Little is known about how language teacher educators become, and also develop professionally as, teachers of teachers. One avenue for teacher education professional development is that of teacher research, whereby teacher educators can not only improve their practices in their immediate context but also help develop transformative pedagogies in wider contexts by sharing their research. This volume aims to understand how language teacher educators around the world continue developing professionally by examining their own teaching practices. It seeks to understand the professional gains teacher educators see in conducting research with their own students/future teachers; to promote knowledge democratisation by including teacher educators from under-represented contexts such as Latin America and Africa; to examine language teacher educators’ motivations to write for publication; and to reduce the gap between educational research and educational practice in BA and MA programmes in language teaching.

School Development through Teacher Research – Lesson and Learning Studies in Sweden and Tanzaniapresents the results from a three-year-long joint research project conducted by educational researchers from Tanzania and Sweden. Even though the country contexts differ in social, economic as well as educational conditions, including teacher education and classroom standards, many recurrent education challenges are shared. These include the tendency to make educational reforms with little or no input from professionals. The new educational reforms in both countries put a much higher responsibility on teachers; teachers must be able to organise teaching that enables all students to develop required abilities/competencies. Thus, teachers need tools to develop knowledge that can contribute to their professional knowledge base. With an overall interest in issues of teaching and action research, this joint project aimed to use Lesson and Learning Study as models for developing and improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. The research project was realised through four case studies in each country with a focus on students’ development of specific capabilities and values Science, Vocational Skills/Home and Consumer Studies, English as second language and Mathematics in grades 6-7. Complementing the cases School Development through Teacher Research – Lesson and Learning Studies in Sweden and Tanzania offers an introductory background to Lesson and Learning Studies as models for teacher-driven research and school development. The book is written to support teachers and teacher educators’ wishing to reflect about learning and the struggle of learners to discern various concepts, principles and practices. As well as those who genuinely wish to see serious learning take place, rather than simply seeing content ‘covered’ – including curriculum designers and developers, educational researchers, educational supervisors and leaders and student-teachers as well as students of pedagogy and didactics. We dedicate the book to teacher educators, teachers and school leaders who are seriously striving to enhance students’ learning and understanding in different subject areas.

School-university partnerships have the potential to greatly benefit teaching and learning in PK-12 environments, as well as educator preparation programs. This collaboration is advantageous to teachers, counselors, and administrators. Professional Development Schools and Transformative Partnerships provides a comprehensive look at the design, implementation, and impact of educational initiatives between schools and universities. Including cases and research on existing collaborations, this publication addresses barriers and trends in order to provide direction for successful partnerships in the future. This book is an essential reference source for educational leaders in colleges, schools, and departments of education, as well as leaders of PK-12 schools.

This book advances the theory of action research, analyzing how it can be used to develop autonomy among language teachers. Although acknowledging that the research process is not always linear, the authors proceed according to a clear progression which teachers can adapt to their needs. They provide examples, narratives, questions and tasks, and give multiple ideas for establishing research questions, choosing appropriate methodologies, adapting to existing contexts, and collecting data. They also suggest possible instruments, and give clear instructions for carrying out the most common kinds of statistical procedures, and ideas for presenting, discussing, and writing up research findings. In spite of its practical bias, the book is theoretically and ethically rigorous, and contains an extensive glossary for quick and easy reference. It will appeal to trainee teachers, in-service teachers wanting to expand their own professional horizons or working for a higher qualification, and is an invaluable reference for teacher-educators and scholars.

The International Handbook of Teacher and School Development brings together a collection of research and evidence-based authoritative writings which focus on international teacher and school development. Drawing on research from eighteen countries across seven continents, the forty chapters are grouped into ten themes which represent key aspects of teacher and school development: Issues of Professionalism and Performativity What Being an Effective Teacher Really Means Reason and Emotion in Teaching Schools in Different Circumstances Student Voices in a Global Context Professional Learning and Development Innovative Pedagogies School Effectiveness and Improvement Successful Schools, Successful Leader Professional Communities: their practices, problems & possibilities Each theme expertly adds to the existing knowledge base about teacher and school development internationally. They are individually important in shaping and understanding an appreciation of the underlying conditions which influence teachers and schools, both positively and negatively, and the possibilities for their further development. This essential handbook will be of interest to teacher educators, researchers in the field of teacher education and policy makers.

This book presents a story of school improvement activity in East Africa from 1985 to 2000, which focused on sustained teacher development. The core of the book consists of six evaluations of school-and district-wide school improvement projects (SIPs) supported by the Aga Khan Foundation in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. The case studies present an evolving body of knowledge about the successes and challenges of a comprehensive approach to school improvement grounded in a common set of strategic principles. The strategic principles embody the belief that the chances for quality improvement in teaching and learning are greater when change efforts *are school-based, *involve whole schools as the unit of change, *emphasize the ongoing professional development of teachers, *attend to school management and organizational conditions affecting the capacity of teachers to implement change, * prepare for the institutionalization of organizational structures and processes that enable continuous school development, and *evolve through partnerships among relevant education stakeholders. The book concludes with commentaries by international experts in school improvement and teacher development on the SIP project designs, implementation and outcomes, and on lessons that can be drawn from the projects and their evaluations for school improvement policy, practice and theory in developing and developed countries around the world.

Teacher collaboration helps to facilitate meaningful and effective learning and enables sustainable development of schools. Teacher teams who collaboratively investigate a shared problem, or design curriculum materials together, significantly contribute to the professional development of teachers in areas of subject matter, curriculum design and data skills. Contributions to this book discuss various perspectives of teachers collaborating in design teams, by investigating the sense of collaboration and its effects, and the conditions that influence and drive it. The studies provided suggest that collaborative design and research supports participants (teachers and teacher educators) to improve their knowledge, specifically in regards to technological pedagogical content and subject matter. Participating teachers further developed curriculum design expertise, such as, understanding the relevance and effectiveness of involving stakeholders in designing and implementing newly designed curricula. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Educational Research and Evaluation.

Research into teacher education is dominated by Anglophone literature, with the inevitable result that teacher education in non-English speaking regions of the world largely remains unexamined. This book fills the gap in the existing literature and comprises twelve invited contributions from an international panel of educationists. To provide the reader with a clear structure, the book offers a detailed introduction and afterword which brings together the various themes examined in each chapter. The contributions offer perspectives on teacher education in the Asian region, perspectives which, until now, have been missing from contemporary debate on teacher education. Presenting research from Australia, Japan, the USA, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and Vietnam, this book examines the varied situations teacher educators experience in their own countries; in so doing the researchers identify resonances and dissonances in comparison with the dominant Anglophone research literature on the same subjects. This book is an important contribution to the comparative study of teacher education in the first decade of the twenty-first century, giving a voice to an important sector of the international community of teacher educators. This book was published as a special issue of Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy.

This book tracks the development of Exploratory Practice since the early 1990s as an original form of practitioner research in the field of English language teaching. Drawing on case studies, vignettes and narratives from teachers and learners around the world as they experienced Exploratory Practice in their different contexts, Hanks examines the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the Exploratory Practice framework and asks what the principles really mean in practice. For language professionals considering investigating their classrooms and their teaching/learning practices rigorously and thoughtfully, this book breaks new ground, arguing for a fresh perspective: (exploratory) practice-as-research. Judith Hanks is Lecturer in TESOL at the University of Leeds, UK. Her work bridges specialist areas in language teacher education, intercultural communication, TESOL and EAP.