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The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Chi-hung Ng on the nature of career goals in relation to professional learning by teachers, another by Cheryl Craig on one teacher's experiences of professional development over a 10-year period as well as a report by Ali Sahin on an exploration of the professional status of elementary teaching in Turkey.

Despite continuing interest in teacher reflection and an extensive body of research on peer assessment, the interaction between these areas has not been sufficiently investigated. This study on reflection and peer feedback is part of an ongoing action research addressing the design and pedagogical model of a theoretically oriented teacher training course. The course comprised face-to-face lessons followed by written reflections of the student-teachers concerning their learning experiences. These reflections were presented for peer feedback - thereby initiating a community of reflecting peers ('co-reflection') - and were additionally subjected to instructor feedback under two conditions (full vs. diluted). Student-teachers' perception of their professional development that resulted from these co-reflecting communities were quantitatively evaluated (using a self-reported questionnaire) over a three-year period. An enhanced positive effect over the three-year period was found - regardless of the instructor feedback condition - as well as significant differences between parallel groups (higher for science vs. mathematics student-teachers). These are described in the first part of the paper, followed by an in-depth case study analysis in the second section. The case studies reported inclusive analysis of the students' written reflections and feedback. It provides an insight into the processes of co-reflection, identifies changes over time in the quality of reflections and feedback, as well as in the personal, professional and social development of the student-teachers, attempting to identify the mechanisms leading to these changes. Examples are cited to illustrate the ways in which the students developed and what activated their motivation for development. The case studies reveal two developmental models, one of external orientation and the other internal. These are characterized by a willing receiver and willing donor, respectively. The importance of a 'maturity interval', when the student is 'ripe' for developmental change, was also demonstrated. Offering an appropriate trigger at this mature point may stimulate crucial development. Teacher development is further interpreted in terms of interpersonal variables. The current paper may encourage teacher educators and student-teachers themselves to incorporate co-reflecting in their course planning and community planning. Ways may be designed to train student-teachers to offer and use feedback effectively. For feedback to be valuable, it should be reinforcing, challenging, thorough and sincere, radiate faith, and be of a friendly nature - it should be non-insulting and non-judgemental. They may be used for in-text as well as summary remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals moving from job to job are argued as a feature of reflexive modernity. This trend is reflected in the increasing number and diversity of 'career changers' or 'second career teachers' recruited to teaching. Having recruited teachers, retaining them in the profession is recognised as a considerable challenge. In terms of retention, the induction year and the role of the NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) mentor are increasingly seen as significant in meeting this challenge. The research focus on the experience of career changers in teaching has largely been on those moving into the secondary phase. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the experiences of three primary school NQT career changers from a PGCE primary programme at a university in England. It adds to the considerable literature on how NQTs generally come to identify with and through the culture of the school. The experiences of the participants' first year of teaching in their respective primary schools are explored through a constructive grounded theory methodology. It recounts their reality in line with the view that if human beings define situations as real they are real in their consequences. The data are argued as local and detailed rather than representing a universal truth, a partial reality which can be drawn upon to illuminate the bigger picture for primary career changers. Analysis, which was initially inductive draws on notions from Lave and Wenger's and Wenger's work on communities of practice 'legitimate peripheral participation' and 'leverage' and their significance for job satisfaction in the NQT year. The research found that 'being managed' emerged as the key concern for the NQTs. In addition, their positioning in relation to their previous work experience was significant in achieving job satisfaction. Those who saw themselves as experienced newcomers and wished their previous work experience to be acknowledged found that it was variably capitalised upon in primary teaching. There is also a suggestion here that being 'different' in this paper - male or gay teachers was problematic. The findings have implications for teacher trainers and NQT mentors in that it offers a perspective on the range of experiences career changer NQTs bring with them to teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Teachers Network Leadership Institute (TNLI), an initiative designed to bring the voice of teachers into the educational policy arena through teacher action research. We view teachers’ research on teaching and on school processes as an important means through which to expose the various sources of tension between policy and teaching, as well as to elucidate the impact of education policies on teachers’ practice. For the purposes of this paper, four teacher studies were selected as representative of the quality of work that the TNLI teachers are producing and as referents for our discussion of the unseen and public or ‘bright’ sides of teacher research. In addition, we have used surveys, questionnaires and interviews with TNLI participants to assess the impact of TNLI on their teaching, their students, their schools and districts, as well as on teachers’ knowledge of policy‐making. We find that teachers sharing research within teacher networks like TNLI constitutes a significant opportunity for professional development and can help teachers to build bridges across classrooms and schools, to the academy and to the larger policy community by opening up understandings of practice. The negotiation of meaning that ensues can make transparent the ways in which policy is translated into practice and it can highlight opportunities for policy reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends the literature on teachers’ career paths by attending to the experiences of educators when they were students in secondary classrooms. Grounded in the perspective that biography is central to teaching, we investigate undergraduate pre-service teachers’ educational experiences, views on teaching and learning, and professional plans. We draw upon life history interviews with 40 prospective teachers at three institutions across Pennsylvania, USA. We find that past educational experiences are intricately connected with career choice, intended professional path, and pedagogical focus. This paper identifies and discusses three forms of modeling – disciplinary, mentoring, and empowering – which influence pre-service teachers in powerful and enduring ways. These forms of modeling expand our understanding of teachers’ career intentions and apply the apprenticeship of observation to planned career paths. