No description available.

No description available.

This commentary reflects upon a set of papers relating to teachers’ work which are significant for a number of reasons. Firstly they begin to fill a gap in the understanding of the experience of Scottish teachers, and how they see their work and careers in teaching. Secondly the research has impacted, with other forces, upon policy at national level, by raising awareness of teachers’ experiences of employment and support within a context where the focus of rhetoric is long-term professional development. Arrangements for the support of new teachers have now changed. The analysis presented here sets the papers’ findings in a wider context of the changing nature of work and of career, and of the shape these take in teaching, and questions assumptions made about the current and future nature and length of teachers’ careers. Teachers’ work is work, public sector work and professional work and each additional characteristic shapes its nature. Contextually, globalisation and new managerial agendas have brought changes in work and career and the findings of the papers are analysed within this framework. The Scottish context, with its educational history, ways of working and recent changes in teachers’ work, provides its own unique setting for understanding teachers’ work and the impact of modernisation. It is concluded that while some common effects of modernisation are clearly identifiable for Scottish teachers’ work, satisfaction with autonomy unusually remains high. The new arrangements for teachers following from the implementation of the McCrone agreement are considered as a force for sustaining that satisfaction.

No description available.

During school-based work and placement experiences, student educators come into contact with children and young people on an almost daily basis. Government guidance dictates that they must contribute to child protection. However, little is known about the preparation they receive for this significant role in Northern Ireland and current policy regarding child protection training in undergraduate curricula is unclear. This study had three main aims: to discover whether or not a pre-service child protection training programme would increase student educators childhood maltreatment knowledge, to consider the differentiated training needs of student groups and to ascertain the perspectives of student educators and experienced practitioners regarding pre-service child protection training. A theoretical analysis allowed for the development of the Child Protection Questionnaire for Educators (CPQE). This was then used to ‘test’ student educators child abuse and neglect knowledge prior to and following participation in the Pastoral Pathways Programme, a pre-service child protection training programme. The study used multi-method research procedures, in terms of combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, and the data collection methods consisted of child protection training Audit; CPQE; vignette; training Programme; and focus groups. The research found that student educators significantly increased their child abuse and neglect knowledge following participation in the Programme and that there is a need to differentiate training needs of student groups. There was evidence from the findings of an urgent need to develop pre-service child protection training in Northern Ireland. The study highlighted the need for an inclusive approach to the undergraduate curriculum to resolve child protection training inequalities and to develop integrated pre-service child protection training in order to contribute to child protection in Northern Ireland more effectively.

The central question explored in this study is how can Initial Teacher Education (ITE) be developed to enhance the skills, confidence and preparedness of student teachers for Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) and inclusive practice? It involved an inclusive action research (IAR) project involving teachers, teaching assistants, student teachers and a university tutor within one partnership school. The IAR focused on the actions that participants agreed were immediately relevant to preparation for inclusive classrooms. To deepen the potential transferability of the study, additional research methods were used to reflect on the IAR and the wider placement context so that factors supportive of professional development could be identified and understood. The study demonstrated that remodelling partnership as collaborative enquiry among students, practitioners and an academic tutor (Mclntyre, 2009) can enable reflexive engagement with conceptual and practical dilemmas in ways that may enhance the professional development of students and more experienced practitioners. It also captured an account of the complex nature of inclusive practice and the manner in which practitioners adopt particular conceptual positions (e.g. capability discourses) to enhance their own self-efficacy whilst operating contradictory discourses (e.g. deficit discourses) when mediating external cultures. Supportive to professional development for student teachers and school staff was; a collaborative culture; opportunities for students and more experienced staff to engage in structured, systematic, collaborative enquiry in the context ofthe school placement; the demotion of the discourses of expertism (Slee, 2010); the promotion of capacity discourses for SEND and opportunities for reflexive work. The study raises questions about the appropriateness of individuated competence standards for inclusive practice and suggests that teacher education must embrace more complex, research-oriented, dilemmatic, critical-theoretical and socially situated pedagogic frameworks, networking ITE into continuing profeSSional development in ways that enable career-long development in support of education for all.

