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Student engagement in higher education has attracted worldwide attention in recent years because of its strong correlation with positive outcomes of student learning and also, increasingly, because of its influence on a consumer-oriented global education market. Such issues come into sharp focus in the case of China, currently the largest international market for higher education in Western Europe, Australia, and North America. As a growing number of Chinese universities become global players, they are competing with their Western European, Australian, and North American counterparts for a burgeoning home market of more discerning and cost conscious consumers. Nevertheless, limited attention has been paid by the higher education sector as to how student engagement is conceptualized by those consumers and what factors inform and influence their perceptions and choices. This case study of undergraduate student engagement at a Chinese university attempts to begin to answer these questions. It analyzed data collected through interviews and focus groups to investigate student and staff conceptualizations of student engagement and the factors that influenced it. The factors were categorized into external factors (contextual and institutional) and internal factors (personal). A sociocultural analysis identified three issues: "transition," "lack of student-staff interaction," and "shock students."

This article focuses on a virtual research environment (VRE) and how it facilitated the networking of teacher educators participating in an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research capacity-building project. Using the theoretical lenses of situated learning and socio-cultural approaches to literacy, participants' ways of engaging with this technology are described, and the reasons why their existing technical expertise did not unproblematically transfer to the new technology are explored. We argue that three main factors affected the use of the VRE, and in particular its wiki tool: the individual's motivation to learn and to engage with (more) new technologies; the emerging dynamics of each research group as they developed shared working practices; and the institutional climates, which supported or discouraged the individuals' engagement with both the technology and a regional Teacher Education Research Network that used this technology. In conclusion, we suggest that successful engagement with new technologies in future academic communities of practice might well benefit from a shared commitment to agreed working practices across the group and the provision of brokerage and championing of the technology by key individuals who are in the position to inspire, motivate and support others. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)

This paper reports on the Teacher Education Research Network (TERN) initiative, which piloted a model for research capacity building in teacher education in the North West of England with the aim of providing early and mid career researchers from seven regional universities with opportunities for professional learning and development. It explores the intricate dynamics of the learning journeys undertaken by the participants and critically examines the structural, social and cultural factors involved in the navigation of the complex ecologies in which they were embedded as teacher educators and how this impacted on their learning. It concludes that initiatives such as TERN can result in academic learning and professional development, but in view of the internal and external pressures confronting education departments today it also raises pertinent issues with regard to the sustainability of such projects. As such the paper makes a strong contribution to the growing international literature on academic learning and professional development within a research capacity-building context. (Contains 1 table.)

This article offers an initial account of the Teacher Education Research Network (TERN), a pilot education research capacity building project funded by the ESRC and designed to test a "social practices" model for building an educational research infrastructure across England. The TERN project is still running at the time of writing, so it is not yet possible to offer a full evaluation or a theorised analysis of the project. Setting the initiative within the regional context of teacher education in the North West of England, the article describes elements of the project and begins to explore their significance, drawing on early evaluation data. The article adapts Charles Desforges' equation of research capacity building as "Capacity = expertise x motivation x opportunities" as a frame for this exploration. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 1 note.)

This paper presents a critical overview of the way in which higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK have had their research activity subject to review. There have been six such reviews to date, the first two carried out by the Universities Grants Committee and, from 1992, by its replacement, the four UK higher education (HE) funding bodies (HE Funding Council for England, HE Funding Council for Wales, the Scottish HE Funding Council and the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland). The paper provides a broad outline of the key elements of the process, focusing on the two more recent research reviews and their impact on the subject of education, with the references providing specific detail for those interested in the minutiae of the reviews. (Contains 6 tables.)

Over the last 15 years, initial teacher education in England has been established as a national system, closely controlled by the government. One of the consequences of this move is that teacher education is now intimately bound up with changing national politics and policy priorities which reach down into the finest of detail of provision. In this paper, we focus on the way in which politics and policy have impacted on one of the defining features of teacher education provision in England--that of "partnership". In particular we examine the way in which the concept and practice of partnership has been transformed in line with New Labour's "Third Way" politics. In order to do this, we reflect on our recent evaluation of the National Partnership Project, an initiative established by the Training and Development Agency for Schools to increase the quality and quantity of schools' involvement in initial teacher education. (Contains 1 note.)

