Search results for: Educational change

This study examined how policy-makers described their work and motivations. Furthermore, the study focused on policy-makers' perceived relationship with teacher educators researchers and their understandings about research. The findings revealed that policy-makers described research as necessary to shape their decision-making and important to justify their work. However, some of the participants appeared acutely aware of their own lack of ‘research literacy’ and were quick to note they wished for greater support in this area. Policy-makers sought better communication strategies to utilise research findings in a timely, free and publicly accessible, user-friendly manner.

This study explores how two first-year teachers viewed policymakers’ reforms affecting their teaching and tenure in the field. These results show how policymakers’ high-stakes reforms impacted the development of these beginning teachers in significant ways. In this case study, the participants ended their first year of teaching questioning their roles in such classrooms. However, their commitment toward their work with their students appeared to keep them in the field as public school teachers. These findings reveal two implications for researchers, teacher educators, and teacher mentors.

The present paper explores the growing role of venture philanthropy. It also investigates the ideas of educational entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation in influencing the federal and state policies and practices in teacher education in the United States. The authors reject the position that the USA government should invest in the current system of teacher education in order to increase the capacity of the existing institutions that currently prepare teachers. They also disagree with the position that the current teacher education system should be replaced by an alternative based on deregulation and privatization. They suggest the need for transformation in the present system of teacher education, which will improve the quality of teacher education programs. They suggest focusing on helping student teachers learn to enact teaching practices that will promote student learning.

This article reviews the impact of an educational reform in Namibia in the early 1990s called the Integrated Teacher Training Programme (ITTP), which was an outcome of collaboration between the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), the liberation movement and teacher educators from Sweden and other Western countries. Research questions posed concerned: (1) the ITTP’s perceived impact on the participants’ private and professional lives; and (2) the ITTP’s impact on the participants’ views on knowledge and education in relation to democracy. This follow-up study indicates that the ITTP was crucial for the participants’ professional careers and private lives. The majority saw education as a key to democracy and social transformation, and considered themselves as important actors at local, regional and national levels in forwarding these aims.