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Over the past 20 years, the primary focus of education policy and programming in low- and middle-income country contexts has shifted from access to quality. There has also been a laudable increase in the amount of available research about education quality in low- and middle-income countries, and a growing emphasis placed on incorporating research- and evidence-based activities and approaches into donor-funded education programs, particularly for early grade reading. Reviews of early grade reading (EGR) programs and their level of impact, however, particularly when programs are implemented at large scale, may leave some practitioners, policy makers, and donors dismayed. Effect sizes and impacts of the programs are often positive, but the absolute gains in reading performance are not as dramatic as we would like, despite the implementation of evidence-based approaches.

In education policy and implementation literature, the decoupling of policy and implementation, and the messiness involved in putting research into practice in education, are well documented. In this chapter, the authors propose the idea of “satisficing,” as it has been defined in policy and implementation literature, as a useful lens for considering the apparent decoupling of actual impacts and anticipated outcomes for programs that have adopted research- and evidence-based approaches. Using examples from EGR programs in African and Asian contexts, the authors argue that “satisficing” occurs at multiple levels, including the classroom, school, district, and even the program implementation (i.e., contractor or grantee) levels. The authors also argue that this lens has important implications for education program design and research.

This chapter explores the idea of paradigm shifts and the changes that have taken place in the field of teaching and teacher education over the past four decades. The work unpacks how teachers, their practices, their professional development, and their education are conceived in the positivist and interpretive paradigms. The study of teaching and teacher education is likewise shaped by the ontological and epistemological underpinnings associated with different research methods and the paradigms with which they are associated. To demonstrate the influence of paradigms, this chapter concludes with a rich example of how the interpretive tradition has shaped a teacher education program in northern Finland.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2017 in over 200 journals, magazines, books and other sources.

The paper provides a brief description for all 590 sources.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This research treated the secondary school teachers as the research scale and the research targets included the following: secondary school (employ unit), center of teacher education, and qualified teachers. In terms of these three groups of people, the topics of exploration focused on the perception of suitable teachers, perception of evaluation standard during the process of teacher examination and the relationship among teacher examination systems. The research was managed by two phases: the first phase referred to literature reorganization, expert interview, the qualities and conditions of suitable teachers, important evaluation standard during the process of teacher examination and teacher examination system used; the second phase included questionnaire survey, employ school acquisition, the perception of centers of teacher education and qualified teachers toward the suitability condition and examination evaluation standard in the first phase and teacher examination system used. This research found out that as to the perception of suitable teachers, through data collection, there were six factors reorganized. The levels of their importance were as follows: education devotion, teaching capacity, class management, capacity to guide special students, capacity to communicate with the parents and the will to undertake administrative works. Noticeably, employee unit and centers of teacher education apparently valued class management more, compared with trained teachers; as to evaluation standard of examination, the analytical result found out that the perception of three groups were different in terms of the views toward educational works, written examination data, candidate’s age, club experience at school and capacity to use multimedia support teaching materials. This research further proposed six suggestions for centers of teacher education and trained teachers: (1) employ schools considerably valued educational devotion; (2) trained teachers tended to neglect the importance of class management; (3) employee unit considerably cared about the new teachers’ competence to use multimedia support teaching materials; however, trained teachers did not have the same view; (4) employee unit considerably cared about new teachers’ views toward educational works as well as the candidates’ ages; (5) generally speaking, trained teachers neglected the importance of club experience at school; (6) the data revealed that written examination data was not relatively important in terms of teacher examination

The decade of the 1980s was unique for the sheer quantity of education reform reports and legislation. Virtually every state enacted education reform legislation, including reforms of teacher education, licensing, and comprehension. According to Darling‐Hammond and Berry, over 1,000 pieces of legislation related to teachers have been drafted since 1980, and “a substantial fraction have been implemented.” As I discussed in my 1989 RSR article, “Five Years after A Nation at Risk: An Annotated Bibliography,” two waves of 1980s reform reports were identified in the enormous body of primary and secondary literature dealing with education reform. The reform publications of the early 1980s stressed improvements in curricular standards, student performance outcomes, and changes to the education programs, such as salary increases, teacher testing, and stricter certification requirements. The second‐wave reform publications emphasized more complex issues centered around the concepts of restructuring the schools and teacher education programs, as well as empowering teachers to become more involved in curriculum and governance issues.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of active teaching methodologies, namely, problem-oriented learning and the case method, to develop sustainability competencies. It also analyses the advantages and challenges for teachers when implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in eight undergraduate and postgraduate degrees within the framework of a cross-departmental collaboration.