This article reviews the processes, issues and dilemmas involved in evaluation research undertaken in the context of changing and evolving government policy in education. The article is grounded in an evaluation of the National Partnership Project (NPP), the team conducted on behalf of England's Teacher Training Agency (TTA) in 2004-2005. It will not present a critique of partnership in England, but will draw on perspectives of partnership to provide some background information to the project. It will also discuss the processes of evaluation research in the context of frameworks from recent and relevant research and will raise issues for future commissioned evaluation research to address. (Contains 1 note.)

This article examines the professional learning accruing from school-based initial teacher education (ITE) within the wider policy debate on school performance. It contrasts the very positive perceptions reported by teachers on the contribution of involvement in ITE to their professional learning with the less than fulsome attitude of school inspectors. Evidence is drawn from questionnaire responses from primary school ITE coordinators and mentor-teachers in the north-west of England, text searches of primary school inspection reports and quantitative data collected by Ofsted. It concludes that a more explicit emphasis on initial teacher education in school inspections would give due recognition to the important role played by ITE and make it easier to promote the professional learning and school improvement outcomes which derive from school-based initial teacher education. (Contains 5 tables.) [Appended to this document is: "Regression results of the determinants of Key Stage 2 and Ofsted averages."]

A common strategy employed by wealthy industrial nations for dealing with short-term skill deficits is to recruit internationally; such was the case, around the millennium, when a teacher supply crisis occurred in the United Kingdom (UK). That immediate crisis is now over; yet irrespective of peaks and troughs, international teacher migration is steadily rising and the trend looks set to continue. Despite this, little quality information on multinational movement is available to inform workforce modelling. Apart from the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol, little systematic consideration has been given to strategically managing migration to be of positive benefit to all stakeholders, and in particular to meliorating the impact upon vulnerable source countries. This article reports findings from an empirical study carried out in the period 2001 to 2006 which triangulated perspectives of overseas trained teachers, head teachers, policy makers, teacher supply and recruitment agencies and key stakeholders from source countries. The teachers, the majority of whom were recruited from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, were both older and more experienced than is customarily thought. The study found the impact of recruitment policy and practice on the resources and workforce of source nations to be extremely varied and to involve a complex nexus of factors.

The education and training of teachers is an issue of national concern. In this paper we analyse the findings of an in-depth investigation, undertaken by means of semi structured interviews, of a group of minority ethnic teacher trainees who withdrew from Initial Teacher Training courses in England, and a smaller group of those who completed these courses. We focus, in particular, on trainees' perception of the manifestation of racism during their training. Though none of the minority ethnic withdrawers perceive racism as the determining factor for their withdrawal, some mention instances of covert and even overt racism, while others note subtle forms of discriminatory obstacles to successful completion of the course, which they are reluctant to label as racism. The paper concludes by pointing to the complexity of categorizing phenomena as racism. It also draws attention, on the one hand, to the vulnerability of those who view themselves as being racially abused, and, on the other, to those who are disinclined to dwell on barriers to success as forms of racism and are more predisposed to regarding them as failures of the system.

In this paper we examine the discourses of Primary school numeracy coordinators responsible for auditing, monitoring and supporting their colleagues in relation to the introduction and embedding of the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) in the UK. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) focuses our analysis on the contradictory coupling of school, NNS and audit systems with our R&D project through boundary objects and crossers. We achieve this through an analysis of the registers and genres adopted in teachers' reflective discourses, and their relation to contradictory activities. Their often conflicted narratives indicate contradictions between these systems. We find inquiry hybridised with audit and inflected by its collegial negotiation. We also find dialogical inquiry mediated by the collegial discourse of practice, and our R&D group mediated by a critical discourse of reflexivity. The theoretical articulation of the CHAT approach to discourse through Halliday and Hasan's conceptions of register and genre is discussed.

