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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.

Teacher education reform in the United States has been an ongoing theme over the past 100 years, particularly since A Nation at Risk in the 1980s, when education became increasingly politicized and less of a public good with which the American public did not tinker. These reforms have four different themes: (1) strengthening the clinical component of teacher education, (2) preparing educators with the tools needed for equity and social justice, (3) participating in heightened accountability demands, and (4) expanding alternative certification. This chapter explores these four strands of reform and concludes they are colliding forces in which the country pours time, resources, and energy. Ongoing collisions on the reform landscape produce increasingly negative consequences for teacher education, teacher recruitment, and retention and America's public schools.

Teacher Education has been transforming throughout the world to cater to the emerging needs of quality education. Significant developments have taken place nationally and internationally in political, economic, and cultural fields, influencing education in general and teacher education in particular. The quality of education depends to a great extent on the quality of teachers. And, the quality of teachers depends on the way they are educated and trained. Pakistan has a vast education sector and a huge teaching force but teacher education in the country has not been keeping pace with modernization and development globally. Teacher education curricula, dissemination, evaluation and implementation revolved around traditional models for decades. However, there has been a growing realization to reform the teacher education system lately. The education policy (2009) of Pakistan indicates such realization on the part of the stakeholders. This chapter reports on an important teacher education reform program, which is based on collaboration between the government of Pakistan and the USAID. The Teacher Education Project (TEP), assisted by USAID, is a reform initiative that aimed at restructuring and modernizing teacher education in Pakistan. This chapter aims to provide insights into the objectives, importance and achievements of the project in terms of shaping the future direction of teacher education in Pakistan. It reports on the substantial structural and policy changes that took place in teacher education under the project. This chapter also highlights the possible challenges in the way of useful implementation and sustainability of this and similar education reform initiatives in Pakistan.

This narrative inquiry centers on teachers' longitudinal experiences of policy-related reforms systematically introduced to T. P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest, second most diverse city in America. The embedded research study, with roots tracing back to 1997, uses five interpretive tools to capture six mandated changes in the form of a story serial. Special research attention is afforded pay-for-performance, the sixth reform in the series. The deeply lived consequence of receiving bonuses for his teaching performance prompted Daryl Wilson, Yaeger's long-term literacy department chair, to proclaim “data is [G]od.” Wilson's emergent, inventive metaphor aptly portrays the perplexing conditions under which his career ended, and how my long-term research project likewise concluded.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reform of initial teacher education (ITE) policy in Australia over a 25-year period from 1998 to 2023. It examines policy shifts and movements over this timeframe and aims to better understand the ongoing reforms in the changing contexts of their times.

The paper engages a critical policy historiography approach, focusing on four “policy moments” each linked to a review commissioned by the Commonwealth government of the day. It draws upon the reports and government responses themselves, along with media reports, extracts from Hansard, and ministerial speeches, press releases and interviews related to each of the four policy moments, asking critical questions about the “public issues” and “private troubles” (Gale, 2001) of each moment and aiming to shed light on the complexities of these accounts of policy and the trajectory they represent.

The paper charts the construction of the problem of ITE in Australia over time, highlighting the discursive continuities and shifts since 1998. It traces the constitution of both policy problems and solutions to explain the current policy settlement using a historical lens.

Its value lies in offering a reading of the current policy settlement, based on a close and systematic historical analysis. Where previous research has focused either on particular moments or concepts in ITE reform, this analysis seeks to understand the current policy settlement by taking a longer, contextualised view.

Turning an education reform program into school reality greatly depends on the principal. In certain cases, principals choose to implement reform instructions only partially. The purpose of this paper is to explore school principals’ considerations leading to their decisions not to fulfill a national reform’s guidelines in a full and complete way.

This qualitative study is based on interviews with 59 school principals. Generating themes was an inductive process, grounded in the various perspectives articulated by principals.

Data analysis yielded three major considerations: adjusting to school reality; caring for teachers; and using discretion.

Longitudinal studies in order to explore how principals’ considerations and mediation strategies evolve and unfold throughout the reform implementation would be useful. The authors suggest complementing principals’ verbally expressed perceptions with more objective measures such as direct observations (recorded on video and then reflected upon), to evaluate their considerations and mediating strategies.

