Science centres generally strive to increase awareness, interest, capability and participation by citizens in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This review of Scitech's professional learning (PL) strategy was designed to analyse quantitative and qualitative feedback about the professional learning activities delivered by…

This article is based on a case study to explore a model of teacher governance and illustrate the distinct challenges of entrepreneurship in public education. In the Sedona Charter School, each classroom principal educator serves as instructional leader and resource leader. Principal educators adjust curricula, hire their teachers, determine…

Although the importance of understanding the social and cultural processes mediating pre-service teachers' expansion of the power to act has been increasingly recognized lately, the way the concept of "agency" is portrayed in most of the studies focuses almost exclusively on the subject of activity and therefore, there is insufficient…

The present comparative study investigates the perceptions of male and female teachers regarding the relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction. The study aims to look at factors that empower teachers and lead to job satisfaction from teachers' perspectives. For that purpose, teachers were selected from three educational levels…

In recent years, many teachers suffered different kinds of negative emotions in the context of education reforms. A typical explanation was that the education reforms disempowered teachers in teaching, so teachers were forced to do much non-instructional work. Teachers considered their work meaningless but were powerless to change it, and…

Proposals for innovating language education at school are always affected by cultures of teaching and teacher education. This article takes an inquisitive look at task-based language teaching (TBLT) as a learner-centred approach, arguing in favour of a realistic understanding of possibilities for educational change. This entails confronting…

In South Africa, the common law principle of "in loco parentis" entitles teachers, as the guardians in the school environment, to discipline learners. However, in view of new legislation advancing children's rights, it is unclear as to the extent to which teachers can or do enact the "loco parentis" role. This study employed a…

Teachers' agency has an effect on their own learning process at the workplace. In this study we explored the extent to which teachers participating in a formative teacher assessment procedure developed a sense of agency. We investigated not only whether teachers participating in a such an assessment procedure experienced agency and thus felt in…

Over the past decades, U.S. immigration has changed significantly, yet the way we teach about immigration in schools has changed little. The American Immigration Council has developed a two-year program on Long Island, an area experiencing an increase of new arrivals and anti-immigrant sentiment. The program empowers teachers with the knowledge to…

Teacher professional agency refers to the ability of teachers to control their work within structural constraints. In this paper, we show how teacher activist organizations can assist in the development of professional agency. We focus on a teacher activist organization in a large urban district in the United States and identify three…

The author argues that general education teacher candidates must learn to "­re-start" art to empower them with the skills needed to realize art's promise within their future classrooms. Entry/exit surveys completed by candidates ­revealed that an art methods course corrected misconceptions about the nature of creativity and improved…

Purpose: To examine the contribution of horizontal and vertical organisational learning and its timing to the effective integration of teachers in classes they have not previously taught. Three hundred and forty-five teachers from 64 schools, with at least 4 years of teaching experience, completed questionnaires about the extent of horizontal (OL)…

It is increasingly recognized that opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) are needed to support teaching as lifelong learning, and that if these incorporate a nurturing bottom-up approach, this is more likely to lead to teacher empowerment. However, top-down approaches, including formal courses and workshops on predetermined…

This self-study frames the influences of cooperating (or mentor) teachers on teacher candidates in my teacher education classroom as an action-at-a-distance on my pedagogy of teacher education; that is, a tacit set of influences and expectations that teacher candidates develop about my course before it even begins. Interviews with teacher…

This study investigated novice teachers' perceptions of their professional agency during the initial years of their work in schools. The research questions were: (i) How do novice teachers perceive their professional agency within their work, and what do they see as the main restrictions and resources affecting that agency? (ii) How do novice…