A pervasive audit culture within English Further Education (FE) Colleges from 1992 has meant that the content of continuous professional development (CPD) for further education (FE) teachers has been largely determined by the themes and concerns of inspection. Viewed through the lens of Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘communicative action’, it is argued that FE teachers’ practice has been dominated by external and internal structural constraints, exacerbated by the workings of hegemony by which teachers have been made complicit. It is shown that audit-driven management practices have focussed on an instrumental approach to CPD, developing teachers’ performative skills and neglecting more embedded improvements to practice. My starting premise was that this trend could be understood using the Habermasian term, ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’; this premise is reflected in FE literature where the compromised agency of teachers is the dominant discourse. The fieldwork identified the key constraints and enablers in maintaining teachers’ lifeworld and the possibilities for developing empowering forms of CPD to overcome victimhood and re-invigorate professionalism. Qualitative data was generated by interviews with seventeen teachers and one focus group within one large FE College. The key finding is that CPD could be used as a site for what Habermas terms ‘ideal speech conditions’: Habermas’s theory of communicative action is used to support the argument that CPD’s transformative impact is realised if teachers engage in authentic discussions about practice and are empowered to determine their own practice change.

In recent years there has been unprecedented international attention on the issue of teacher quality. This has resulted in a focus by policy makers on initial teacher education, with many systems opting to articulate standards to define the competences that newly qualified teachers should possess. Central to all programmes of initial teacher education is school placement, a key period of significant learning for student teachers and a time when their competence is assessed. A small proportion of student teachers experience failure or struggle during these placements, however little research into their experiences is evident. This qualitative study explores the perceptions and experiences of members of ‘triadic learning to teach partnerships,’ who have had experience of the phenomenon. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were used to capture data from student teachers, cooperating teachers, placement tutors and directors of school placement on their perspectives regarding the causes of student teacher failure, the impacts of its occurrence and the effectiveness of any support mechanisms provided. The findings revealed the complexity and uniqueness of each occurrence, and the significant impacts on all involved, most particularly the student teachers. Six typologies of student teachers who struggle or experience failure and five pillars for the provision of support emerged as new contributions to aid teacher educators to understand and adequately support these student teachers. Conclusions are also drawn regarding the need for a standards-led approach to the formulation of assessment judgements on student teachers’ competence and the need in the Irish context for cooperating teachers to be enabled to play a greater and more central role.

The English language programme of the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST) has a pressing need for a continuing professional development (CPD) programme. Peer coaching is identified as the type of CPD that is potentially suitable for the English programme. It also serves as a catalyst for building a learning community. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a peer coaching programme on the teachers’ beliefs and practice. To do so, I investigate the difference in teachers’ teaching principles (please see Section 5 of Chapter 2 for details) in direct relation to their actual classroom practice before and after the peer coaching programme in one school term. By comparing how the teachers make sense of their actual classroom practices before and after the programme, this study can address the impact of the peer coaching programme on the teachers’ theories-in-use and has important implications for understanding and improving teaching. This study also attempts to investigate to what extent peer coaching helps to build a learning community. This study found that peer coaching could help to change the teachers' beliefs and perceptions in various extents, which led to changes in teachers' practice. Trust is found to be an important element in a successful peer coaching relationship. This study also found that peer coaching can help to promote an articulate, reflective, and collaborative work culture, which should facilitate and sustain teachers’ professional development, promote teacher leadership and contribute to educational improvement.

This study relates to the reforms by the Education Ministry in Botswana of decentralising the coordination of teachers’ In-service Professional Development (IPD) to the Regional Offices with the overall aim of improving students’ academic performance (Republic of Botswana, 2006). In the absence of other research data, the study aims to understand how secondary school teachers of agriculture in Botswana perceive their IPD. The study endeavours to identify gaps in current IPD provision and make recommendations to guide IPD policy reforms at regional level. Based on a review of the literature and the overarching research purpose, a set of research questions was devised. Considering the research questions, a Realist perspective to the research that endorses a flexible pragmatic stance was adopted. The research employed a mixed methods design. A questionnaire was developed and administered to all the Agriculture teachers in the Central Region (n=247). A purposive sample of teachers (n=36) and every Agriculture Education Officer (n=8) were interviewed. The quantitative data was analysed using SPSS software, with descriptive and inferential statistics reported. A coding guide was developed to analyse the interview transcripts which was done with the assistance of NVivo software (Bazeley, 2007). The findings show that the main source of motivation for teachers to attend IPD is to update their knowledge and skills in the subject. The study revealed workshops and meetings to be the most popular IPD opportunities of all IPD opportunities found to be relevant by teachers. The study also identified satisfactory and unsatisfactory characteristics of IPD; the contextual factors that adversely influence IPD in the region; and a wide range of IPD needs. The findings have implications for future IPD policy reforms; most important of these include the need to:  adequately resource IPD and create time for it as an integral part of the education programme;  remove restrictions associated with funding teachers’ enrolment in part time courses;  revise teachers’ workload policy to help them find time for IPD; and  have IPD emphasise acquisition of agriculture skills by teachers. Beyond policy, the findings also suggest improvement of the design and organisation of IPD, which include strategies for making IPD interesting, meaningful, sustainable and accessible to all teachers in the region.

This study examined the beliefs about English teaching and learning of six Chinese secondary school EFL teachers, whether any changes occurred in their beliefs during the first three years in the profession, and why beginning teachers changed or did not change their beliefs. Data were collected over a period of 10 months using semi-structured interviews, concept mapping, and journal entries. The findings showed how teachers’ learning in the workplace influenced change or no change in beliefs, how their schools supported learning, how teachers elected to engage in activities and how these affected the nature of their beliefs.