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper takes up two important issues in the professional development of university teachers: the controversy surrounding reflective inquiry and its purported benefits for professional development and the lack of research on what teachers learn from reflective inquiry and how that affects and/or changes their professional practice. 1 Specifically, the article asks what is reflective engagement and to what uses do university faculty put reflective engagement over time? Drawing on data from a study of 20 faculty members of the National University of Ireland at University College Cork (UCC) who created a teaching portfolio to compete for an award for excellence in teaching, I first demonstrate empirically how a greater conscious awareness of the act of teaching is facilitated by the creation of a reflective teaching portfolio. Then, through brief case studies, I examine specific uses three UCC teachers made of insights from their portfolio reflections and how they redirected their practice because of what they discovered. Patterns of redirection suggest that professional development through reflective engagement results from a subtle interaction of personal, professional and institutional elements. I offer a refined definition of reflective engagement and its processes to contribute to current discussions about a needed, shared understanding of it to carry out research and I present a small set of vignettes to suggest potential hypotheses for future investigations of its effects and meaning in the professional lives of university teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two inservice teachers participated in an online master’s course focused on multiple literacies. Their learning in the course is used as a means to explore what teachers need to know about multiple literacies in order to adapt their instruction in the context of prescribed reading programs. This essay presents how both teachers navigated their programmatic reading curriculum constraints and used their knowledge of multiple literacies and new literacies in their pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores teacher training by the alternation of classroom work and work analysis using an approach based on a social conception of meaning and action. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the development of professional activity in preservice teachers (PTs) to be assessed by tracking how the reflective tools acquired in training evolve in work and/or work analysis situations. The concepts of 'meaning' and 'expectation' are helpful in discussing the empirical data from a research program designed to evaluate the potential for PTs' professional development offered by the alternating work/analysis programs of French University Institutes of Teacher Training. The main conclusions concern the need to organize PTs' professional experiences within a training network so that PTs are not left on their own to face the diverse and complex situations of daily professional exercise. The effective procedures are those that allow PTs to construct concrete and circumstance-based expectations that the professional rules they have learned are still operational. These expectations help PTs to efficiently calibrate and interpret the meaning of their work experience, while also allowing them to prepare to act differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two decades teachers in many countries have found themselves facing new demands and changes. In his ‘intensification thesis’ Apple made a powerful attempt to conceptualize and explain these changes: the growing economic and management oriented perspective on education leads to intensification of teachers' work, implying deskilling and deprofessionalization. This article argues for three refinements of this ‘intensification thesis’. First, the experience of intensification is not only induced by changes at the macro level, but there appear to be multiple sources for intensification. Secondly, the intensification impact does not operate in a linear and automatic way, but is mediated. Finally, the impact of intensification turns out to be different among different teachers. Thus, we argue for an alternative form of professionalization (as an answer to the growing intensification of teachers' work) through the acknowledgement of teachers' specific knowledge base as well as the need to develop it (even if this implies more work). Teachers' professional development therefore needs to go hand in hand with efforts to ‘buffer’ the threat of intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the practice of teacher education, most would agree that critical reflection in and on the process of learning to teach and the activities of teaching play a central role in teachers' professional development. Using Vygotskian sociocultural theory, we examine how narrative inquiry functions as a culturally developed tool that mediates teachers' professional development. We analyzed narratives written by three teachers of English as a second/foreign language set in three different instructional contexts. Our analysis suggests an interwoven connection between emotion and cognition, which drove these teachers to search for mediational tools to help them externalize their experiences. The activity of engaging in narrative inquiry created a mediational space where teachers were able to draw upon various resources, such as private journals, peers and `expert' or theoretical knowledge, that allow them to reconceptualize and reinternalize new understandings of themselves as teachers and their teaching activities. The intersection of experiential and `expert' knowledge provided a discourse through which these teachers named experiences and constructed a basis upon which they grounded their transformed understandings of themselves as teachers and their teaching. Depending on where these teachers were in their professional development when they wrote their narratives, we uncovered evidence of idealized conceptions of teaching with commitment to action as well as the transformation of teachers' material activities. Implications for the role teachers' narrative inquiry may play in teacher education programs are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers with seven years of teaching experience or less (n = 10) participating in a large-scale mathematics professional development program in the United States were interviewed. The goal of this qualitative study was to better understand less experienced teachers' reactions to professional development and professional support in the teaching profession. The interview data indicate that these less experienced mathematics teachers are not satisfied with their mentors or collaboration in their department and would welcome opportunities for classroom observations. In addition, these teachers were disappointed and surprised at their more experienced peers' lack of mathematics content knowledge. The results of this study have direct implications for the structure and philosophy for professional development to better serve incoming and less experienced teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]