Forms and substance in learner-centred teaching: teachers’ take-up from an in-service programme in South Africa

In this paper we examine the ways in which teachers, enrolled on an in-service programme in South Africa, have taken up learner-centred practices. We introduce the notions of forms and substance in learner-centred teaching and describe how these are developed in the programme. We then analyse the teachers’ practices in these terms, using data from classroom observations and interviews. We argue that teachers take up learner-centred practices in different ways. The majority of teachers took up the forms without the substance, but some managed to be substantively learner centred.     

Gleaning Meaning from Case Studies in International Comparison: teachers’ experiences of reform in Russia and South Africa

This paper considers how case study approaches may be used cross‐nationally. It outlines five key stages in the process of conducting case study research and of learning from it: selection, verification, cumulation, generalisation, and application. The research used to illustrate these principles is a study of teachers’ experiences of changes in education in post‐communist Russia and post‐apartheid South Africa.     

Computing in the curriculum: Challenges and strategies from a teacher’s perspective

Computing is being introduced into the curriculum in many countries. Teachers’ perspectives enable us to discover what challenges this presents, and also the strategies teachers claim to be using successfully in teaching the subject across primary and secondary education. The study described in this paper was carried out in the UK in 2014 where teachers were preparing for the mandatory inclusion of Computing into the curriculum. A survey was conducted of over 300 teachers who were currently teaching Computing to elicit their perspectives on challenges and strategies. From the analysis of the data, extrinsic and intrinsic challenges were identified for both teachers and students. In addition, a variety of pedagogical strategies were recommended by teachers from their own practice. In categorising approaches taken by teaching to support students five key themes emerged: unplugged type activities, contextualisation of tasks, collaborative learning, developing computational thinking, and scaffolding programming tasks. Further investigation could support whether these strategies can alleviate the challenges of teaching and learning of Computing for students and teachers. In particular developing student resilience in Computing is seen as a challenge while not many strategies are suggested. The results of this study will be useful for teachers who are new to the teaching of Computing.     

Conceptualising teachers’ assessment literacies in an era of curriculum and assessment reform

Teacher assessment literacy is a phrase that is often used but rarely defined. Yet understanding teacher assessment literacy is important in an international curriculum and assessment reform context that continues to challenge teachers’ assessment practices. In this article situated examples of classroom assessment literacies are analysed using Bernstein’s (Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research and critique, Taylor and Francis, London, 1996; Br J Sociol Educ 20(2):157–173, 1999) theoretical tools of vertical and horizontal discourses, classification and framing. Drawing on a sociocultural view of learning, the authors define teacher assessment literacies as dynamic social practices which are context dependent and which involve teachers in articulating and negotiating classroom and cultural knowledges with one another and with learners, in the initiation, development and practice of assessment to achieve the learning goals of students. This conceptualisation of assessment literacy aims to make explicit some underpinning theoretical constructs of assessment literacy to inform dialogue and decision making for policy and practice to benefit student learning and achievement.     

Provision of in-service training of mathematics and science teachers in Botswana: teachers’ perspectives

Teaching is a field that is dynamic, with innovations necessitating upgrading of skills and education of teachers for the successful implementation of reforms. The behaviour and attitudes of teachers towards teaching and learning and their knowledge banks are the result of the impact of in-service training. This study investigated the perceptions of mathematics and science teachers in Botswana towards in-service provision by the Department of Mathematics and Science Education In-service Training unit (DMSE-INSET), whose mandate is to improve the quality of teaching by supporting teachers through training programmes that enable them to take ownership of their professional development. Data were collected from a sample of 42 senior Mathematics and Science secondary school teachers, using structured interviews with open-ended questions, which were analyzed qualitatively. The findings show that teachers’ concerns included the lack of impact of current in-service training programmes on the education system, no regular follow-up activities to support the one-off workshops and insufficient skills acquired to sustain the implementation of the strategies solicited by the workshops.     

