This article examines, from a broad historical perspective, how Australia's negative "linguistic culture" has shaped languages education in our country. Language teachers' pre- and inservice training does not often address this topic. Yet to be able to anchor one's profession within a historical, sociocultural, and political perspective,…

Vocational choice appears to crystallize during adolescence and one's career aspirations begin to take shape later. Over 40 years ago Holland studied incoming freshman to match vocational aspirations to vocational preference profiles. Individuals seeking to become foreign language teachers were assigned a Social, Artistic, Enterprising vocational…

The Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society is now running in its thirteenth year. From its modest beginnings thirteen years ago, to its impressive size today, a tradition has been the production of a conference book, consistently launched on the first day of the conference each year. This year, Volume 13 of…

Twenty-nine Zulu-speaking primary school teachers were enrolled for a certificate in-service science education course. Initially, informal classroom discussions with these teachers pointed out poor conceptual knowledge in basic astronomy. This study investigated teachers' scientific and indigenous conceptions of the Earth-Moon-Sun (E-M-S) system,…

This book address a major gap in the current mentoring programs at the secondary level. Staff development resources are often concentrated on helping new teachers be successful in their early school experience. Yes, a good idea, but a limited vision. Meanwhile many veteran teachers go without the mentoring assistance they need to be effective…

If practicing teachers are expected to be reflective practitioners, as teacher standards require, they must understand what reflection means. The problem addressed in this research study concerns the confusion about the meaning of the term reflection in education. The purpose of the study was to develop substantive theory about the relationship…

The first day of a course has great potential to set the tone for the entire course, planting the seeds for habits of mind and questioning and setting in motion expectations for classroom discourse. Rather than let the first meeting contain little besides going over the syllabus, the instructor (Lesser) decided to use two sustained open-ended…

The school environment is a very dynamic sphere. Changes continually take place in educational policy, curriculum and in a school's physical and social environment. A teacher who wants to be effective in such an environment has to adapt to these changes. Continuous professional development of teachers is essential to addressing the gaps in…

The mandate of the new South African curriculum for educators to enact a science-indigenous knowledge curriculum in their classrooms is not only challenging to their cosmological beliefs, it is equally challenging to their instructional practices. This is because science educators (teachers) in South Africa have been schooled largely in western…

The intersection of the arts with technology can provide educators with a focus that is more in tune with students' lived experiences, providing a relevant context for the making of meaning. Yet the technological advances of the last few decades have done little to alter the pedagogical practice of most music teachers. Teaching with technology…

The Internet has changed many people's lives, in both positive and negative ways. The Taiwan Ministry of Education has recognized the Internet's possible risks and has initiated the island-wide "Teacher Awareness of Internet Safety" (TAIS) project for elementary and middle school teachers since 2000. TAIS project is the first…

This paper uses a mixed-method approach to examine the efficacy of a 5-week distance learning model that offered 2-credit courses for K-12 inservice teachers as a form of professional development. This study examined the experiences of the inservice teachers across online professional development courses and analyzed participant surveys from this…

Summer 2009 saw the introduction in England of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). Funded in full by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, the MTL aims to improve the quality of teaching and to raise standards in schools. In this paper we discuss what the MTL might mean both for in-service teacher education and initial teacher…

Despite the frequent criticisms directed toward them, in-service teacher training (INSET) programmes remain one of the most commonly used approaches for enhancing teachers' professional development. This article reports on a study that examined the effects of a part-time masters of education INSET programme based in Central China. The main source…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the efficacy of a new preschool oral language and early literacy curriculum package ("Teaching Early Literacy and Language" ["TELL"]) for children with developmental speech and/or language impairment (DSLI) either as a primary (e.g., specific to speech and/or language) or…