In this article we introduce a practical self-assessment tool for primary English language teachers which can be used in pre-service as well as in in-service contexts. It consists of methodological descriptors that have been derived from a qualitative analysis of representative textbooks. Through the application of thematic coding, common…

Purpose: Nearly 50 years ago, Durkin (1978-1979) conducted a seminal observation study on reading comprehension teaching in Grades 3 through 6. She reported that teachers rarely taught reading comprehension (less than 1% of instructional time). Since then, we have gained substantial knowledge about teaching reading comprehension. We aimed to…

Shortages of qualified teachers in primary and secondary education are very common in almost all European countries and in the US. Since high quality teachers are usually the most likely to leave, much attention has been focused on teacher turnover; retaining the best teachers can help to ameliorate teacher shortages. Using data from the Survey of…

School culture affects all facets of teaching and learning. Starting from individual international teachers' perspectives and their accounts relating to school culture, new insights and perspectives on the problem of practice were gained. The research focused on answering the questions: What are teachers' experiences of school culture in…

Purpose: To improve school organisational performance and innovativeness, and meet diverse student needs, school leaders should be innovative, risk-takers and proactive, thus applying entrepreneurial practices/strategies and market mechanisms. This study aims to investigate, from a schoolteacher's perspective, the degree of entrepreneurial…

'Synchronous hybrid teaching' (SHT), defined as the concurrent delivery of online and in-person teaching, is an instructional mode employed by many schools during the COVID-19 pandemic to minimise learning loss for students who had to self-isolate at home. Since then, there have been calls for SHT to be retained as an instructional strategy…

"English as a lingua franca (ELF)" is a well-known concept for English used as an international contact language among people from diverse linguacultural backgrounds. Using a questionnaire, we explored the attitudes of Spanish and Swedish pre-service primary school teachers towards English and its users after their collaboration on a…

Teachers are regularly confronted with paradoxes in their profession: clashes between different sets of values, their roles and their personal authenticity, the desire to be open but also detached, and the willingness to encourage students to have their own opinion but at the same time to obey and adapt. In this article, we investigate paradoxes…

It has been decades since inclusive education was introduced as the most favourable approach to educating students with special educational needs and disabilities. Still, according to research and practice, teachers' attitudes are seen as the most important key factor for its successful implementation. Therefore, there is an ongoing process of…

This book proposes an innovative theoretical and practical model to promote green education in primary schools, focusing on inspiring teachers to design and execute effective green education activities. This model was pilot-tested with over 60 teachers in Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia. The book is divided into four chapters. The first examines the…

While the educational emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic centred on student learning and safety, teachers' burnout, and teacher strikes, stories of teachers quitting the profession have left schools in crisis around the world. In this study, we use an intersectional approach to explore teacher experiences during the pandemic as 'crisis…

It is highly important that teachers have the necessary professional knowledge, skills and attitudes for the efficiency of the teaching and learning process, which has an important role in gaining the required qualifications to individuals. One of the educational platforms that can be used for teachers to develop both their personal and…

This paper provides both a summary and plenary paper for a Special Issue of papers that build on the findings of a research project that investigated formative and summative assessment methods to support and to improve inquiry-based science teaching and learning. The paper aims to unravel some of the complexity that underpins classroom assessment…

Evidence suggests that children struggle to acquire age-appropriate fundamental movement skills (FMS), despite their importance for facilitating physical activity. This has led to calls for routine school-based screening of children's FMS. However, there is limited research exploring schools' capacity to conduct such assessments. This study…

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become an important tool for school systems as they seek to enhance education and make it more efficient. This has become all the more apparent and urgent with the COVID-19 pandemic. But what degree of access do students from different socio-economic backgrounds have to ICT-based quality…