The growing expectations and demands for teacher education highlight the need to provide future teachers with more knowledge and to prepare teachers as expert collaborators who can learn from each other. This qualitative case study based on video-recorded reflective assignments investigated how Finnish pre-service special education teachers'…

The concept of professional learning communities (PLCs) has received considerable attention in research as well as in school practice since the late 1990s. PLCs have been positively associated with a variety of outcomes for both teachers and students, but differences in the way the concept is operationalised, and the fact that most of the research…

The gap between students' formal, school-based learning and informal, social learning has been widely acknowledged. To overcome this gap, academic service-learning (AS-L) pedagogy involves deliberate efforts to interconnect formal and informal learning by enhancing students' transitions across multiple authentic settings and fostering their…

This participatory action research aimed to understand teachers' experiences and the development process of collaborative expertise in a school well-being program implemented in Finnish comprehensive schools. Teachers from two schools participated in a school well-being program for one and a half school years. During the program, they reflected on…

Of the teachers who leave the profession, about half of them are dissatisfied with the school they work at. Teachers' school environment can have both supportive and adverse effects on their satisfaction with school and teaching in general. Yet this relationship might be different for the Nordic countries than for other European countries as the…

In education, a multidisciplinary approach is needed in order to address many of today's multifaceted challenges. Though multidisciplinary educational approaches have been shown to have benefits on learning, many studies show that teachers often struggle to implement multidisciplinary education, partially due to lack of time and planning. To…

Special education teachers' (SETs) views on their agency in teacher collaboration were analysed using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Finnish SETs (N = 238) answered open-ended survey questions concerning successful and unsuccessful collaboration with the classroom teachers in a tiered support framework. The findings revealed that the…

Research Findings: This study investigated early childhood education and care (ECEC) teachers' experiences of occupational well-being during a two-year pre-primary education trial in Finland. Profile groups of the trial experimental group teachers (n = 376) were identified. We also examined whether the identified profiles differed with respect to…

Co-teaching can benefit learning and well-being of all students in inclusive classrooms. In Finland, co-teaching is a pivotal method of support for students with special needs in learning mathematics, but the outcomes are dependent on the quality of co-teaching. However, little is known about how effective co-teaching is situationally constructed…

This study investigated primary school special education teachers' (SETs') (N = 283) conceptions on their work descriptions and uses of pedagogical documents after a reform in the national support framework. The respondents of this survey reported working mostly in Tiers 1 and 2 when all their tasks (instruction, consultation, and managerial…

Strengthening the identities of teacher educators is critical to quality teacher education and implementing change in the education sector. This study examines the professional identities of Eritrean teacher educators and how these identities can be strengthened through collaborative professional practice in a challenging context currently under…

Background: The question of how best to enable sustainable professional development remains a challenging one. The research reported here is situated within a professional learning communities (PLCs) approach as a long-term goal for continuing professional development (CPD) with action research (AR) principles as a means of organisation. Purpose:…

The implementation of a teacher education strategy in a decentralised Finnish education system is analysed. Altogether, 31 pilot projects, involving teacher educators from all universities, were funded to support the implementation of the strategy and professional learning of autonomous teacher educators in the context of the strategy. In this…

Collaboration between educators is considered to be the key issue when implementing inclusive practices within schools. An open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to extend the current understanding of collaboration between teaching staff. The questionnaire was administrated to 167 classroom teachers, subject teachers,…

At present, the idea of teacher professional development is widely highlighted in education. The present qualitative study examines whether coteaching in collaboration between music lecturers at two universities could enable their professional development and improve student learning. Our study consisted of piano courses in two independent primary…