Teachers’ judgments in their ability to motivate students and promote learning can play a vital role in determining a student’s performance in the classroom and once a belief has been held for a long time, it can become difficult to change. Utilising a sample of 467 beginner and final year pre-service teachers training to become primary (elementary) and secondary teachers, the aim of this study...

This investigation set out to look into the issue of teachers’ exercise of agency in the Iranian EFL context. More specifically, as part of a larger study, it reports on the ways two Iranian Ministry of Education teachers make sense of and operate in the country’s educational setting under the demands of a centralist system of education. Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson’s (2013) framework of teach...

Considering the paramount importance of writing logical arguments for college students, this study investigated the effect of dynamic assessment (DA) of Toulmin model through teacher- and collective-scaffolding on argument structure and overall quality of argumentative essays of Iranian EFL university learners. In so doing, 45 male and female Iranian EFL learners taking part in the study were r...

Currently, politicians, university representatives, scholars and leading NGOs share a strong belief in the ability of educational systems to generate positive attitudes to sustainable development (SD) among citizens, with the idea of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as perhaps the most apparent expression of this conviction. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether ESD might h...

Teacher training programs in EFL contexts pursue the goal of promoting teaching skills and critical dispositions in prospective and experienced teachers and their ability to reflect on and enhance their mediating roles to maximize learning outcomes. Yet, discrepancies in teachers’ roles during and after the programs are not uncommon and accentuate the need to assess outcomes. This quasi-experim...

This study aimed at investigating the effect of using wikis to develop prospective English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' writing performance. The participants were fourth year prospective EFL teachers at Suez Faculty of Education in Egypt. Thirty prospective EFL teachers participated in each of the experimental and control groups. Both groups were pre-tested by using the Writing Perform...

Introduction In the 16 years since the first Education for All conference at Jomtien, national governments and international donors have invested billions of dollars in programs and reforms designed to improve access to quality education, with a focus on basic education. These education programs have implemented activities designed to address many of the common obstacles to education: school co...

Professional Development is critical for improving and maintaining teacher quality and the effect flows on into the classroom. Factors influencing the success of Professional Development activities include potential for workplace change, the diverse effect and understanding of adult learning principles, subject specificity, effective mentoring and the relevance of the presented material. Releva...

This study documents a teacher-researcher’s presentations of 24 literary works to a class of 28 Taiwanese EFL senior high school students during a fourteen-week experiment, and reports on those students’ perceptions of the texts introduced and their attitudes towards literature in general. In preparing literary texts, the teacher explored the notion of computer assisted literature teaching (CAL...

The UK Centre for Astrobiology (UKCA) was set up in 2011 as a virtual center to contribute to astrobiology research, education, and outreach. After 5 years, we describe this center and its work in each of these areas. Its research has focused on studying life in extreme environments, the limits of life on Earth, and implications for habitability elsewhere. Among its research infrastructure proj...