Evolution was introduced into the senior secondary school Life Sciences curriculum in South Africa for the first time in 2008. Research in other countries shows that evolution is an extremely controversial topic to teach, raising serious concerns for teachers. Curriculum change theory dealing with "stages of concern" suggests that…

Testing students on higher order thinking skills may reinforce these skills among them. To research this assertion, we developed a graduate course for inservice science teachers in a framework of a "Journal Club"--a hybrid course which combines face-to-face classroom discussions with online activities, interrelating teaching, learning, and…

Fiste is a three year Comenius project based on a need for innovative and effective ideas for in-service teacher education. The Fiste project is funded by the European Comenius and deals with the use of new web based educational technologies for teaching in-service teachers in Europe. The Fiste's main task is to create a common in-service…

Since its inception in 1990, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Teacher at Sea program has enabled more than 460 teachers to gain first-hand experience of science and life at sea. By participating in this program, it becomes possible for teachers to enrich their classroom curricula with a depth of understanding made possible…

This paper examined the contemporary teacher training and professional development in Nigeria as an example of the experiences in developing countries of the world. Against the background of the ascendancy of information and communications technologies in all aspects of human life this study attempted to situate the concept of Information and…

Needs-identification studies should be systematically conducted to bring clarity to the decisions about the expectations from particular in-service training schemes. This article aims to present the results of a research study diagnosing teachers' in-service training needs in Cyprus. For the purposes of the study, questionnaires were distributed…

The Schools IT2000 initiative, launched in 1997, was the first large-scale attempt to integrate information and communications technology (ICT) into teaching and learning in the Irish education system. As part of this initiative a training continuum was developed with the objective of enabling teachers to progress from novice to expert users of…

The purpose of this paper is to offer some theoretical as well as empirical examples that describe the interrelations between pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and emotional knowledge in teaching and learning. The argument put forward is that there is a need to expand current conceptions of PCK and acknowledge the role of emotional knowledge. It…

No Child Left Behind mandates have given teachers new responsibilities in data analysis and the implementation of strategies that meet individual student needs. Providing tools and methods for data collection, managing it, and then analyzing it is now a basic need for teachers. By aligning assessments for the specific purpose of addressing…

The Indiana State University Professional Development Schools (ISU PDS) Partnership sprang from the convergence of two strong needs: (1) the need for real life practice in the way of extended clinical experiences for teacher education students in schools of practice; and (2) the need on the part of the schools in the community to have access to…

The Hong Kong government has sought to encourage environmental education (EE) in schools. However, little is known about how government and private initiatives impact at the level of the kindergarten. This article, based on a small-scale study, investigates what is happening in Hong Kong kindergartens in EE. The findings show that there have been…

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have been widely introduced to English primary schools (5-11 years) in the last decade and this has generated much research interest. In the past, research has focused on IWB-use in teacher-led sessions, attending particularly to the nature of teacher-pupil interaction at the IWB and the apparent motivational…

The purpose of this study was to explore secondary school teachers' perceptions of interactive whiteboard (IWB) training workshops in Taiwan. This study also sought to identify potential problems associated with the design of IWB training workshops in order to improve their effectiveness. This research employed observations and interviews to…

Contemporary changes in pedagogy point to the need for a higher level of video production value in most classroom video, replacing the default video protocol of an unattended camera in the back of the classroom. The rich and complex environment of today's classroom can be captured more fully using the higher level, but still easily manageable,…

In this discussion piece the authors reflect on work over the past decade, arguing that mathematics teachers have developed technical proficiency in the use of interactive whiteboard hardware and associated software before using this to develop confidence in creating and modifying materials to be used with commercially produced programs in…