Section archive - Professional Development

Alternative and parallel schooling contexts provide educational experiences for U.S. K–12 students grounded in notions of social justice and culturally responsive teaching. College-aged young adults known as “servant-leader interns” are the teachers in this context. In this article, the author examines the nature of the various ways in which servant-leader interns were supported in their development as teachers both at the national training institute and at their local site.

This paper looks at changes in the conceptions of childhood in recent decades, and their contribution to the understanding of the sociabilities and subjectivities that are moulded in school, and how these relate to teachers' initial training. The results are given of a study on conceptions of childhood, expressed in or related to the initial training of teachers in the 1st Basic Education Cycle (CEB), in Portugal since April 1974.

School pupils learning how to learn (LHTL), aimed at helping them develop learning autonomy, requires teachers to develop new classroom practices. Hence teachers LHTL is equally important. The TLRP ‘Learning How to Learn in Classrooms, Schools and Networks’ project researched how practices were developed by teachers in 40 primary and secondary schools in England. A key factor was teachers' own engagement in collaborative classroom-focused inquiry. There were strong statistical relationships between school policy, teachers' professional learning and their capacity to promote learning autonomy in their pupils.

This study investigated the hierarchy of strengths in a sample of 228 Chinese prospective and in-service teachers in Hong Kong. Teachers who reported greater life satisfaction, experiencing more positive and less negative emotions tended to be those with higher levels of emotional strengths and strengths of hope and zest.