Because of the importance of instructor success in the adequacy of instruction and learning, this study aimed to explain the impact of two factors, namely language teachers’ professional identity and autonomy, with respect to their success. To this end, 190 Iranian EFL teachers, including university lecturers and language institute teachers, participated in this study. As for data collection, t...

In this discussion on the development of expertise in teaching, a theory of skill learning is first presented. The characteristics of five stages of skill development in teachers are described: (1) novice; (2) advanced beginner; (3) competent teacher; (4) proficient teacher; and (5) expert teacher. A review of data collected by studies on the subject of teaching expertise points out differences...

This article explores content area pre-service teacher beliefs about disciplinary knowledge, perceptions of effective content area teaching, and existing beliefs about how to integrate literacy into the content areas. Ten pre-service teachers across ten secondary content areas were asked to describe three important variables in secondary teaching: 1) the knowledge of their content area, 2) char...

OBJECTIVES To determine if there is a relationship between overweight and behavior problems among children as young as 5 years old by studying the association between overweight and behavioral health at entry into kindergarten and to determine whether overweight status is a risk factor for the onset of new behavior problems during the first 2 years in school. DESIGN We use data from a nationa...

While learner-centered language teaching has been advocated in higher education in recent years, teacher-centered teaching styles may be still dominant in actual practice. Since previous studies have revealed conflicting results on the relations between variables such as gender, degree obtained, and course type, with the perceived teaching styles, this study also examines the correlation betwee...

In this project, the clichéd ‘student-centred’ versus ‘teacher-centred’ dichotomy has been reconceptualized in terms of the distribution of responsibility for knowledge generation in the classroom and applied in the analysis of ‘well-taught’ mathematics classrooms in Melbourne, Hong Kong, San Diego and Shanghai. This analytical approach enabled the practices of competent teachers in two ‘Asian’...

This paper presents a qualitative evaluation of seven in-service environmental education teacher training courses conducted in the Czech Republic in 2009ñ2011. The evaluation applied a grounded theory approach. 14 focus groups, 13 interviews and two postprogramme questionnaires were used. The evaluation describes a process of managing cognitive dissonance between the participantsí concepts of e...

Facebook is a popular social networking site, which has potential for teaching and learning. In this study, we explored different ways of using Facebook in three cases at a teacher training institute. In these cases, teachers used Facebook as an interactive learning management system to put up announcements, organize weekly sessions, and share resources with students; students used Facebook to ...

Aimed at the current shortages that exist in the practice and training of an engineering automation specialty in the undergraduate level courses in Chinese universities, the CDIO method (Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate) was applied to reform education and training. To optimise the outcomes, Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate was combined with project teaching. The teacher training, proje...