This investigation is concerned with similarities and differences between the sub-cultural groupings developed by the Clark and Trow (1963) model and which are present in a single year-group of students completing their third-year course in a College of Education. The four sub-cultural orientations are labelled Vocationalist, Academic, Collegiate and Nonconformist respectively. The problem is outlined and various hypotheses are tested. A variety of measuring instruments are used and include both published material and measures designed and evaluated through a range of pilot studies to assess specific areas of importance which relate to the particular College used in the investigation. Statistical techniques are employed which range from simple comparisons of group frequencies and percentages to the utilisation of analyses of variance, factor analyses and the stepwise discriminant function. Analyses and their results are discussed in terms of both single-sex comparisons and the larger groupings formed by combining the two sexes. Near-sociometric techniques indicate the extent to which sub-cultural membership can be predicted from sociometric groupings. Further data arc given which indicate major differences in attainment, attitudes and personality between the various groupings. The results are then summarised, conclusions are drawn and suggestions are put forward for future research in this field.

This thesis is a record of experiments in the education of mathematics teachers for Irish Secondary schools conducted at Thomond College of Education, Limerick during the years 1975–77 inclusive. But it is more than a mere record of successes and failures. In its analyses and syntheses, based on experiments and programmes conducted under actual conditions, it endeavours in a true spirit of research in mathematical education to provide new insights. The research culminates in the redefinition of an old problem in mathematical education, and a first step towards a viable solution to the redefined problem is presented.

This study examines the racialised narratives of White tutors in initial teacher education (ITE) with specific reference to how well initial teacher education (ITE) prepares student teachers to teach in an ethnically diverse society. It draws on critical race theory as a framework to identify how the discourse of whiteness is embedded in the experience, knowledge and hegemonic understandings of these tutors and how it affects their approach to the topic of race equality and teaching in a multicultural society. The research was conducted in a predominantly White institution where the majority of student teachers and tutors reflect the national teacher demo graphics within the context of an increasingly diverse pupil population and the continued underachievement of pupils from certain minority ethnic groups. The study involved interviews with White ITE tutors within one institution. The resulting narratives were juxtaposed with the narrative of a minority ethnic tutor to examine the embedded and embodied effects of the dominant discourse of whiteness. The tutors' narratives reveal how whiteness is embodied and performed within the context of ITE to maintain whiteness whilst simultaneously engaging with the rhetoric of race equality and compliance with statutory duties and requirements. The study shows how the tools of whiteness (Picower 2009) are used to maintain and promote the misrecognised discourse of whiteness resulting in the symbolic violence evident in the persistence of endemic racism within the academy. The disruption of such a discourse has implications for ITE policy, practice and recruitment. There are particular implications for the school-based aspects of initial teacher education programmes and the continued professional development of ITE tutors and mentors.

This research project examines teachers' Continuing Professional Development (C.P.D.) within two clusters of rural primary schools in the north of England. The research considers teachers' attitudes to, and their understanding of, the meaning and purpose of C.P.D., and how it affects themselves and the pupils they teach. The research, which is set within its historical context with particular reference to the impact of the Education Reform Act (1988) and the raft of initiatives that have influenced the direction of teachers' C. P. D., reflects on teachers as professionals. Through a combination of survey and case study, quantitative and qualitative approaches to data collection were used and the initial questionnaires were followed up by semi-structured interviews in the two case study schools. Using Bolam's (1993) tripartite definition as an analytical framework C.P.D. is subdivided into the areas of training, education and support. The data analysis showed that across both clusters teachers' C.P.D. was driven by national government initiatives and, in some cases, the national initiatives became the schools' priorities, leaving little opportunity for an individual school based approach to C.P.D. Across the clusters there was an established relationship between the School Development Plan (S.D.P. ), performance management and C.P.D. The one year performance management cycle appeared to dictate the length of the C.P.D. cycle and promoted short term development, reducing opportunities for longer courses, such as advanced diplomas and higher degrees. The constraints of the cycle, along with the emphasis on the deficit model of C.P.D., is viewed as contributing to the general deprofessionalisation of teachers.