While the benefits of teacher involvement in designing technology enhanced learning are acknowledged in the literature, far less is known about shaping that involvement to yield those benefits. Research is needed to understand how teachers learn through design; how teacher design activities may be supported; and how teacher involvement in design…

Competence as a measure of "fitness to practice" and its evaluation through mechanisms of personal performance review, has led to the introduction of systems in a number of professions which link appraisal to the maintenance of professional registration (variously referred to as re-validation, re-certification, re-accreditation, etc.).…

Numerous national initiatives call for interdisciplinary mathematics and science education, but few empirical studies have examined practical considerations for integrated instruction in high school settings. The purpose of this qualitative study was twofold. First, the study sought to describe how and to what extent teachers integrate mathematics…

This article presents an evaluation of distance technology used in a novel Lesson Study (LS) approach involving a dispersed LS team for inter-professional purposes. A typical LS model with only school teachers as team members was modified by including university-based lecturers with the school-based teachers, using video-conferencing and online…

Students with disabilities often struggle in science and underperform in this important content area when compared to their typical peers. Unfortunately, many special educators have had little preparation to develop science content knowledge or skills in methods for teaching science. Despite their lack of content knowledge, special educators are…

This dissertation presents the findings of an exploratory, multiple-case study in which eight public secondary school teachers engaged in a professional development (PD) program centered on improving teacher instruction for English learners (ELs). The participants worked as co-teachers with teacher credential candidates, serving as both mentors…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA--the main federal education law) was signed into law at the end of 2015, but schools and districts have until the 2017-2018 school year to begin implementing their plans to comply with it. ESSA represents a substantial shift from prior law in how it addresses teacher professional growth and evaluation, and as…

This study examined the relationship between teacher demographic characteristics (race/ethnicity, age, and gender) and teacher summative performance evaluation ratings in a large urban district over three school years--2012/13-2014/15. In all three years a disproportionately large percentage of Black teachers, teachers age 50 and older, and male…

As a follow on to my earlier research with beginning teachers, in which I investigated their propensity for pedagogical change, when they faced difficult and unfamiliar cultural situations in school, this research was undertaken to test the findings on a larger scale. The research from which this case study is drawn uses a greater number of…

Just as accountability policies have led to increased levels of teacher data use, teachers have begun to increase the extent to which students track and analyse data about their own learning. Although some might argue that such "student-involved data use" (SIDU) might empower or motivate students to take charge of their own learning…

This paper aims to identify elements that will help with the process of thinking through curriculum issues based on the concept of open architecture. We argue that this concept can be an interesting driver of practice and debate concerning curriculum development in different contexts. More generally, we seek for viable public education that is…

This paper argues that teacher learning is not reducible to lists of "performative" standards. Funded by the Society for Educational Studies, we used "lesson study" as a vehicle to develop new teacher expertise, following which we concluded that conceptualising "learning to teach" as acquisition of standards is…

Today's teachers and administrators are caught in a squeeze of conflicting demands. And evaluation guru Charlotte Danielson fears that teacher evaluation, as it's often implemented today, is making things worse. In schools where teacher evaluation has become simply a matter of numbers, ratings, and rankings, it may be undermining the very…

In 2013, a team of experts funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wrapped up a three year, $45 million project to identify Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)--an effort to determine whether it's possible to put numbers on something as complex as teaching. After reviewing 20,000 classroom videos, crunching data from thousands of student…

This special issue recognizes EAPRIL as being a platform for practitioner and practice-based research and by organizing the 10th annual conference for practitioner research on improving learning in education and professional practice. Papers in this conference and in this special issue are rooted in practice-based research or practitioner…