This study compared perceptions of teacher efficacy beliefs and concerns about teaching in pre-service teacher cohorts from New Zealand, Malaysia, and England. Participants were primary pre-service teachers from Malaysia (n = 53), New Zealand (n = 100), and England (n = 119), who completed the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy (long form)…

The consequences of organisational commitment (OC) are of great importance to organisations. Considering the effect of teacher commitment on student success and the increasing teacher turnover rates in the world, studies focusing on the organisational commitment of teachers gained more importance. However there is still a significant gap about the…

This paper describes lessons learnt whilst using an online peer review system in an undergraduate unit for pre-service teachers. In this unit, students learn to use information technologies as part of their future teaching practice. The unit aims to foster graduates who become lifelong reflective educators by providing opportunities to explore and…

In response to rapidly changing communication practices in an increasingly technological world, evolving literacy concepts such as multimodality, are now acknowledged in the new Australian Curriculum. Ironically, primary school teacher professional development in Western Australia remains closely tied to a mono-modal, print focussed paradigm. This…

This study investigates who chooses primary teaching and how prospective primary school teachers differ from future teachers in other types of schools. Using variance analysis, future student-teachers of different types of schools are compared with regard to their motives for the choice of studies and profession. As a main result, prospective…

To implement cooperative learning successfully in practice, teachers require knowledge of cooperative learning, its features and terms, and how it functions in classrooms. This qualitative study examined 12 Australian generalist primary teachers', understandings of cooperative learning and perceived factors affecting its implementation. Using…

The purpose of this study is a qualitative comparison of Israeli and U.S. teachers' views and attitudes toward parents' involvement in school. Fifty-six elementary school and secondary school teachers in Israel and in the state of Maryland, USA were asked to define parents' involvement, their feelings towards it, and its challenges and strengths.…

An emerging national agenda for the mental health and wellbeing of young Australians has fostered an expectation that primary teachers can recognise and respond to students with internalising problems. A mixed method survey of fourth-year preservice teachers revealed patchy personal and practicum exposure to internalising problems and scant…

This paper describes a school's participation in a project designed to support critical reflection of teachers' beliefs about best practice in early childhood education, and how these beliefs and practices intersected with shifting policies and trends in the broader early childhood field. The "Professional Learning" Project (PL project), was…

A considerable number of primary schools in Australia and overseas organise their students into achievement-based classes for literacy (and/or numeracy): a practice often seen in high school settings. Why school systems do this will be examined elsewhere, though it is safe to say that concern for ongoing student achievement is a consideration.…

The delivery of the primary curriculum has been subject to recent debate in Western countries. In Australia, the primary teacher is by and large considered a generalist; however a current paradox exists whereby there are claims that specialists are needed to deliver the curriculum. This study explores this claim by first addressing the prevalence…

Many universities around the world are using service learning in courses to enhance their students' mastery of course content and commitment to social justice. Teacher education faculties have additionally experimented with service learning as a way of providing authentic field experiences at inner city schools for their teacher candidates. This…

This paper is about examining life in classrooms. Authentic recording and interpretation of the complexities of classroom life have long been both fascinating and challenging for researchers. Typically, such research has been expensive, time-consuming and susceptible to claims that its intrusiveness pollutes the authenticity of the very context…

Studies of the use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approaches in foreign language classrooms have frequently raised doubts about the adequacy of elementary and secondary teachers' understanding of CLT and their use of this approach in classrooms at those levels. Reasons for this alleged state of affairs are reviewed, with one potential…

A multi-stage mixed analysis was used to examine stories from 423, primarily Hispanic, undergraduate students in the United States regarding their best and poorest K-12 teachers, along with responses to 10 Likert format survey items. In the quantitative analysis phase, participants expressed strong agreement with items derived from the literature…