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…

Over the past 20 years, federal and state reforms have drawn on heavy-handed attempts to close the achievement gap through top-down management of teachers. Such approaches have often included high-stakes accountability systems that mandate what to teach and how to teach it and that evaluate teachers on the basis of annual standardized test scores.…

This presentation retraces some of the often forgotten history, dating back to 1860s, of Aotearoa/New Zealand that formed aspects of our education structures. Of particular interest is the relationship between educational innovation and change that came about through the active involvement of teachers as policy champions as they pursued their goal…

The implementation of the C3 Framework has unfolded unlike any previous standards project. A grassroots movement rather than a top-down mandate, the C3 effort calls on teachers to be at the forefront of social studies reform. In New York State, the C3 Framework provided context and inspiration for the New York Social Studies Toolkit Project.…

Bullying is a major concern in education worldwide, particularly in countries such as New Zealand that are reported to have high rates of bullying in schools. In this article it is proposed that, in order to effectively prevent or substantially reduce bullying in schools, a systemic approach needs to be adopted, with interventions organized at…

There is an ongoing tension within educational policy worldwide between countries that seek to reduce the opportunities for teachers to exert judgement and control over their own work, and those who seek to promote it. Some see teacher agency as a weakness within the operation of schools and seek to replace it with evidence-based and data-driven…

K-12 teachers who write about their daily work on blogs and other social media platforms share local knowledge and wisdom from the immediate view of the classroom. These first-hand retellings of everyday classroom life offer a unique critique of educational policy from the teachers' perspective. Reporting on the analysis of 14 public-facing blogs…

This study explored teachers' perceptions of implementing personalized learning in several urban elementary school classrooms. Additionally, this study examined teachers' readiness for change through the lens of Ely's (1990) Eight Conditions of Change Model. The study participants included five elementary school teachers and the school principal.…

This paper examines the need for more holistic, narrative-based research into the identities of museum educators. The author explores the increasing demands being placed on museum educators along with the substantial challenges experienced by these professionals amidst the changing climate of museums. Many museum educators feel that their museums'…

One popular approach to teacher leadership is to identify certain teachers as particularly successful, then have others learn from them. Collaborative leadership, in contrast, looks at leadership as a quality that anyone can have. In this model, the goal is not to figure out who is best. Instead, teachers share their unique talents and interests…

Development of motivation and self-regulated learning skills can take classroom management beyond the role of maintaining order in the classroom to empower students and teachers for lifetime learning. The authors describe self-regulated learning, student strategies, and the classroom structure that supports motivation and self-regulation.

Education reform and improvement in K-12 public education continues to be a national priority. Research within the past half century has brought to the forefront the brutal truth that American public education needs improvement (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). The call for improvement includes the need for teachers to emerge from silence and isolation…

The Education Reform -- Joint Agreement published in June 2018 sets out agreed principles and enablers and measures that will support and encourage the empowerment of schools in Scotland. These include the commitment that Education Scotland would carry out three inspections in the 2018-19 academic year looking at the following themes: Readiness…

The purpose of this paper is to comparatively investigate the professional autonomy of upper secondary school teachers in three European countries in interpreting and implementing curricula. The paper focuses on teachers' experiences, and their perceptions of their autonomy and the control exercised over them in the global era of neoliberal…