One of the major priorities that should guide teacher education programs in preparing teachers for their work in a democratic society is to develop a commitment to knowledge that embraces complexity and to place this knowledge into competition with the mainstream vision, which results from a deep reliance on standardized testing and controls much…

Engaging in sustained and collaborative action research is one way science teachers can build the bridge between improving student learning and their own professional learning as teachers and teacher-researchers. This article presents a series of practical strategies for science teachers who want to gain a new sense of confidence from conducting…

Supervision of students engaged in research projects and theses is an important site of teaching. Schon's (1987) well-known framework-educating for reflective practice-proves aptly suited for this teaching forum, offering insights for research supervision at multiple university levels. Conceptually, a research and writing studio where a practicum…

Video has assumed an increasingly prominent role in teacher education, particularly in the form of the viewing of videotaped class lessons by preservice teachers. Yet there is little research that confirms whether preservice teachers attend to the aspects of the video(s) that teacher educators anticipate or desire. This article explores this issue…

Purpose: The paper seeks to identify the quality characteristics of critical action research and action research theses compared to traditional research thesis writing. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on the literature and the authors' experience with supervising and examining action research theses, the paper identifies key problem areas in…

Reflective models of supervision have shifted the emphasis from teaching observations as primarily evaluative events to events intended to promote teachers' reflective practice. This paper presents a longitudinal action research study investigating post-observation interactions between language teachers and their supervisors in an American…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a university's freshman year community-based service-learning experience on the achievement of standards articulated for teacher candidates. Standards assessed included knowledge of community-based resources, demonstration of reflective processes, and recognition of the importance of…

The necessities and benefits of reflexivity are now well laid out in the broader social science literature, and the American Evaluation Association's (2004) "Guiding Principles for Evaluators" identify reflective practices that evaluators are expected to carry out. This article uses the context of the university classroom and a writing sample to…

This paper discusses quality evaluation of health sciences mentoring programmes. The discussion highlights the way in which perceptions of what constitutes quality shape evaluative purposes. Potential tensions between the evaluative purposes of various stakeholders are brought to the fore. To this end, the discussion explores the ways in which…

This study investigates how preservice teachers make sense of student-centered instruction with existing traditional beliefs about teaching. Teacher educators assume that university instruction translates directly into practice, yet, research is clear that beginning teachers revert to traditional teaching practice. For elementary teachers, one…

In this essay, the authors argue that only by sharing their mistakes and uncertainty can they fully reflect on their own process as teachers, only by understanding their process can they begin to identify the many factors that contribute to classroom messes in the first place, and only by acknowledging the perpetual messiness of their practice can…

In this article, some of the ways in which thinking about chaos theory can help teachers and student-teachers to accept uncertainty and randomness as natural conditions in the classroom are considered. Building on some key features of complex systems commonly attributed to chaos theory (e.g. complexity, nonlinearity, sensitivity to initial…

Background: Teaching Games for Understanding has been promoted as an innovative curriculum model in the past decade in Hong Kong. It focuses on developing pupils' tactical awareness and decision making capability through integrating the cognitive and contextual dimensions of learning in physical education. Aims: This article reports a qualitative…

We propose a framework for evaluating the degree of authenticity of instructional tasks used within a teacher education program. First, we provide a defense for authenticity as an exemplary aspect of education. Second, we synthesize the theoretical literature on authenticity into conceptual codes. Using these codes, we build our authenticity…

The universities and faculties which educate teachers of mathematics for teaching pupils/students of any age group from pre-school age to higher education carefully monitor and compare valuable results of this research, detect the areas in which the mathematical achievements of pupils should be improved at the national level and propose the ways…