This narrative literature analysis examines the storylines of rural teachers told through published research on rural teachers. Using a narrative analysis approach, we investigated research published between 1970 and 2010—four decades of ruraloriented education research and policy work. Four storylines emerged from our coding of rural-related education research: (1) rural teachers are professio...

Teachers Participating in Professional Learning Activities: The Role of Personal, Organizational, and Administrative Factors   M. AhmadYoosofi* H. Motaharinejaad, Ph.D. ** H. Aazari, Ph.D. ***   To help with the improvement in professional learning of teachers the opinions of 190 elementary school teachers on developmental leadership, cooperation among teachers, internalization ...

This study investigates the profile of Chinese pre-service mathematics teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) through a sample of 106 people. An adapted scale was developed and validated in the survey. From the data collected from the scale, the findings reveal that Chinese pre-service mathematics teachers rated themselves as most competent in the factor of Content Knowle...

This thesis concerns the process of student teachers ́ learning to teach primary science and is based on four studies involving primary science student teachers during their teacher education program. The overall question that the thesis intends to investigate is in which ways student teachers’ learning about teaching can be illustrated and understood in terms of the critical aspects that are ex...

Implementation of inquiry-based curriculum materials has been a challenge in science education. Recent research points to the importance of coherence in professional development as a means to improving implementation. Policy researchers have defined coherence in terms of alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessment is key to supporting implementation, while teacher learning researchers ha...

EFL teachers’ professional identity is a multi-dimensional and complicated concept. It is influenced by many other issues in the educational context such as reflective practice. This study intended to explore the relationship between professional identity and reflectivity of Iranian EFL teachers. It also aimed to examine how high and low reflective teachers perceive the professional identity co...

The purpose of this case study is to describe the challenges one coach faced during the initial implementation of a coaching initiative involving 33 teachers in an urban, high-poverty elementary school. Reading coaches are increasingly expected to play a key role in the professional development efforts to improve reading instruction in order to improve reading achievement for struggling readers...

Three recent random assignment studies from the Institute of Education Sciences evaluated teacher professional development (PD) programs in different grades in reading and mathematics. The PD examined in the three studies emphasized building teachers’ content knowledge and their knowledge about content-specific pedagogy. The PD, which was based mostly on commercially available programs, combine...

Groupware is often regarded as an important tool for facilitating team collaboration. However, most theoretical findings are obtained by using students as subjects. We are interested in knowing the practicability of groupware embedded in a professional community of practice. To gain insights into the reality of knowledge sharing and creation through collaborative technologies in a real setting,...

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact on student achievement of elementary school teachers who participated in professional development in the content area of mathematics. Teachers participated in professional development courses and have accumulated a range from three to eighteen total credits from the summers of 1998 through 2007. The impact is measured by student achievement d...