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Although research on teacher collaboration has proliferated in the last few decades, scant attention has been paid to the development of teacher collaboration in school contexts. Informed by the perspective of complexity theory, this study investigates the complex process of teacher collaboration through qualitative interviews in an English teaching research group (TRG) in a secondary school in China. The findings reveal three distinct stages in the development of teacher collaboration, labeled as ‘breaking the ice’, ‘everything is out of control’ and ‘learning how to collaborate through collaboration’. The study shows that teacher collaboration is an adaptive, complex system that evolves through internal self-organization and interaction with external stakeholders and systems, such as school management and university researchers. The study provides useful insights into the ways of facilitating and sustaining teachers’ collaborative practices to enhance school effectiveness and improvement in specific educational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships between teacher and students are interdependent and rely on their mutual interaction. In the classroom, teaching involves daily face-to-face encounters between students and teachers and therefore could be considered a moral as well as an academic issue. A central question is how the teacher can establish and support a learning community in diverse classrooms where the different learners are recognized as participants, not just as recipients. In this article, a situation from a science lesson has been selected as a case to highlight/illuminate teaching as creating space for participation. The theoretical framework used in this discussion underlines participation as intersubjectively dependent. This perspective points to the ambiguity and uncertainty embedded in teaching and learning situations. It also emphasizes the importance of the teacher's role in inviting students into meaning-making processes. Special attention is paid to essential features of teaching as creating space for participation; 'the act of holding back', 'the act of passing on' and 'the act of non-valuing'. Teaching as creating space for participation is also discussed as an issue that needs greater attention in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reflective practice has potentially positive effects on an organization’s capacity to focus on student learning and teaching practices. In an effort to comply with policy and provide teachers with opportunities to reflect on their practice, districts, schools, and teachers have turned to various models that feature collaborative experiences. One such model is the Critical Friends Group (CFG), focusing on the improvement of practice and learning experiences for children, using protocol-driven structured conversations. This article examines the mechanisms that support and sustain reflective practice within a community of practice and utilizes Wenger’s three dimensions of practice – mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire. The study followed a CFG in an elementary school using ethnographic case study methods to conduct a close examination of CFG meetings, protocol use, and analysis of teacher interviews. The propensity to ‘look out’ at school-wide issues vs. looking in at classroom practices, perceptions about feedback on classroom practice, and using protocols to guide conversation emerged from the data as prominent mechanisms in communities of practice. CFG facilitators and coaches, as well as participants must be explicit about the purposes of their work and protocol use alone does not ensure a focus on student learning and teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper suggests a conjunction between the learning space of educational edge community (EEC) and the Deleuzeguattarian thought regarding the nature of teachers’becoming. It attends to the emerging subjectivities of teachers/learners within an EEC, a nomadic, open, and smooth space of learning. It is suggested that autonomous learning processes that are enabled in nomadic spaces provide the freedom that is essential for the immanent growth of complexity that leads to creative becomings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores how one specially prepared, accomplished teacher managed dilemmas that arose as she worked to enact responsive language arts instruction with English Learners in a policy context that privileged high-stakes accountability and standardization. Drawing on sociocultural learning theory, the article illustrates how the teacher’s sense of self – who she ‘wanted to be’ – informed her engagement with educational policy. Ultimately, we argue that the teacher’s identity pressed her to engage in acts of appropriation and authorship vis-à-vis the policies and policy-related tools she was asked to implement. In making this argument, we theorize an agentive and dialectical relationship between teachers’ identities and their participation in policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teaching postcolonial literature can be a daunting undertaking that teachers may try to avoid. This article explores three problems that teachers may confront in teaching postcolonial texts. The first problem deals with which literary text to choose and the criteria that may help teachers anchor their choices. Second, in response to the question of how teachers pedagogically assist students to correct preconceived notions and deconstruct stereotypes, this article proposes three stages of creating and recreating spaces that interact and ultimately assist students generate meaning. Students move from prior knowledge into an informed reality guided by the teacher and then into the world of the text in a process that involves collaborative learning, reinventing conceptual realities and the concretization of literary texts. Third, I examine how to approach postcolonial texts by utilizing Iser’s aesthetic act of reading. The work posits a teaching model of three phases that help students interact and eventually unlock assumed unfamiliarity with postcolonial texts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