Societal culture and teachers’ responses to curriculum reform: experiences from China

Educational change is intrinsically bound to the cultural characteristics of the society. However, the relationship between educational change and societal culture is rarely explored, especially in the context of mainland China. Following a 3-year qualitative research project, the present study explored the influence of societal culture on teachers’ responses to the national curriculum reform of upper secondary education in mainland China. The results generated three themes highly relevant to teachers’ responses to curriculum reform in Chinese culture, namely teachers’ obedience, teachers’ facework and teachers’ collaboration. These teachers’ responses reflected some Confucian ethics rooted in Chinese culture and explained the absence of radical teacher resistance to the national curriculum reform. It was suggested that a culturally sensitive approach to change leadership may have been more fruitful for facilitating the aims of curriculum reform in mainland China.     

District professional development models as a way to introduce primary‐school teachers to natural science curriculum reforms in one district in South Africa

This paper reports on a study that investigated whether district continued professional development (CPD) sufficiently prepared teachers for their classroom practice. Analysis of CPD models used with primary‐school natural science teachers in a district in the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa was conducted. Findings indicated that the district CPD models used with the teachers did not address the various challenges and complexities within the district and therefore created several challenges that negatively impacted on the success of the new curriculum reforms. It is argued that successful CPD models should address both the internal and external factors that influence individuals' understanding of new reforms and their social practice. Thus, it is proposed that each district should develop a context‐based CPD model that captures and addresses issues that are likely to impact teacher learning and classroom practice in their particular context.     

Language teachers’ conceptions of assessment: an Egyptian perspective

The current study investigates the assessment conceptions of both pre-service and in-service English teachers within a high-stakes, test-driven context in Egypt. For this purpose, 170 Egyptian pre-service and in-service teachers completed an assessment conceptions questionnaire. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis were employed to answer the research questions. The results of the study showed in-service teachers preferring a combination of formative and summative assessment practices while pre-service teachers favored a relatively summative paradigm. With regard to functions of assessment, in-service teachers endorsed the improvement function of assessment more than the pre-service group. Both groups had negative perceptions about the effectiveness of teacher training programs. The study provides a number of implications for language teachers, teacher educators, and policy-makers.     

Exploring teachers’ curriculum decision making: insights from history education

This paper explores teachers’ decision making by examining the topics that 11 history teachers from 10 schools in England chose to teach and how they approached teaching these topics. Data were gathered from curriculum documents and semi-structured interviews in which teachers’ topic choices and approaches to history were explored. Most teachers adopted a disciplinary approach to history teaching but one focused on analytical structures rather than processes. Additionally the findings suggest a large degree of uniformity in the topics chosen despite the freedom provided within the policy documents for history teaching in England. Few teachers had given much consideration to approaches that demonstrate the ‘usability’ of history for young people. This suggests a need to engage teachers more fully in robust curriculum debates given their central role in enacting curricula.     

History curriculum and teacher training: shaping a democratic future in post-apartheid South Africa?

ABSTRACT

Issues of transitional justice are central to countries moving away from identity-based conflict. Research tends to focus on the most well-known forms of transitional justice, like truth commissions. Far less attention has been given to education as a form of transitional justice, and even less to teacher professional development, even though education is central to signalling the new society and teachers are expected to become agents of change in their classrooms. This article focusses on history curriculum change in post-apartheid South Africa. We show how the post-apartheid South African government developed a human rights-based history curriculum but failed to support teachers to implement it. Aspects of these inadequacies included a failure to take into account the de-skilling of a large segment of the teaching population under apartheid and teachers’ personal legacies of that era. Through a review of the teacher professional development programme, Facing the Past, this article demonstrates the possibility to implement teacher training programmes attuned to the particular needs of a transitional justice environment.     