This article reports the findings of a research project which examines the reasons why minority ethnic trainees withdraw from teacher training courses. It highlights a number of issues, the most significant of which is that withdrawal is a process and not an event. The most common causes of withdrawal were "personal" and "family" reasons. However, the combination of these two factors with various issues to do with the initial teacher training (ITT) institution and the placement school made it impossible for most trainees to stay on the course. With the exception of perceptions of racism by some minority ethnic trainees, the reasons for withdrawal given by majority ethnic and minority ethnic trainees were by and large the same. The article concludes by suggesting a number of strategies for ITT institutions and placement schools to improve the retention of trainees. It emphasizes the need for better support from ITT institutions, more structured mentoring during school placements, continuous and effective communication between the ITT institutions and placement schools, flexibility in course structure, improved funding, availability of affordable childcare, and the tackling of discrimination. It also stresses that withdrawal is not necessarily final, and these trainees should be encouraged to return to teaching as many enjoyed the course and would make good teachers. (Contains 8 tables.)

The use of video evidence as a vehicle for promoting discussion and critical reflection is well established in educational literature in the field of professional development and is gradually becoming more accepted as a research method. There is general agreement also that in relation to image-based research the combination of video evidence of practice and professional dialogue promote critical reflection and can be instrumental in bringing about changes to that practice. Our aim in this paper is firstly to explore briefly our use of video images as a catalyst for promoting rich dialogue that supports multiple perspectives, meanings and interpretations of classroom events. We describe from a very practical perspective the trials and tribulations of developing a methodology for collecting and analyzing video recordings of classroom practice. Secondly, we describe our attempts to capture and narrate the experience as a multimodal account (Kress & Leeuwen, 2001 ) for dissemination purposes. The experience of coming to understand and work with the possibilities and constraints offered by the integration of media such as graphic/video image, text, music and becoming familiar with the language of 'roll-overs', 'one-stop-shops', 'rendering' was for us a very steep learning curve which proved both exciting and challenging.

Currently in the UK there is much pressure to increase the recruitment and retention of ethnic minority teachers, not only to respond to the continuing shortage, but to develop a teaching force that reflects the diversity in the UK population and provides role models for ethnic minority students. There is, however, little research on how ethnic minority teachers cope with the demands of the profession, especially in their first year. The introduction by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) of an induction period for Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) in 1999 was an attempt to create a programme of individual support and monitoring to provide NQTs with a bridge from Initial Teacher Training (ITT) to becoming established in their chosen profession. We believe it is now timely and important to examine how ethnic minority beginning teachers experience these new arrangements. In this paper we, therefore, explore the induction experiences of British teachers of Asian and African Caribbean origin in three Local Education Authorities (LEAs) in the North West of England. We conclude that the NQTs are being provided with equal opportunities by their employers and that affirmative action may have been undertaken by a few of these employers during the recruitment and selection process, although some anecdotal evidence is also presented of discrimination. Further, the paper suggests that the majority of the NQTs find their schools and LEAs supportive and the induction process valuable, although it highlights the need for additional support in some individual cases.

Discusses nature of professional identity, focusing on teachers and nurses, and articulates view of "professional" as "caught between an 'economy of performance' and various 'ecologies of practice'." Rejects over-simplified understanding of "professional" identity and advocates embracing "ambivalence and contradiction" within professional identities rather than trying to "reduce or resolve them." (Contains 115 references.) (KSB)

Offers an interpretation of the dynamics of home-school relations in terms of a matrix of "mobilisations" and "demolisations" among parents, teachers, and children based upon data collected in an action research and development project. Aims to establish some bases for practical and theoretical "manoeuvers." (CMK)

Reports on research, undertaken at the Manchester Metropolitan University (England), on primary student teachers' understanding of mathematics and its teaching. Investigates how non-specialist teachers conceptualize mathematics and its teaching and the development of their views throughout an initial training course. (CMK)