There has been increased attention to the importance of teachers and teacher quality in developing and sustaining successful education systems for some time now (Barber and Mourshed in How the world's best performing school systems come out on top, McKinsey & Company, New York, 2007; Darling-Hammond et al. in Empowered educators: how…

While teacher learning has become a locus of school reform across many international settings, there is relatively little examination of the idiosyncratic ways in which policy discourses on teacher learning are enacted in schools. In this paper, we aim to investigate how these policy discourses are translated and configured into practices and…

Post-secondary institutions, especially those with a research focus, face a challenge in ensuring consistent and high-quality teaching, in part because many members of the teaching faculty have backgrounds in research instead of teaching. A common part of meeting this challenge is the presence of Centres for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) on…

In a recent publication, Senge ("All systems go: the change imperative for whole system reform." Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2010, x) stated "at no time in history has there been a more powerful need for a new vision of the purpose of education." Increasingly citizens, academics and practitioners are calling for radical…

The International Handbook of Teacher and School Development brings together a collection of research and evidence-based authoritative writings which focus on international teacher and school development. Drawing on research from 18 countries across 7 continents, the 40 chapters are grouped into 10 themes which represent key aspects of teacher and…

Teachers must be prepared to meet the needs of a rapidly changing society. Needs of businesses, society, and students must be identified and programs, teaching strategies, and attitudes toward technology; and its mandates must be changed to meet them. (JOW)

This paper focuses on Alberta, Canada's 1998 "Teacher Growth, Supervision and Evaluation" policy, examining its origins and adoption along with the significant shift in images of teaching and supervision that it conveys. Both the process and substance of the policy are analyzed within the context of Alberta's larger plan to restructure…

British Columbia's systemwide educational reform efforts enable teachers to engage in classroom-based research while building a learner-focused curriculum. This article describes the province's teacher research efforts, underlining important implications for educational policy. Teacher research permitted teachers to honor schools' educative…

This book examines transformational leadership and explores why such leadership can enhance the work of secondary-school leaders. It focuses on school leadership exercised in restructuring contexts. The text is divided into three parts: (1) the context for changing leadership; (2) transformational school leadership; and (3) beyond transformational…

Describes how one high school implemented schoolwide action research teams as a comprehensive change management strategy to develop teacher leaders, teachers as change agents, and a collaborative reflective culture. The three-year case study showed that work on action research teams did not come naturally or easily, but teachers improved over time…

This report provides the second year update to the Alberta (Canada) government's 3-year plan to restructure the province's education system. Key strategies for improving teaching are put forth, including: updating teacher preparation and certification requirements to reflect the most current understanding of effective teaching; establishing…

Reports a study that examined eight Canadian elementary schools that were implementing cooperative learning, describing the context and design of the cooperative learning project, identifying nine common concerns of elementary teachers beginning to implement cooperative learning, offering suggestions to staff developers for supporting teachers,…

This paper is intended to provide a basis for discussion about staff development in the mathematics education community. It is directed to those who plan staff development programs intended to improve elementary mathematics teachers' classroom practice. Discussion includes the importance of establishing program goals and considerations of the…

In the second half of this decade, society will likely move toward a creative synthesis between the unbridled progressivism of the 1960's and the reactionary conservatism of the early 1970's. In Canadian secondary education, this movement will result in redistribution of power, alterations in the nature of education, and increased insecurity of…

This study looks at the interview responses of teachers and administrators in five secondary schools in Ontario (Canada) to government-initiated accountability strategies. Several questions were posed: (1) What were the perceived effects of these strategies? (2) What motives did teachers and administrators ascribe to the government for introducing…