Head teachers’ spirituality and inclusive education: a perspective from critical realism

ABSTRACT

Spiritual leadership gains attention amongst researchers for closing the gap between achieving personal and organisational goals. Despite documentations that spirituality undergirds head teacher’s actions leading inclusive schools, research still remains thin in understanding how spirituality underpins leadership for inclusive education. This paper draws on the philosophy of critical realism to offer a conceptual tool that identifies head teachers’ spiritual actions in their efforts to include ethnic minority students. This is done through multiple qualitative methods collection from an in-depth case study at a multicultural primary school in Cyprus. The critical realist framework helps uncover head teacher’s spiritual actions in a more systematic, structured and holistic way. It reveals that head teachers’ spirituality supports the goals of inclusion and occurs in at least four interrelated and emergent ontological levels (psychological, social, cultural and policy levels) which are set in four scaler levels from microscopic to macroscopic (sub-individual, micro, meso and macro levels). This framework problematises mono-dimensional and reductionist understandings of spirituality in leadership. The paper concludes by suggesting solutions to enrich leadership programmes for inclusive education with fostering leaders’ spirituality at different ontological levels.     

Addressing contradictions in teachers’ practice through professional learning: an activity theory perspective

ABSTRACT

This case study focuses on the professional learning of 38 K-9 teachers who engaged in a professional development (PD) programme in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) through collaborative action research (CAR). Through the lens of CHAT or Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the author examined what teachers were learning, the contextual factors that influenced their learning and classroom practice, and the outcomes of this PD initiative. The changing activity system of the teachers is described, as well as how they addressed contradictions in their practice. Addressing these contradictions resulted in an expansion of their object and professional growth. The study contributes to a growing body of research in teacher education which applies CHAT as a conceptual framework to understand teacher professional learning and how interactions among activity system components influence teachers’ development and practice.     

Quality of religious education in Croatia assessed from teachers’ perspective

The main aim of the present study was to examine the quality of religious education in Croatian primary schools when assessed from teachers’ perspective. Religious education teachers (N?=?226) rated the impact of certain factors on the existing quality of religious education in primary schools and expressed their expectations about the future status of this aspect of education. In addition, teachers rated different sources of their professional satisfaction as religious education teachers. We identified understandable latent dimensions of teachers’ opinions, expectations and satisfaction where retained dimensions are modestly interrelated. The conducted regression analyses suggest that teachers with different professional status-related personal attributes are fairly uniform in their views, expectations and satisfactions. An interesting finding of this study concerns the relationship between school-based Catholic religious education and the parish-based catechesis, where an existing relationship represents a weak source of religious education teachers’ satisfaction. This represents a valuable empirically driven insight regarding the Catholic religious education in Croatian schools with some importance to the broader context of religious education in general.     

Being professional: accountability and authority in teachers’ responses to science curriculum reform

The science curriculum is a focus of repeated reform in many countries. However, the enactment of such reforms within schools rarely reflects the intended outcomes of curriculum designers. This review considers what we know about the experiences and reflections of teachers in the enactment of externally driven school science curriculum reform. ‘Externally driven’ signals a focus on studies of teachers who did not make a proactive choice to adopt a particular curriculum reform initiative. This is a very common experience for teachers in many school systems, and one likely to highlight issues of professionalism and authority that are central to the work of teachers. The review analyses 34 relevant studies. These include studies of teachers’ experiences of national curriculum reform, and also studies focusing on more regional or local curriculum reform activities. The studies examine individual teachers’ beliefs, practices and reflections associated with curriculum reform, the response of teacher communities to reform (e.g. within school departments), and teachers’ (and other stakeholders’) experiences across school systems. A wide range of factors influencing teachers’ responses are identified. These are characterised in terms of personal, internal and external contexts of teachers’ work. The review also highlights issues of authority, professionalism and the process of meaning-making in response to external curriculum reform. The discussion section identifies important areas for future research and gives recommendations for the design of curriculum policies that recognise and support the professionalism of science teachers.     

