The role of teachers in education is widely acknowledged in educational studies that routinely find that quality of teaching is fundamental to student success. Accordingly, this study set out to examine and describe the professional development of teachers in countries where students perform better in the PISA assessment, namely, Finland, Estonia,…

This document, "Annex 1 to the Final Report to DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission" is intended as a companion piece to European Commission report "Preparing Teachers for Diversity: The Role of Initial Teacher Education. Final Report". It contains country fiches which are overviews of available…

This study gathers evidence on policies that aim to raise students' learning outcomes through incentives and support measures to enhance teacher quality. A central concern is to identify policies that are effective and efficient. These include incentives and support systems to ensure that high-quality candidates are recruited to initial teacher…

Concerns about inadequate development of subject expertise for American elementary school teachers have been well documented. There are many exceptions to this narrative, and there are many exemplary U.S. teacher preparation programs. However, it is clear that, overall, the preparation of elementary teachers in the United States in key subject…

The aim of this article was to shed light on problematic issues related to the practical element in early childhood teacher education. We approach these questions mainly through scrutinizing and interpreting this part of kindergarten teachers' university education in Finland. We then expand our analysis to include the broader issues of job…