This paper presents findings about factors parents consider when choosing schools in the new educational market in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The economic and political chaos of the early independence period led to greater differentiation between public schools. Policies were enacted that encouraged the growth of private schools and fee-charging…

The work of teachers is subject to changing not only policies and reforms but also the complexities and contradictions of societal transformations. This paper examines teachers' perceptions of the impact of post-Soviet transformations on teacher collaboration amid the changing education policies and reforms in Ukraine. Drawing on qualitative…

Elevating the status of women was among the primary Soviet objectives in Central Asia. One way of achieving this was to create a new profession--school teaching--that would become an important career for them. Newly minted women professionals were scientifically trained in pedagogical institutes, then placed in the growing number of secondary…

This article discusses William W. Brickman's contributions to the field of comparative and international education. Through archival research of Brickman's collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, interviews with his former colleagues, students, and family members, and a content analysis of his publications and the two journals…

Although Azerbaijan's education sector has experienced intermittent democratization efforts since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, school leadership has remained untouched. This article argues that while Anglo-American models such as transformational and distributed leadership could benefit the schools, based on interview and…

This article considers the problematic nature of primary headship. It reviews evidence of some of the most significant problems encountered by new and experienced heads derived from two sources: the UK dimension of a European questionnaire survey undertaken in the mid 1990s and more recent reports gained from interviews with serving school…

"European Education" (originally known as "Western European Education") may no longer be directly associated with the field of comparative and international education, yet its establishment in 1969 was an attempt to make a direct contribution to the academic debates about the future of comparative education. The journal emerged at a time when…

It is not clear how best to support youth with type 1 diabetes to participate in physical education (PE) at school. The aim of this study was to explore perceptions of facilitators and barriers to PE in youth with type 1 diabetes and to determine how schools can help these individuals to be physically active. Interviews and focus groups were…

Investigating the reasons for pre-service teachers (PSTs) who choose to undertake a physical education teacher education (PETE) programme can inform teacher educators on how best to define teaching tasks, organize knowledge relevant to student learning and shape the perceptions of PSTs about teaching and learning (Calderhead, 1987). In this study,…

This article presents an interview with Beatrice Beach Szekely, a comparative education scholar that specialized in the Soviet Union. She was editor of the journal "Soviet Education" from 1970 to 1989. During the interview, Szekely talked about how she became personally involved in Russian/Soviet studies of education. She related that her interest…

This study examines the strategies that Russian private colleges and universities use to navigate the legal and normative pressures of the state in the free market of educational services. The tension between state control and free enterprise is analyzed through the prism of legitimacy as it is produced and maintained by the system of quality…

This article reports on a study of one recently qualified teacher's employment of the Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) model in a UK secondary school. The study sought to examine how the teacher, not formally educated in its use, delivered TGfU and to identify those factors that led to this interpretation of the model. Occupational…

Previous studies have found that student teachers value the practicum over other parts of physical education teacher education and that they experience a gap between theory and practice in their education. The purpose of this study was to provide more knowledge about the theory-practice relations in the context of the practicum of physical…

Research shows that teachers' grading is influenced by non-achievement factors in addition to official criteria, such as knowledge and skills. Some grading criteria are internalised by the teacher, who is sometimes unable to verbalise the criteria used and refers to what is called a "gut feeling". Therefore, transparency, validity…

This paper outlines a method for exploring learning in educational practice. The suggested method combines an explicit learning theory with robust methodological steps in order to explore aspects of learning in school physical education. The design of the study is based on sociocultural learning theory, and the approach adds to previous research…