This study drew upon the recently developed Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) to compare and contrast the teaching perspectives of cooperating teachers against a range of demographic data specific to cooperating teachers. The outcomes indicate, among other things, that a high percentage of cooperating teachers base their pedagogical…

A new school-university partnership in NSW has created exciting opportunities for preservice teacher preparation. The paper examines the results of a pilot study and outlines the main teacher preparation activities undertaken in the partnership. The paper focuses on how engaging preservice teachers in the community of practice of teachers assisted…

This paper explores the link between teacher research and whole school change. As the authors investigated three US schools described as having close ties between teacher research and school culture, they discovered that moving teacher research out of individual classrooms and into entire schools is astonishingly difficult work filled with paradox…

In this paper, the author investigates how the working assessment theories and practices of preservice teachers change in the enactment of those theories and practices in a mentored learning environment. Following 38 secondary English teacher candidates across time, the author tracks preservice teacher growth in knowledge about classroom-based…

The findings reported in this article form part of a wider comparative research project investigating the active learning of teachers and of pupils in the educational practices of eight countries. This article aims to describe what a small rural school in Finland understands by active learning. Data is presented from a qualitative research case…

Using a qualitative study, two teachers, Emily and Rebecca, who started their teaching careers in their forties were interviewed and followed for 3 years to document their experiences in the teaching profession. The tale of these two teachers includes their joys, frustrations, and problems that surround their lives as middle school math teachers.…

Gaining access to the inherent relational complexity of teaching/learning situations is essential to learning to teach. As teacher educators our work with prospective teachers indicates that opportunities to develop the capacity for relational knowing are increasingly being denied and dismissed. Specifically, we are concerned with what we perceive…

The introduction of a school management information system (SMIS) in an urban vocational high school, located in a middle-class socio-economic neighborhood, notably affected the learning, behavior and attendance (LBA) interrelations between homeroom teachers (HRTs) and parents. HRT-parents interrelations in general, but those involving parents…

Increasingly educators and policy makers recognize that new teachers need help making the transition to independent teaching. One particularly important role mentor teachers can play is to help beginning teachers to focus on students' ''mind activity'' in order to build on their prior knowledge, experience, and interests, and to promote…

This study reviews the criteria for assessing reflective thinking, and investigates how the process of reflective thinking develops in preservice teachers. Reflections of preservice teachers are assessed from two perspectives: content and depth. The findings include variations in the content, and that the pace at which reflective thinking deepens…

Based on research concerning the influence and persistence of beliefs about teaching that pre-service teachers (students who are not yet teaching professionally) bring with them to their courses. This study used a survey and semi-structured interview to ascertain what students in a beginning education course felt were the qualities and determining…

This paper reports students' perceptions of the classroom discipline strategies utilized in Australia, China and Israel. It examines data from 748 teachers and 5521 students to identify how teachers' use of various disciplinary strategies, and the extent to which these relate to student misbehavior, differ in three national settings. In general,…

Australia, like the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), continues to experience a mismatch between the cultural backgrounds and socio-economic class of teachers and those of the students they work with. This article reports on a study that explored how a group of Australian teacher-education students understand their own ethnic and…

The current research presents a qualitative view of a teacher-student association within the context of dynamic inquiry, as encouraged by a new biology curriculum, ''Biomind''. This curriculum enables open inquiry learning through teacher guidance. We characterized the various aspects of the student's functioning as a self-directed student during…

This paper explores possible uses of teacher efficacy research by democratic teacher educators. The many possible meanings of teacher efficacy levels make it problematic for teacher educators to interpret and use teacher efficacy. Beneficial teacher efficacy doubts and problematic types of teacher efficacy confidence are identified, including…