Thomas Guskey, keynote speaker at the 2008 Phi Delta Kappa Summit on High-Performing Educators, urged attendees to become good leaders so they can lead the changes in education. But he warned that forging this path would take courage, similar to the courage displayed by the student in the photo as he stood before the tanks. The summit began with a…

This article uses four academics' gendered and cultural responses to life in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand under the new managerialist regime. Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) requires academics to submit evidence-based portfolios every six years to categorise and rank them, with government funding assigned accordingly. When the…

When we tend to analyze the living conditions of teachers, system arrangement and identity identification can be considered a significant method for analysis. In reality, there appears a phenomenon of overlapping identification in the identity identification of teachers in China, which leads to plural selections in the identification manners of…

National and state-level policies recognize the critical role that talented teachers play in ensuring that all students learn and in building capacity for instructional excellence in schools. Teachers influence student learning more than any other factor in the school, and the dividends of effective teaching are cumulative (see "Defining the…

Reform advocates and policymakers concerned about the quality and distribution of teachers support proposals of alternative compensation for teachers in hard-to-hire subject areas, hard-to-staff schools, and with special knowledge and skills. The successful implementation of such proposals depends in large part on teacher attitudes. The current…

Teacher turnover disproportionately impacts high poverty districts, where teachers hold fewer professional credentials and working conditions are more challenging. The disparities in teacher quality and working conditions likely contribute to teacher turnover and workplace instability as well as limit students' opportunities to learn.…

Several years ago, when his college first financed a writing program administrator (WPA) position--reassigned time and a budget to pay adjunct faculty stipends for program development--the author met with all the most senior adjunct faculty. "Without you," he told them, "this effort to build a better writing program won't work. Participation and…

In response to external pressure for change, the subject university engaged in major restructuring activities during the mid to late 1990's. As predicted by organizational theory, faculty reacted to the restructuring in order to define the conditions and methods of their work and to legitimate their professional autonomy. Although this university…

New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, "Te Whariki", has two learning outcomes, dispositions and working theories. While a sociocultural perspective of dispositions has received significant attention in research and teaching, "working theories" as a concept has remained somewhat nebulous. This paper describes ways teachers…

Education leaders and much literature exhort teachers and school leaders to use data more often and more effectively to guide planning and decision making--called, "data driven decision making." This term is ubiquitous in literature and reform discourse, but "on the ground," so to speak, practitioners face significant challenges in analyzing,…

This paper is about a research focusing on recent problems of Hungarian teachers. The aim of the study is to reveal the real troubles of Hungarian pedagogues, on the basis of their answers to a questionnaire, the nature of these problems and how they affect the role of the teacher. Supposedly, the nucleus of the problems of the teachers is…

Teacher effectiveness has the largest impact of school effects on student learning, and research indicates that top-quintile teachers produce learning gains three times (3X) that of bottom-quintile teachers. However, the supply of these "3X" teachers is limited. Meanwhile, 3X teachers affect only a small portion of children each year, no more than…

This case exemplifies the effects of high stakes standardized testing and accountability on education and stakeholders. When schools are pressured for success, educational leaders and teachers often find themselves in circumstances where regulations and procedures are violated, sometimes with noble intent. The case focuses on the ethical and…

The idea of "transmorphosis" will be used in this article to discuss the impact of new teaching and learning environments on the highly mobile global academic pedagogue. "Trans-" implies "movement across", whether it be space, time, place, culture, or institution. "-morphosis" evokes the possibility/requirement to shapeshift one's pedagogical…

The paper analyses and compares developments in history teaching in Germany, England, and the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th centuries. The development of history teaching in the three countries shows striking similarities. National politics have always used history education for purposes which did not necessarily tally with distanced critical…