This study was motivated by the desire to understand how to support the development of competent and confident string instrument teachers. This research investigates early-career string instrument teachers' experiences of pre-service tertiary education and induction, and how these experiences impacted early-career string teachers' competence to…

The fostering of learner autonomy has become an essential element of modern pedagogy and an established object of research. There are many difficulties in providing evidence of learners' development towards autonomy, however, since it is not measurable in a traditional sense. As a learning advisor (LA) at a private language university in Japan, I…

Little is known about the experiences of non-heterosexual educators in Canadian Catholic schools. This article reveals previously unreported data from a qualitative study that compares the treatment of and attitudes towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) teachers in publicly-funded Catholic school systems in the Canadian…

The article "Conversation as Inquiry: A Conversation with Instructional Designers" (Campbell, Schwier & Kenny 2006) appeared in the "Journal of Learning Design" Volume 1, Issue 3 in 2006. Nine years on, Professor Katy Campbell, Dean of the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, reflects upon the arguments articulated…

Based on a critical ethnography of an urban high school that exemplifies the many changes of post-apartheid South Africa, this paper presents data about two teachers who propose opposing perspectives and practices of knowing students. The analysis of the teachers' narratives shows that they came to know their students through solicited,…

Public spending reductions across the advanced capitalist world are creating new professions that have a "hybrid" status and/or role. However, research on professional learning has paid little attention to them. This qualitative study of one such profession, public service interpreting (PSI), addresses that lacuna. The paper focuses on…

This study explores the impact of practica in multigrade schools in rural areas in Turkey on the development of preservice teachers' identities, drawing in particular on Gee's four perspectives regarding viewing identity. Interpretation of the identity categories was based on the content of students' reflective narratives written over four…

This article presents a case study of a group of approximately 70-year-old women who are learning to play rock band instruments in a formal music school context. The study examines the individual and shared meanings that the participants assigned to taking part in the rock band. The study aligns with John Dewey's view that the meanings of present…

Suburban middle schools have been affected by a growing enrollment of English language learners and by the need to demonstrate that this population of students is meeting prescribed academic proficiency benchmarks. These developments necessitate cogent, English learner--focused professional learning across content areas. Using Gee's perspective on…

Utilizing a figured worlds and critical historical inquiry framework, this qualitative study examined how the Tejano History Curriculum Project provided opportunities for prospective and practicing bilingual educators to challenge long-standing and problematic depictions of Tejana/o histories in Texas. This study examined how these teachers…

This article analyses qualitative narratives from skilled migrants using Bourdieu's concepts of misrecognition, symbolic and social capital to understand the uneven effects of migration transitions on employment outcomes among migrant groups. Transnational skilled migration is increasing to unprecedented levels, especially from non-OECD countries…

The effectiveness of community based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes depends on the calibre of staff recruited and employed. Therefore, this study aimed to understand how the life experiences of community disability workers (CDWs) in Malawi, Botswana and South Africa influenced their choice of career. A life history approach was used to gather…

Through the use of narrative inquiry, this research study explores the collaborative curriculum making experiences of six teachers (three males; three females) in one physical education (PE) department in an urban middle school in the U.S. Collaboration; as defined in this work, this has to do with teachers' voluntary interactions and their shared…

The objective of this research was to explore the effects of language brokering upon identity formation within the family unit of students who have lived in the United States for a period of time and have come back to live in Mexico. The participants are six students that are currently undertaking a BA in TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of…

In this article, four teachers reflect on what it means to work in a for-profit free school in Sweden. These narratives corroborate concerns about educational inequity and academic standards within the free school system. Equally, they reveal how teachers struggle to negotiate a professional identity within a competitive school market where social…