evokes a vision of the world as a global village. The effect of this diversity on the UK economy has been considerable. Nevertheless, the research attention given to how overseas students can become integrated into UK culture remains inadequate. This…

In this article, we examine the characteristics of a progressive school-change project in South Korea called the "Hyukshin" School (HS) movement. HSs are public schools that are intended to disseminate progressive and democratic practices. We obtained data from interviews with participating teachers, official documents, reports, and…

The widespread availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has generated new activity contexts that provide opportunities and resources for learning, at the same time as expanding the learning potential of traditional contexts such as the family and schools. Within this framework the present study analyses the frequency with…

This article examines, how agency is constructed by members of two transnational families living in Norway in biographically oriented interviews. We understand agency as realised on the intertwined levels of grammar and meta-agentive discourse. Reports of speakers' lived language experience and their experiences with family language policies are…

This article focuses on the processes that come into play as part of a school development project and how these processes contribute to strengthening teacher professionalism. Through processes of consciousness raising and the development of learning cultures where tacit knowledge becomes explicit and shared, and new practices are tested out and…