Despite the widespread recognition of the significance of outdoor play in early childhood development, centers for early childhood education (ECE) face the challenge of striking a balance between active play activities and safety concerns. Thus, the visual attention of teachers is critical. Studies that compare the visual attention of novice and…

The well-being of foreign early career academics (FECAs) has been the subject of research attention in relation to present demanding academic milieux in general and to those unfamiliar workplace settings in particular. A traditional variable-oriented approach that focuses on mean scores can easily gloss over the diverse nature of the group under…

This book is the first volume devoted to mindset theory and practice in language education, offering interdisciplinary investigations into the motivation, competencies, emotions and wellbeing of language learners and teachers. Presenting studies from a vast array of language learning environments, the chapters explore topics such as students'…

The high performance of Japanese students, as demonstrated on international tests, is well-known, but the professional learning of Japanese teachers has received less attention. Ruth Ahn, Yasuko Shimojima, Hisayoshi Mori, and Shigeru Asanuma describe the professional development requirements for teachers across their careers. Novice teachers are…

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 article examines emotionally challenging expectations in the relationships beginning teachers have with students' parents. The data consist of narrative interviews with 17 Japanese beginning teachers. Due to strong cultural and social norms prescribing appropriate social interactions, Japanese teachers have little leeway in negotiating…

Bandura (in: Pajares and Urdan, Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents, Information Age, Greenwich, 2006) suggested that efficacy beliefs should be considered in relation to key challenges within a (teaching) context. As part of a larger project on the teacher efficacy beliefs of Japanese high-school teachers of English (JTEs), this paper reports…

Recent research has acknowledged the importance of the relationships of school principals with beginning teachers. However, little is known about how emotions inform these relationships from the beginning teacher's side. Applying the concept of emotional geographies, this paper explores the kinds of storied emotional distances that appear in the…

This study aims to reveal the teaching script and structure of lesson practice of two seventh-grade Japanese mathematics teachers--a "novice" and "expert"--through comparative analysis of mathematics lessons. Specifically, it aims to clarify how the teachers' views of teaching as tacit knowledge determine lesson structure and…

This narrative research explores the tensions that beginning teachers tell about their relationships with students between the ideals they have, and how the teachers experience those relationships in the micropolitical and relational environment of their everyday work. The phenomenon is approached through stories told by three Japanese beginning…

Teachers in Japan earn tenure on their first day of employment--not after two years of experience based on evaluations of teaching performance or student test scores. This is almost too good to be true. If tenure is so easy to attain, how do the Japanese make sure their teachers, especially novice teachers hired with little teaching experience,…

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…

This volume contains selected papers submitted to the 20th Jubilee Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES), conducted virtually in June 2022. The 20th BCES Conference theme is "Towards the Next Epoch of Education." The theme is focused on problems, discussions, changes, solutions, and…

The 23rd EUROCALL conference was held in Cyprus from the 24th to the 27th of August 2016. The theme of the conference this year was "CALL Communities and Culture." It offered a unique opportunity to hear from real-world CALL practitioners on how they practice CALL in their communities, and how the CALL culture has developed in local and…