Providing prospective and in-service principals with leadership education programs in order to develop an upgraded understanding of their role as mediating agents between the inner and outer spheres of school-life.

As principals serve as mid-level policymakers who leave their “fingerprints” on policies received from the authorities, exploring these considerations may contribute to both the scholarship and the practice of the leadership role in times of education reforms.

Scholars have focused their attention on systemic reform as a way to support instructional coherence. These efforts are often layered on to existing social relationships between school staff that are rarely taken into account when enacting reform. Social network theory posits that the structure of social relationships may influence the direction, speed, and depth of organizational change and therefore may provide valuable insights in the social forces that may support or constrain reform efforts. This study aims to discuss this issue.

This mixed‐methods exploratory case study examined five schools within one under‐performing school district as it enacted a system‐wide reform. Quantitative survey data were collected to assess social networks and teacher work perception of five schools enacting the reform. Qualitative data were gathered through individual interviews from educators within representative grade levels as a way to better understand the diffusion and implementation of the reform.

Despite being enacted as a system‐wide reform effort, the results suggest significant variance within and between schools in terms of reform‐related social networks. These networks were significantly related to the uptake, depth, and spread of the change. Densely connected grade levels were also associated with more interactions focused on teaching and learning and an increased sense of grade level efficacy.

The findings underline the importance of attending to relational linkages as a complementary strategy to the technical emphasis of reform efforts, as social networks were found to significantly facilitate or constrain reform efforts. Implications and recommendations are offered for leadership, policy and practice that may support the design and implementation of reforms, which may ultimately increase student performance.

The study makes a unique contribution to the reform literature by drawing on social network theory as a way to understand efforts at reform. The work suggests that the informal social linkages on which reform is layered may support or constrain the depth of reform.

Teachers' resistance to educational reform has been explored, with special attention given to the reasons driving opposition and the resistance practices employed inside school walls. These studies have not, however, examined the agenda setting strategy employed by teachers opposing new policy on the national level, nor has any extensive study focused on the messages or rhetoric characterizing their opposition. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the rhetoric and images used in web‐based campaigns by teachers to secure public support for their resistance to the “New Horizon” reform in Israel 2007 teachers' strike.

This study employs a descriptive case study methodology to illustrate the bottom‐up political strategy employed by teachers seeking public support for their opposition to reform. Content analysis of entries and manifestos posted on prominent teachers' weblogs and partisan school web sites during Israel's 64‐day teachers' strike in 2007 was conducted. Texts discussing the reform and its leaders, as well as educational and policy issues were analyzed inductively, divided according to meaning units, and then grouped together into categories.

Data indicate that the media, and specifically the internet, are perceived as major arena for garnering legitimacy and support. Teachers' rhetoric of resistance to reform was found to be characterized by: the use of emotional and rational appeals, the attempt to present teachers as “champions of education”, the use of dramatic labeling addressed at reformist leaders, and symbolic images of political parties.

The paper presents a conceptual model of political processes in the education system. The findings show the agenda setting strategy as reflected in teachers' cross‐level bottom‐up attempts to influence politics. Furthermore, teachers' rhetoric in resisting educational reform shows great similarity to the rhetoric of political campaigns. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intersection of teacher emotions, teacher collaboration and educational reform, particularly with respect to time, a key teacher resource that is often impacted in school change.

This paper draws upon data gathered in an in-depth, two-year qualitative case study of teacher teams in two US elementary schools. A total of 57 interviews and 102 hours of teacher team meeting observations were conducted across the two schools. The data analysis process involved several rounds of content coding of interview transcripts and teacher team meeting observation notes using MAXQDA software.

Teachers at the two schools benefitted from collaborative school structures that allowed time and space to innovate and brought joy to their professional lives. Strong professional communities served as sources of support as teachers experienced stress and frustration with reforms that created demands on their time and shifts in their teaching. Leadership played an important role in providing emotional support and autonomy to teachers, allowing teachers to flourish collectively.

This study has important implications for how researchers, policymakers and practitioners conceptualize the emotional dimension of teachers’ time in educational reform efforts. It is critical to consider whether expectations for what teachers can accomplish in collaboration are realistic in light of current working conditions. Given that emotions are at the core of teaching and the process of change, it is important to continue to explore the connections between teacher emotions and the professional capital they build in collaboration with each other.