This paper draws on case study research with Lee who had been permanently excluded from an urban secondary school in England. It begins with two extended extracts from the case study in order to illustrate the challenges the principal researcher, Deon, faced in the day-to-day conduct of the work. The section that follows engages in a reflexive…

Discontinuities are often found between top-down language education policies and local language policy enactments, as de facto language policymaking results from stakeholders' negotiation and interpretation of policy mandates. Teachers occupy a particular role in the execution of language education policies, as they are the "final…

Recent mathematics education reforms (NCTM, 2000) have resulted in increased opportunities for teachers to learn new teaching practices. However, the relationship between teacher professional development and the actual implementation of new practices is unclear. I posit that a teachers' decision to implement newly learned practices is strongly…

Changing times in teacher education has been a long mantra and many changes have been occurring globally in this sector of higher education. In South Africa teacher education change has been linked to changes in the broader education processes and includes policy changes and the development of regulatory frameworks which all impacted on practice…

This article examines the spread of the neo-liberal educational policy in Finnish schools by considering entrepreneurship education. We examined the kinds of gendered and classed enterprising selves that were narrated in the Finnish writing competition "Good Enterprise!" written by pupils in the 9th grade of comprehensive school. In…

As our world becomes increasingly diverse and technologically-driven, the role and identities of teachers continues to change. "Cases on Teacher Identity, Diversity, and Cognition in Higher Education" seeks to address this change and provide an accurate depiction of the teaching profession today. This thought-provoking collection of…

In this article, the author considers some of the issues addressed in the 2007 MLA report. The 2007 MLA report argues that the two-tiered literature/language configuration in post-secondary foreign language departments "has outlived its usefulness and needs to evolve," and even needs to be replaced. When proclamations are made that foreign…

Narrative is fundamental to our diverse capacities to remember, to provide an account of self, and to represent our actions, motivations and place in society. The narrative mode is concerned with central aspects of the human condition--commitments and personal agency; motivations and emotions; collective experiences and cultural histories and…

This article reports further findings from the "Carpe Vitam: Leadership for Learning" project, based on a close examination of some of the interview narratives with an Australian principal. Positioning analysis is used as an empirically-grounded means of making sense of who this Australian principal is and what she does as a leader to…

This article examines teachers' experience in relation to the massive top-down but ever-changing education reform initiatives in Hong Kong, where "East meets West" in cultures and identities. A life-narrative approach was used to probe the daily experience of 24 secondary school teachers of different ages, genders, and marital statuses…

Policy in England identifies pregnant schoolgirls as a particularly vulnerable group and emphasises the importance of education as a way of improving the life chances of those who become pregnant while young. This paper draws on repeat interviews conducted over a twelve-month period to compare and contrast the stories of four young women. The…

The study is situated within a national youth organisation called the Australian Air League Inc (Air League). We examine the recent progress of the Air League in South Australia, starting as a loose network of volunteers engaged in a sporadic array of activities, to become a learning community that worked collaboratively and then developed further…

After the author was named principal of Osbourn Park Senior High School almost 10 years ago, he met with his new boss, the area associate superintendent. The author asked him his opinion of Osbourn Park. His reply was direct: "This school has never really accomplished anything. People look at it as mediocre--as a school that has never reached its…

The article draws on an ethnographic study of students' experiences in a restructured campus of several schools, located in a densely populated northeastern city, serving a multiracial, largely working class and poor Latino neighborhood. The authors underscore student narratives of a chronology of opportunity and loss, while also noting an…

Although practitioners, policy-makers, and academics call for reform in teacher education, there is ambiguity surrounding the identity transformation of graduate students who "become" teacher educators. This self-study uses narratives, based on intricate personal and collaborative reflection, to explore how the assumption of new role identities is…