The aim of this paper is to investigate and compare lessons given in primary school teacher education in Japan, Finland and Sweden. We analyse one lesson from each country and compare them using a common framework. Chevallard's anthropological theory of the didactic (ATD) is used to frame this analysis and in particular to model teacher educators'…

Herein we examine the dominant image of East Asian schools as marked by a darker side of widespread bullying, leading to high rates of youth suicide. First outlining the substantial literature on bullying in the English language, we turn to show how -- paradoxically -- the rates of bullying and suicide are no higher, or in nearly all cases, lower…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

While policy debate is often focused on the whole teaching profession, primary and secondary teachers differ in more ways than one. While all countries require teachers to have at least a bachelor degree to enter the profession in primary or lower secondary education, the structure and content of the programmes vary and are less geared towards…

The transition to formal education is a critical transition in children's lives that has importance for socio-emotional and behavioral functioning. In the transition process, teachers are key players who work intensively with children and their families. This article focuses on teachers' perceptions of children´s socio-emotional behavior during…

The last two decades have seen unprecedented interest in science curricula, with many governments seeing improvements in the performance of their school students in science as key to future economic prosperity. We present the results of an analysis of the curriculum documents for primary and secondary science in Australia (New South Wales and…

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…

Differences in teacher quality are commonly cited as a key determinant of the huge international student performance gaps. However, convincing evidence on this relationship is still lacking, in part because it is unclear how to measure teacher quality consistently across countries. We use unique international assessment data to investigate the…

Reports a re-analysis of mathematics achievement data on 28,274 elementary students in twelve countries. Results corroborate recent studies of productive factors in academic learning. Among directly alterable variables, the amount and quality of instruction, including homework, most strongly influence achievement. (Author/JDH)

For the first time, the annual conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) took place in Sweden. The conference took place at the Faculty of Education on historic ground on the old fortification walls of Carolus Dux from the 17th century right in the centre of the city. This year's host comprised the…

The International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics created by the International Congress of Mathematics at Rome, Italy, in 1908, submitted a large body of reports to the congress at Cambridge, England, in 1912. Those for the United States have been published as bulletins for the Bureau of Education. The material in this bulletin shows…