A mixed research methodology was used: a quantitative study to assess the levels of acquisition of sustainability and research competencies and the potential correlation between them, as well as a mixed study of the advantages and challenges for the teachers participating in the cross-departmental initiative. Curriculum content linked to the SDGs was worked on. Active teaching methodologies and a competency assessment rubric were used as curriculum implementation strategies in the eight courses involved.

Active teaching methodologies are suitable to implement the SDGs in university teaching and to develop both sustainability and research competencies. A synergic effect is observed between them. Coordinated work between teachers of different subjects in several degrees contributes to developing a culture of sustainability at the university.

Although the collaboration between teachers from different disciplines was successful, this study did not promote interdisciplinary projects among students from different degrees. This promises to be highly valuable for future research.

Students can become present and future leaders in achieving the SDGs. This approach can be replicated in other educational institutions.

This study bridges the gap between theoretical recommendations and the practical implementation of the SDGs in undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

Coordinated work between teachers of different subjects in different degrees contributes to the development of a culture of sustainability at the university.

Evidence-based practice is an essential component of special education and provides a framework for promoting the use of research to inform policy and practice. Despite the importance of evidence-based practice to special education, the research-to-practice gap remains a persistent challenge to the successful dissemination of effective, research-based practices. Given the underuse of research in special education, the next big thing in evidence-based special education is to develop effective mechanisms for disseminating research and practice. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to introduce research utilization as a concept to special education and present a preliminary analysis on special education teacher perceptions of research. Results suggest that special education teachers value evidence-based practice but remain unsure of their skills to distinguish between studies with more and less rigorous methods. Moreover, we found that special education teachers tended to use sources with lower self-reported ratings of trustworthiness, such as social media and teacher exchange websites, due to time efficiency and accessibility. Respondents provided recommendations for ameliorating the research-to-practice gap and increasing the usability of research overall.

Research over the last decade or so has made it clear that quality teachers matter to student achievement. What is less clear is the ways in which they matter and how we can prepare such high-quality teachers. Nowhere is this lack of clarity more evident than in special education, where we have few studies on teacher quality and even fewer studies on the type of preparation opportunities that would lead to high quality. Thus, it is difficult to make evidence-based decisions about how quality special education teachers should be defined and prepared. As a field, we have to turn to research in general education to provide a sense of some of the dimensions of teacher quality and effective teacher education. In this chapter, we provide a summary of the research on characteristics of highly qualified teachers and what we know from the research on teacher education and professional development that might foster these qualities, both in general and in special education. Part of our discussion centers on the concerns surrounding this body of research and the challenges of applying the findings to the field of special education. Although these challenges pose considerable problems, we are optimistic that potential solutions exist and can be reached through an alignment of initial teacher education and induction.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to trace the origins of narrative inquiry as an empirical research method specifically created to examine how teachers come to know in their own terms.

Approach – The chapter reviews key conceptualizations in the teaching and teacher education field chronologically.

Findings – The review begins with Clandinin and Connelly's groundbreaking work concerning teachers’ personal practical knowledge, the professional knowledge landscapes of schools, and stories to live by (teacher identity). Three other important narrative conceptualizations on the research line are then highlighted: narrative resonance, narrative authority, and knowledge communities. Special attention is also paid to how narrative inquiry has fueled studies having to do with curriculum, subject matter, and culture. Narrative inquiry's important contributions to the emergence of the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices genre of research is additionally highlighted, along with several more recent advances having to do with collaborative narrative inquiries, studies with children, and reforming school landscapes.

Research implications – Lingering issues relating to narrative inquiry's acceptance as a legitimate research approach are also discussed; latent opportunities are likewise paid attention.

Value – The value of the chapter is that it is the first work that has specifically followed developments on the Connelly–Clandinin research line. The chapter shows the major contributions that the world-class research program – and the associated research projects spawned from it – have made to teaching and teacher education internationally.