In order for Vietnam to seek better international integration into an increasingly globalised world, the Vietnamese government has launched educational reforms, requiring teachers to adopt ‘western’ constructivist pedagogies. This study focuses on pre-service teachers’ learning in Vietnam, where traditional attitudes towards teachers’ and learners’ roles promote passivity amongst students and unquestioning respect for the authority of teachers’ knowledge. The thesis describes a cycle of action research conducted in a major teacher training institution in Vietnam. Through an intervention based on constructivist theories, the researcher set out to investigate factors that enhance teacher learning, and barriers that hinder it, with the aim of contributing evidence to discussions about the most appropriate strategies to be employed to bring about a change for the better in teacher education. The research highlights the importance of Vietnamese teacher educators in promoting change in Vietnam. The data collected comprised tutors’ and student teachers’ questionnaires, staff meeting discussions, student teachers’ journals and the researcher’s field notes. The findings reveal that student teachers were willing to accommodate and accept change and were often very enthusiastic about different patterns of teaching, which included peer evaluation and peer feedback. However, the student teachers' strongly held beliefs about relative roles of students and teachers remained firmly fixed. Other cultural factors also emerged from the findings. The thesis argues that the most productive way of incorporating constructivist learning into Vietnamese teacher education is by gaining a better understanding of the current status quo in order to respect and honour deep seated cultural beliefs. It argues that the imposition of pedagogical change is counter-productive without better engagement of teacher educators and teachers in discussion and debate about the characteristics that Vietnam wishes to see in its teachers and education system in the future. In particular, the thesis argues that the focus for transforming teacher education should be on promoting the responsibility of tutors to create a ‘transfer space’ to introduce students to new ideas about the processes of teaching and learning, and to develop new qualities needed via this ‘transfer space’. Evidence from the study suggests that this strategy is likely to be supportive of student teachers’ development as it allows them to separate the processes of teaching from the culturally dominant beliefs about roles which are part of their established identities.

There are so far few attempts to understand the teaching occupation and the meaning of being a good teacher as understood by teachers, a central issue in the improvement of schools. This study explores Chilean teachers’ perceptions of their professional identities, since conflict and stress around questions of identity affect teachers’ emotional well-being, impacting their capacity to engage emotionally with students and the wider school community, and thus their capacity to provide significant learning experiences which are key elements of successful learning. On the contrary, positive leadership and sufficient intellectual and material resources for reflection and discussion on the situation of conflicts on teachers’ professional identities can trigger processes of personal and professional growth, enhancing professional identity meanings, and thus effectiveness in providing significant learning experiences. To look at teachers through the lens of identity allows us to explore the combination of personal and contextual factors that affect their identities, bringing an understanding of teachers' perceptions about their identities and the contribution of other social actors to them in Chilean primary public schools. In this vein, it is important to acknowledge that most teachers have strong motivations in choosing the occupation. These motivations are often related to their sense of vocation as well as their personal beliefs and values. In this context, teachers’ professional identity meanings are explored in underperforming schools by means of semi-structured interviews of twenty primary teachers. By a careful qualitative analysis, this study found different groups of influences that define these identities, shaping and re-shaping at least three professional identity profiles with consequences for teachers’ autonomy in professional judgements, agency and collegial relationships, and impacting their capacity to provide significant learning experiences.

This qualitative research studies a group of sixteen Chinese high school teachers to explore Chinese teachers’ perceptions of professionalism as well as changes in teaching. These teachers were all graduates from Master of Education (Ed.M.) programme in a Chinese university. They differed in many aspects including teaching experiences, schools they were working for, personal histories. These teachers’ work and lives were analysed based on data generated from three rounds of semi-structured interviews. Themes emerging from the interviews suggested that it was Chinese teachers’ professional conscience that had mostly affected their sense of professionalism, and there were changes both in teachers’ perceptions and actions in teaching after their graduation from Ed.M. This research contributes to a better understanding on Chinese teachers’ professional lives by identifying professional conscience as the core of Chinese teacher professionalism. The meanings of professional conscience suggest that Chinese teachers’ perceptions of professionalism share similarities to that of teachers’ in the West. The fluctuations of professional conscience through teachers’ lives has challenged stereotypes of teachers in the Chinese society.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2007. / Title from title screen (site viewed Dec. 4, 2007). PDF text: 115 p. : ill. ; 6 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3271906. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-196). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-347). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002. / Title from title page screen (viewed Sept. 11, 2002). Thesis advisor: Edward L. Counts, Jr. Document formatted into pages (x, 186 p.). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-100).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1932. / "Reprinted from Bulletin of the Georgia State College of Agriculture, vol. XX, no. 418, Dec. 1931." eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.