The phenomenon of adopting a religious lifestyle is growing worldwide in general and in Israel in particular. In the Israeli context, the transition from a secular lifestyle to a religious one is defined as "repentance". Sociologists define the repentant as someone who has changed his or her beliefs, opinions and behaviours in the…

The main purpose of this research was to examine the relationships among school principals' transformational leadership, school academic optimism, teachers' academic optimism and teachers' professional commitment. This study conducted a questionnaire survey on 367 teachers from 20 high schools in Taiwan by random sampling, using principals'…

This article highlights the experiences of students and educators from a larger sociocultural study of participation and engagement at a senior alternative high school programme in British Columbia, Canada. Drawing on participant observation, active interviews and document analysis, school attendance was remediated as a meaningful social practice…

Based on an analysis of 137 texts written by pupils, this paper examines pupils' humour directed at teachers, its types and social functions. The collected data are divided into three categories that describe different modes of teachers as targets of pupils' humour. The first mode describes teachers as unintentionally comical, the second as duped…

This article describes a model for incorporating lesson study into the student teaching placement and reports on the success of the implementation of such a model with student teachers and their cooperating teachers (CTs). Student teachers had the opportunity to discuss many important ideas with each other and their CTs, including "big ideas" of…

The article examines organisational challenges in the Finnish vocational education and training (VET) to support students' lifelong learning pathways. Investigation of organizational challenges is done through the students' transitions either within one school level or from one school level to another or to working life. For supporting the…

This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers' job satisfaction, self-efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers' professional identity. Using two-step cluster…

Critical incidents of peer provocation in physical education were investigated among 675 junior secondary school students in Botswana. Data were generated through a brief, open-ended questionnaire requesting the students to narrate their experiences of bad, hurtful and offensive peer behaviours during physical education classes. Six overlapping…

This paper explores high school students' and teachers' preferences towards constructivist Internet-based learning environments. The study proposes a framework, including two dimensions and five aspects, to illustrate the features of the Internet-based learning environments. Based upon this framework, the "Constructivist Internet-based…