How do student teachers gain confidence in their teaching abilities as part of their school-based practicum experience while increasing their self-efficacy from the successes of their practicum? To understand this question better, we explored preservice teachers' post-practicum accounts of experiences of success in relation to efficacy (Bandura,…

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the findings from a study of the professional lives of four physical education specialist teachers considered exceptional and to explain why they engage in their practice as they do. The issues of how teachers develop as well as how they change during their careers is emphasized. The…

Successfully inducting new teachers creates professional alliances to sustain learning organizational cultures. This research involved 30 beginning teachers from a large school board in southern Ontario. The theoretical frame of the study consists of a mixed qualitative data analysis methodology of grounded theory and discourse analysis. The…

Over the past 20 years, the value placed on creativity has dramatically increased, and it has become centrally relevant to education on a global scale. This article explores the many elements involved in the creative process in the hope of providing educators with a working knowledge of how creativity might be enhanced. Recommendations are drawn…

This article examines four categories of teaching strategy used in business classes by a group of 26 secondary school business teachers in Hong Kong, using grounded theoretical coding techniques in the analysis. Each of the teaching categories is illustrated with typical extracts from interviews and is discussed in relation to its effectiveness…

This article provides an historical overview of significant trends in school architecture from 1798 to the present. I divide the history of school architecture into two major phases. The first period falls between 1798 and 1921: the modern graded classroom emerged as a standard architectural feature during this period. The second period, which…

In this paper, Norwegian research on the relationship between the school and the local community during the past 30 years is reviewed. The Norwegian context of schooling is briefly described, pointing out the rural-urban conflict. The review is organized into two phases: research in the expansive and contractive phases of the Norwegian welfare…

Education in rural Scottish schools has changed rapidly over the past 15 years. These changes include the implementation of national curriculum and assessment guidelines, increased parental influence and a shift from local authority based management to more locally based schemes. During the 1990s, research in the field focused largely on learning…

This paper reviews 25 years of research on small rural schools in England, in a period of unprecedented educational reform, and shift in government policy on small schools from persistent threat of closure through a period of a centrally funded "presumption against closure" in the early 2000s. It notes a dearth of funded or peer-reviewed research…

This chapter responds to the research questions posed in the introductory chapter on the status and nature of educational research on rural schools and their community relationships. Drawing on the national reviews, we discuss the quality of the research focusing on its themes and questions, theoretical perspectives, and research design and…

This introduction presents the case, and sets the scene, for five reviews of research on rural schools and their communities, arguing that educational research in this field is relatively rare, and decreasingly visible despite the significant population of the world's children who live in rural communities and attend rural schools. After…

This paper reviews research on small rural primary schools in Finland and analyses it under three thematic foci: the relationship between the local rural school and the surrounding community, the small rural primary school as a learning environment, and the teachers' profession in this context. Over 30% of Finnish primary schools are small rural…

This review of 30 years of research in small rural schools in Sweden includes projects focusing directly upon rural education and rural schools, reports from national agencies, and official statistics. Two main foci were found: (i) the quality of education and pupils' academic performance, and (ii) the economics of running schools in different…

This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study into the adjustment experience of a group of postgraduate international students at a university in the South of England. Friendship emerged as a major theme in this study; of particular importance to students was the desire and need to mix with conational friends. This desire was driven by…

This article is based on a qualitative study that explored educational challenges and coping mechanisms of internal migrant girls whose families moved from the rural areas in the east to the western parts of Turkey. The study revealed that internal migrant girls have encountered a number of challenges that influence their educational achievement…