System-based and collaborative teacher inquiry has unexplored potential that can impact educational policy in numerous ways. This impact can be increased when teacher inquiry builds momentum from classrooms and teaching practices and simultaneously addresses district, state, and national discourses and networks. In this conceptual paper, I encourage scholars and practitioners to consider ways to methodologically, theoretically, and collectively strengthen teacher research and inquiry to increase its impact on policy. I propose a methodological framework for policy-oriented teacher inquiry that highlights multilayered research approaches and collaborative inquiry. I situate my arguments and the proposed framework in the context of qualitative research and Marx’s dialectic method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research examines two images of teachers as seen by students of education: the ideal teacher and their own self-image as teachers. The research compares the students' perceptions of these two images using two sub-groups of students of education: students at an academic teachers' college who will be referred to as student teachers and beginning teachers, who, while teaching, are completing their academic degrees at teachers' colleges or regional academic colleges. Data were collected from 89 students at the two colleges by means of a questionnaire that included open-ended questions which were analyzed qualitatively. The findings of the research indicate that there are two major categories that comprise perceptions of the ideal teacher: first, personal qualities; and second, knowledge of the subject taught as well as didactic knowledge. Both groups of students similarly attributed great importance to the personal qualities of the ideal teacher, but there is a difference in their perception of the importance of knowledge: the beginning teachers attributed great importance to knowledge and perceived it as a quality similar in importance to personal characteristics, while the student teachers, who had not begun their teaching careers, attributed less importance to knowledge as a characteristic of the ideal teacher. A quality which was less prominent when profiling the ideal teacher is general education and wide perspectives. The teacher as a socializing agent, a person who promotes social goals, was not mentioned at all. Students maintained that, during their studies, they had improved their qualities as 'empathetic and attentive' teachers, 'knowledgeable in teaching methods', and in 'leadership'. But they had hardly improved their knowledge of the subject they taught or their level of general knowledge. The discussion of knowledge and the desirable personal qualities of a teacher is relevant to the current debate regarding the relative merits of disciplinary education in contrast to pedagogical education in preparation for teaching as a profession. The clear preference for disciplinary education by policy makers in Israel and elsewhere in the field of teacher education is contradictory to the emphasis placed on the personal development of future teachers and their pedagogical education by the students of education who participated in this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst there is a growing body of literature on practitioner research and the role of collaborations and partnerships that include universities in that process, there are relatively few studies examining the role of the university in any depth. We reflect on 12 years of working in school-university collaborative research partnerships through an analysis of the exchanges between teachers and academics as documented by interviews, case studies and project reports. We draw upon a sample of 90 teachers in 51 schools covering all phases of compulsory schooling. Focusing on the exchanges between the university and partnership schools, we extend the idea of radical collegiality to encompass teacher to academic dialogue in the process of mutual transformation. We contribute to the development of greater conceptual clarity regarding school-university research partnerships and their potential to contribute to the creation and translation of knowledge about teaching and learning. The interplay of the project as the context, the role of enquiry and the development and use of tools by the participants is outlined and a model for understanding the dynamics of school-university partnerships proposed. We suggest that the project as a space- and time-limited context inclusive of partner institutions may have the scope to reconcile the tension between an impetus for exclusive bonding and the flexibility of bridging across structures in social networks. We conclude that the model of the exchanges between partners is fruitful in unravelling the relationship between theory and practice in the pursuit of knowledge about teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore how experienced teachers learn informally, and more specifically, how they learn through the activities they undertake when teaching classes. Regarding these activities we studied four aspects: behaviour, cognition, motivation and emotion. During one year, data were collected through observations of and interviews with four experienced teachers. For the analysis we used Eraut's distinction into three types of learning which differ in the degree of consciousness that is involved. We found several activities that represented each of these types of learning. The findings demonstrate how cognitive, affective, motivational and behavioural aspects are interrelated in classroom teaching and that learning from classroom teaching occurs at several levels of awareness. Hence, we argue that a theory of teacher learning should account for activities involved in the alignment of behaviour to plan and for the role of motivation and emotion. The findings suggest that fruitful development of the quality of teaching requires more attention for the relation between teachers' cognition, emotion, motivation and behaviour, and for promoting teachers' awareness of their implicit beliefs and behavioural tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]