This article draws on and develops the outcomes of previous research which concluded that school subject departments provide the setting for influential professional development and that experienced teachers strongly influence their newly qualified colleagues. The findings of two subsequent research projects, which used this as a starting point,…

Assumptions are often made about new lecturers in terms of previous experience, development needs and orientations towards the new role. Postgraduate certificate (PgCert) programmes tend to operate on the assumption that new lecturers are already familiar with the research element of their discipline, in a default transition from PhD to…

Practical work has a long history in science education in the UK. This article explores how the influences of curriculum and assessment policy have shaped practical work over recent years. We argue that, together with changes in teacher training programmes, these influences have weakened science teachers' capacity to meet the challenge of calls…

This article discusses the development of beginning physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the context of teaching basic electricity during a one-year Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) course and beyond. This longitudinal study used repeated semi-structured interviews over a period of four-and-a-half years. The…

This paper extends the dialogue of educational philosophy to the experience of beginners entering the teaching profession. Rather than impose the ideas of any specific philosopher or theorist, or indeed official standard, the exploration presented here owes its origins to phenomenology and the use of grounded theory. Working from a narrative data…

Learning how to plan is recognised as a key skill that beginning teachers have to develop but there has been little research examining "how" they may actually learn to plan. This paper, based on the analysis of 10 post-lesson interviews with 17 secondary school teachers across three years (the PGCE year and the first two years in…

This paper reports on research that took place at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), United Kingdom, over two years. The project formed the basis of an iterative, interpretive, action research study focussing on a particular set of participants--trainee teachers. The insights gained from the initial cycle fed…

This article discusses particular aspects of current Canadian teacher training that seem healthy practice to an experienced school-teacher from the United Kingdom. With the UK government increasingly interested, some would say determined, in moving the funding of initial teacher training away from universities and to schools, my visit to Canada,…

This paper argues that given the complexities and contested nature of contemporary higher education, induction programmes for new academics should move beyond generic approaches to teaching and learning and engage academics in considering the contexts in which they are practising, focusing on developing their agency in these complex contexts. A…

The training of teachers in upper secondary education varies considerably dependent on whether training is undertaken as a secondary school teacher or as a teacher within the Further Education (FE) system. Indeed, until the late 1990s, the training of teachers in FE had been the focus of little regulation by Government. Differences also occur…

The research reported here set out to investigate the features in schools and science departments that were seen as effective in contributing to the continuing professional development (CPD) of early career science teachers. Ten schools took part in the study, selected on the basis of their reputation for having effective CPD practices. To gain…

Previous research in education has investigated the relationship between gender and perceptions of musicality, suggesting that teachers' assessments of boys' and girls' achievements in music are different and unequal. This empirical study attempts to explore that relationship in more detail, building on research from the late 1990s, by asking…

This study explored the language capability of two groups of new teachers in a multilingual city: the first in their initial teacher education year, and the second near the end of their induction year. Almost all teachers in the city face the challenge of teaching English as an additional language in classrooms characterised by super-diversity and…

Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. The paper presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalisation, embedded in the unique timespace contexts of mobile learning. A…

This article brings together the findings of two separate studies in Britain and Australia that sought to examine the experiences of teachers of ethnic difference. Drawing on qualitative data, we examine how early-career and mid-career minority ethnic teachers in Britain and Australia, respectively, understand and take up the role of…