Amongst the academic community there has been an increasing acceptance that knowledge and learning is no longer situated solely within academic settings and that workplace settings are also legitimate spaces for reflecting on practice in order to enhance professional capabilities. Learners are uniquely placed to draw on their workplace experiences…

Given the demands and constraints under which they work, it is critical for principals to determine their own readiness for change before undertaking the complex process of changing schools. Leaders can discover their change readiness by becoming reflective practitioners who know themselves and engage in professional learning. This informed…

This article focuses on teachers' learning in a research and development (R&D) work project. The teachers are working in a lower secondary school, and the cooperation between them and the researcher lasted for two years. The aim of this article is to show what teachers can learn and how they can learn during such a project. In the qualitative…

How has philosophical reflection contributed to the ways that we think about teaching? In this paper I explore two forms of narrative reflection on teaching--genealogies and portraits. Genealogies tell a story about the origins of teaching; portraits find expression in myths and other narrative forms. I explore two genealogies of teaching--one…

The first thing that comes to mind for many teachers when they think of assessment is testing, quizzes, performance tasks, and other summative forms used for grading purposes. Such assessment practices represent only a fraction of the kinds of assessment that occur on an ongoing basis in an effective science classroom. Formative assessment is a…

The POWERTECH contest in Taiwan was established in an attempt to promote inventiveness and technology to elementary school pupils. The POWERTECH contest is designed as a collaborative learning system for project design. Project design is comprised of technical processes, which include the construction of an artifact and improvement of its…

The trustworthiness of a qualitative study can be increased by maintaining high credibility and objectivity. Of utmost importance to these factors is the reflexivity of the researcher. Standard journaling techniques are frequently used to maintain an audit trail and document tentative interpretations of a study. One of the major limitations to…

This study explored the relationships of self-reflection and insight with individuals' performances on various language tasks. The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS; Grant, Franklin, & Langford, 2002) assessed individual differences in three factors: engagement in reflection, need for reflection, and insight. A high need for reflection was…

This study examined the phenomenon of second-career teachers. The participants in this study shared their reflections concerning the motivating factors and common experiences associated with leaving established professions in order to pursue careers in teaching. The study also inquired into the process involved in professional preparation as well…

This paper takes the form of a discussion document. A number of ideas surrounding the topics of continuing professional development (CPD), performance management (PM) and effective classrooms in secondary schools are outlined. The paper draws on some of the recent literature in these areas and refers to some current trials within a UK-based…

In this study, we argue that a teacher has a crucial role in leading students into collaborative inquiry-learning practices. While many studies have given the impression that students are able to engage in inquiry processes on their own, the role of social practices and teacher guidance often remains unexplained. However, even when the pedagogical…

This paper outlines research undertaken during a study visit to The Gambia (2008) and our thinking about the value of this, and other such visits for education students. The qualitative methodology made use of interviews and reflective journals. We argue that such visits may have the power to transform peoples' values and, drawing on literature on…

After completing a qualitative methods course in geography, we moved classroom discussions into practice. While undertaking graduate fieldwork in sites across the globe, we participated in critical, reflexive journaling. Whereas journal writing is often private, we shared our entries, aiming to facilitate rigour while concurrently exploring…

This article reports on a study that was conducted with 41 rural teachers drawn from a larger sample of 691 teachers who were enrolled for an in-service programme at a South African university. As part of the assessment of a research component of the programme, teachers were asked to report on how they designed and carried out an intervention to…

A two-year research project with teachers in nine different early childhood centres was designed to explore and extend opportunities for young children to reflect on their learning. This was described as children becoming "wise" about their learning journeys; the aim was to find ways to assist them to articulate their understanding of…