This article suggests some reasons why an urban education project in Australia might inform current debates surrounding teacher education. The first section provides a brief overview of the Australian education system from 1950--1980 as a way of introducing the larger historical context in which teacher education is situated. The second part…

Learning to teach is a complex and multidimensional process. Many teacher educators agree that learning to teach occurs when theory connects with practice, general propositions and abstract concepts are instantiated in clinical contexts, and field experiences are interpreted in light of a coherent knowledge base. The recently redesigned curriculum…

This article outlines the experiences of educators in three teacher education institutes in the USA, Australia and the UK as they experiment with carrying out programmes based on ideas of action research. The emphasis is on experiences with programmes of initial education for secondary school teachers. A descriptive case study aimed to find out…

The authors draw on data from weekly e-mail responses to a questionnaire completed by beginning teachers placed in one-year, paid, internships. Interns were assigned mentors who responded every several weeks, also via e-mail, to a questionnaire about the interns and their development. Data from 23 interns were analyzed. Seven themes were…

Is it possible for principals/heads to be effective educational leaders? In this study, we compared the work of principals/heads in two policy contexts. In Policy Context 1, standards for student performance were common and well-established, and authority was devolved to the school level for reshaping the school to meet those standards. In…

Our graduate degree program includes a component of six one-credit courses, in which teachers find ways to bring into their own classroom practices theory learned in related three-credit courses. Prior research indicates that taking course work alone may not bring about changes in teachers' decision-making. Prior research also encourages higher…

College counseling center administrators and staff counselors face the increasing challenge to provide best practice counseling in all domains of their work. The present chapter explores the evidence base for alcohol counseling, seeking to determine whether recent empirical evidence suggests the use of particular counseling strategies when working…

This study investigated how well chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for work in industry. To this end, sixteen interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of recent University of Cape Town chemical engineering graduates. Qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that graduates felt that overall, they were…

Preparing pre-service education candidates to be successful in today's classroom is a complex task. There must be a bridge between theory and practice that requires a collaborative effort between universities and public schools. This article presents: (1) teacher educators with a field-based clinical model for preparing pre-service teacher…

This narrative inquiry presents the experiences of a group of 10 new primary teachers grappling with relationships in the social context of their school environment during their first year of teaching. Their lived experiences are plotted together in the story of Gemma to provide one insight into the emotional dimension of attaining the identity of…

There is a rich history of researchers developing curricular materials aimed at enhancing student learning in American classrooms. Though many of these innovations have been successful on a small scale, institutionalizing them so they become part of a district's instructional culture has been a challenge. As large districts try to scale up and…

This article reports on the experiences of six participants in a Master's degree in Education (M.Ed.) programme based at the University of Exeter who had all contributed to a collection of academic papers on educational research in a distributed community. The programme was a distance learning one which had a special focus on application of ideas…

This collaborative self-study, told through email excerpts and reflections, explores a teacher educator's return to high school teaching. In this study, we juxtapose our voices and alternate between past and present to develop insights that reveal how going back can lead to moving forward with respect to educating prospective teachers. While the…

Educators are continuously challenged to increase their pedagogical effectiveness when teaching adult learners. Neo-Piagetian theory and research, based on Piaget's classic work, provides promising concepts and tools to help educators enhance their pedagogical knowledge and competence when teaching adults. Consequently, through research findings…

Teacher educators are increasingly experiencing conflicts between external demands and their ideas about preparing students to teach. This paper reports on ways in which such educators promote learning in their students, and how their practical teaching methods relate to their professional views on teaching. This paper argues that the teaching…