The purpose of this study was to determine the longitudinal changes in the attitudes of pre-service primary education teachers towards teaching as they progressed through training. The findings show that both positive and negative changes are observed in the attitudes of student teachers towards teaching during the teacher education period. Student teachers mention teaching practices, cooperating teachers, the training programme and supervising teachers as the reasons for these changes.

This article examines three possible influences on the impact of teacher professional development as a mechanism for improving teaching and learning. These influences are those from the individual teacher, those from the school and those from the activities in which teachers participate. Data were collected from a national sample of primary and secondary teachers in England. The results reveal that teachers in high performing schools participate in professional development activities that are longer in duration, more active and more collaborative in implementation. In contrast, teachers in the lowest performing schools report high levels of performance management conditions and participate in activities that are short in duration.

In this article, the author explores the practices of four secondary school teachers in Johannesburg as they deliberately tried to shift their practices to focus on learners’ thinking through classroom talk. A set of codes is developed to describe teachers’ changing practices. The codes illuminate the similarities and differences across four secondary school mathematics teachers as they shift their practices to take account of learners’ thinking.

This study investigates the role of the literary arts in fostering teachers' dispositions in one socio-multicultural foundations course. The author examined a class project that offered preservice teachers the opportunity to learn about the schooling live and learning of diverse students through reading and analyzing a common text. The author concludes that the literary arts in teacher education may have the potential to foster dispositions—especially, the disposition to observe students more closely.

In this article, the authors examine to what extent ICT is being used by the teachers and how they are using ICT in their teaching. The authors also discuss how factors such as the subject being taught, teaching experience, gender and age influence the use of ICT in teaching.The findings revealed that teachers in the secondary schools in Hamar do use ICT but few use ICT very often. However, most are still unsure whether ICT will have any positive effect on the learning outcome for their students.

The purpose of this study was to examine Queensland teachers’ conceptions of assessment and their relationship to their level of teaching and compared the results to teachers from New Zealand. A questionnaire-based survey of teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and practices in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment was conducted in 2003. Data revealed that teachers showed a willingness to integrate assessment into their professional duties of improved teaching and learning, tempered with caution about the quality and usefulness of the assessment resources being used to make students and schools accountable.