Fear and efficacy appeals in the classroom: the secondary teachers’ perspective

Previous research has examined the use of classroom fear and efficacy appeals from a student perspective, but little is known about teachers’ views towards fear and efficacy appeals. In this preliminary study, we conducted a survey of 234 secondary school teachers. Results showed that teachers held mixed views towards the use of fear appeals and their domain knowledge of fear appeals, but more homogenous views about efficacy appeals, reassuring messages and domain knowledge of efficacy appeals. There were no differences in the endorsement of fear and efficacy appeals from teachers of differing school general certificate of secondary education performance, however, teachers reported students to be less efficacious from schools whose performance is deemed to be ‘under average’. There were no differences in the endorsement of fear appeals or domain knowledge of fear appeals between novice and experienced teachers. These findings provide a first step in examining fear and efficacy appeals from a teacher perspective.     

Transforming Teacher Education in South Africa: a space‐time perspective

South Africa's most urgent and difficult project is to reconstruct all spheres of public life so as to establish enabling conditions for a flourishing and peaceful democracy. A viable education system with committed, competent and confident teachers is a primary condition for accomplishing these ends. This article offers a critical account of current attempts to transform teacher education and development. Against a sketch of inherited ways of using time and space in teacher education in South Africa, the article assesses change in three ‘spaces‘‐‐public space, evaluative space and pedagogical space‐‐and related changes in time. A fourth space of change‐‐institutional space‐‐is mentioned in so far as it affects the other three. I argue that the main direction of change is from insulated space and interrupted time to porous space and continuous time. While this direction has promising possibilities, it is not without pitfalls.     

Exercising a bounded autonomy: novice and experienced teachers’ adaptations to curriculum materials in an age of accountability

This study explores teachers’ first enactments of a set of theory-based curriculum materials designed to support academic language instruction. Specifically, this multiple case study looks at how six middle school English teachers in three US schools adapted the materials; each case includes a pair of teachers, one novice and one more experienced. All schools were located in the same district where a school performance measurement system was being used to publicly rank schools’ academic performance and growth. Multiple measures were used to look for evidence of adaptations and why teachers made adaptations. We found that all teachers adapted the curriculum, most often in response to either perceived student needs or district reform pressures. In two cases, patterns of adaptation differed by teacher experience; experienced teachers appeared better able to adapt curriculum materials to meet instructional goals. This pattern did not hold up at the third school, where teachers faced greater reform pressures. Taken together, these findings suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the role of school and district policy on teachers’ enactments of theory-based reforms. We conclude with guidance to researchers, instructional leaders and others interested in the potential of theory-based curricula as a lever for improving classroom instruction.     

Addressing computational estimation in the Kuwaiti curriculum: teachers’ views

Computational estimation has not yet established a place in the Kuwaiti national curriculum. An attempt was made to include it during the early 1990s, but it was dropped by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education because of the difficulties teachers had teaching it. In an effort to provide guidance for reintroducing the concept into the curriculum, this study reports on mathematics teachers’ understanding of the meaning of computational estimation and their views about its significance in the elementary and middle school curricula in Kuwait. Data gathered from 59 elementary and middle schools teachers in Kuwait revealed that more than 60% of teachers equate computational estimation with rounding. While two-thirds of the teachers viewed computational estimation to be an important skill for daily life; only one-fifth (20%) saw it as important in mathematics education. More than half of the teachers either disagreed with the idea of teaching computational estimation or only wanted to teach it in limited situations. Most were concerned about the difficulty of learning computational estimation or feared that teaching computational estimation would cause problems with students’ development of standard algorithms for determining an exact answer. These findings reveal the challenge that mathematics educators face in introducing computational estimation into the mathematics curriculum. In order for computational estimation to be taught in elementary and middle school classrooms, teachers need to understand the concept and its value in education. Teacher education needs to focus on helping teachers better understand the concept of computational estimation and appreciate its value for instruction.