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The purpose of this study is to explore how, through the cultivation of reform ownership in the professional development (PD) program, the Pathway Project, agency was achieved for the development of teacher professionalism and teacher expertise in the cases of Mrs. Cruz and Mrs. Keyes. This, in turn, provided opportunities to advance student learning.

Multiple sources of data (focused classroom observations, semi-structured interviews and collected artifacts) were analyzed through a case study approach to understand the processes by which an agentic context materialized for these two teachers.

The authors identified the following three stages in the cultivation of reform ownership in the cases of Mrs. Cruz and Mrs. Keyes: emerging; developing; and deepening. Each of these stages proved critical to the achievement of agency for the development of teacher professionalism, teacher expertise and student learning.

The cases of Mrs. Cruz and Mrs. Keyes offer a renewed vision of the ways in which teachers can achieve agency in the current reform environment. Given the proliferation of reform efforts within today’s educational landscape, their cases suggest that PD developers take seriously the responsibility of cultivating reform ownership for the achievement of agency and deep and lasting change.

Purpose – This chapter discusses the application of the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) to school change and the learning of groups of leaders, teachers, and students. Specifically, the authors describe the Seven Levels to Success, a model for school change that supports teachers in building their school’s own staircase (coherent) curriculum in literacy. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this model for capacity building – giving schools a “deep bench” of leaders and teachers who can sustain improved student achievement over a period of years.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The theoretical underpinning of this research is provided by the Vygotsky Space, a construct that shows how learning may be understood in terms of the intersections of collective and individual actions, and public and private settings. This construct allows us to understand what drives a school’s advancement through the Seven Levels and how that advancement can be restarted after it has been slowed or interrupted. The authors report findings about school change from 20 years of work in 264 elementary and secondary schools, reflecting a wide range of students and communities across the United States.

Findings – While schools’ typical advancement in the Seven-Level model is neither steady nor linear, it adheres to an overall pattern: Leaders must take ownership first, followed by teachers and then students. To build their school’s staircase curriculum, teachers must see themselves as creators rather than consumers of curriculum. Teachers who see themselves as creators take ownership of their curriculum. Their deep understanding of the curriculum promotes continuous improvements and related success in improving their students’ literacy learning. Four case examples illustrate change in a variety of school settings, providing existence proofs of how the Seven-Level model functions to improve students’ literacy learning.

Research Limitations/Implications – The authors highlight the importance of the school as the unit of analysis in change efforts, and of understanding a school’s progress over time. The authors emphasize considering the role of multiple constituencies, beginning with school leaders and encompassing teachers, students, and families. One implication of this study is that more attention should be paid to the role of school leaders – administrators, curriculum coordinators, and teacher leaders – in setting the stage for sustainable improvement.

Practical Implications – The authors provide guidance to practitioners working on school change within the framework of the Seven Levels to Success and other social constructivist models. Specifically, the authors give examples of relevant actions external consultants and school leaders take at critical junctures in a school’s progress.

Originality/Value of Paper – This chapter breaks new ground in applying the GRR model and the Vygotsky Space to the area of school change in literacy. Summarizing 20 years of work with the Seven-Level model demonstrates potential of teacher-developed curricula for the sustainable improvement of students’ literacy learning.

Global focus on reforming teachers has resulted in the inclusion of multiple survey questions about teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies. A cross-national analysis of these survey data will likely enhance our understanding and inform the future direction regarding teacher professional development policy and practice. Yet we do not know whether these surveys measure the key features and their contextual factors of teachers’ professional learning activities to allow a systematic cross-national analysis. Based on international and U.S. literature, I develop a conceptual model of teachers’ professional learning activities in global context and analyze relevant survey items used in three major international studies – TIMSS, PIRLS, and TALIS. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the coverage of these survey items and a direction for improving data collections of teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies.

Across K–12 settings, instructional coaching continues to flourish as an approach to teacher professional development intended to address long-standing inequities in student achievement. Yet, coaching models differ in how to conceptualize change or transformation as a result of coaching efforts.

This case study problematizes the concept of change within one practice-based coaching program, by positing the possibilities of striving for transformational change directed at addressing educational inequities.

Qualitative methods reveal how coaching belief statements guide the burgeoning identities of beginning coaches to align to (and at times extend beyond) coaching for change through the lens of teacher practice.

Implications describe ways that coaching programs might utilize reflection and analysis activities to foster more equity-oriented coaching identities, regardless of coaching model.

Designing and facilitating authentic learning opportunities for coaches to reflect, rehearse, connect, and apply knowledge to practice as they develop their own understanding of what it means to coach for change is crucial.

The growing knowledge society has caused a change in the meaning of knowledge and learning. In Dutch schools, this creates a demand for evidence-based innovation and school development and a need for working with data. This chapter focuses on leadership in changing schools including the difference between management (organizing, structuring, and budgeting things that already work); leadership (adapting things that do not run smoothly, stimulating, motivating and empowering people, and communicating vision); and relationship with interactional and transformational leadership. Consequently, inquiry-based leadership is becoming the center of interest internationally (Geijsel, Krüger, & Sleegers, 2010; Luo, 2008). The author presents a conceptual framework for deeper understanding of school leadership in the 21st century – that to be effective in their roles, they must learn how to create inquiry-based cultures in their schools and to continuously learn from data. Finally, the author identifies some challenges for school leaders in coming years and proposes ways that help strengthen their leadership including the professionalization for all leaders oriented to instructional leadership, inquiry-based leadership, higher order thinking and distributed leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and problematise technology and teaching reform initiatives in Australia and Singapore, demonstrating the importance of adopting a critical stance towards technology-rich education reform. In the Australian context, the tensions and challenges of the Digital Education Revolution and the Teaching Teachers for the Future programme are illustrated. In the Singapore context, the implications of the ways in which teachers exercise their agency over technological imperatives are examined.

The first section of the paper draws on interview and observational data generated during a microethnographic investigation into secondary school students’ use of iPads as a learning tool in an independent school in South-East Queensland. Data “snapshots” illustrate the lingering challenges of reform designed to achieve technology-rich learning environments. The second section of the paper draws on a retrospective study of current ICT initiatives in Singapore through case studies of two schools that are heavily involved in ongoing ICT integration programmes.

While reforms are usually borne out of careful studies among policy makers and politicians to develop solutions to problems, the final version often reflects compromise between various stakeholders championing their respective agendas. As such, problematisation is imperative to develop critical and nuanced understandings. In both Australia and Singapore, it is suggested that failing to account for such ontological matters as teacher and learner identity and agency prevents meaningful change.

Global reform to achieve technology-rich teaching and learning environments reflects the ubiquity of such initiatives across geographical and cultural boundaries. Such reforms have been driven and supported by a substantial body of research, much of which has uncritically accepted the view that technology-rich reform is inherently “good” or necessary. Learning technology research has thus tended to focus on epistemological matters such as learning design at the expense of ontology. This paper engages with emerging research into technology as an identity issue for learners and teachers to explore the implications of technology-driven education reform on educational institutions, policies and practices.

Reflects on a recent national initiative in Hungary to develop and embed enterprising teaching and learning approaches in secondary schools. Begins by briefly examining the reasons for such a development and moves on to discuss the perceptions of Hungarian teachers concerning the benefits of the enterprising approach to students, the school and teachers. Explores the factors which influence the process of transferring the enterprise approach to Hungary, looks at student reactions and concludes with a reflection on what has been learned from the experience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the merits of lesson study (LS) as a research approach for research in (science) education. A lesson was developed to introduce students to model-based reasoning: a higher order thinking skill that is seen as one of the major reasoning strategies in science.

Participants of the LS team were three secondary school teachers and two educational researchers. Additionally, one participant fulfilled both roles. Both qualitative and quantitative data were used to investigate the effect of the developed lesson on students and to formulate focal points for using the LS as a research approach.

The developed lesson successfully familiarized students with model-based reasoning. Three main focal points were formulated for using LS as a research approach: (1) make sure that the teachers support the research question that the researchers bring into the LS cycle, (2) take into account that the lesson is supposed to answer a research question that might cause extra stress for the teachers in an LS team and (3) state the role of both researchers and teachers in an LS team clearly at the beginning of the LS cycle.

This study aims to investigate whether LS can be used as a research approach by the educational research community.

In this chapter, we trace the emergence of a particular type of teacher subject, the subject-area counsellor, who became a key player during different phases of the recent curriculum reform in the Republic of Cyprus (2004–2017).The understanding of teachers as subjects is theoretically informed by the Foucauldian notion of discursive power that helps understand how individuals are constituted (subjectivated) and governed (subjected) through language in power relations that permeate social institutions. This type of teacher was constitutedas a hybrid expert-subject by embodying academic expertise and teaching/practical experience in classrooms. We utilize data from individual, semi-structured interviews conductedwith subject-area counsellors and elementary schoolpractising teachers during the introduction and implementation of new curricula (2011-2014), to argue that this particular type of teacher subject emerged as a meaningful and dynamic meso-level. As counsellors moved in between the Ministry of Education and Culture/Pedagogical Institute (macro-level) and schools/teachers (micro-level), it was possible to observe that multiple curriculum makings were taking place, given that subject-area counsellors sometimes opened up spaces and further possibilities of curriculum-making with teachers; but, at others, those spaces were rendered impossible when teachers expected to receive teaching materials from them, thus reinstating pyramidal traditional hierarchical-administrative roles for both.