Section archive - Theories & Approaches

In this article, the authors describe some small-scale research studies about the European Conferences on Educational Research (ECER) that have been carried out during the past ten years dealing with attendance motives and assessments of ECER.

This article explores how neo-institutional theory may be applied as an analytical framework to investigate the relationships between teachers’ perceptions on their professional change on the one hand, and the numerous change efforts embedded in recent neo-liberal educational policies in Norway on the other. It is argued that the dynamics of change can be investigated in light of teachers’ institutionalised practices within a certain set of governing mechanisms including regulative rules, norms and cultural-cognitive beliefs. The findings suggest that vital, regulative elements in recent neo-liberal policies have managed to penetrate the teachers’ perceptions of their classroom practices, in a process that is framed by teachers’ pre-existing normative values and the cultural scripts guiding their practices.

This study examined whether there is a difference in the effectiveness of three pathways in learning to teach offered across the California State University (CSU) System. It compared traditional campus-based, intern, and online credential programs across a 22-campus system. No significant differences were found among the ratings of the employment supervisors; however, the teachers identified consistent differences between the pathways on all composites. The success of online pathway from the teachers' view is consistent with reviews that indicate that certain online learning conditions result in more effective learning than traditional instruction.

This article focuses on exploring the perspective of equity in curriculum. From a background of understanding curriculum as embedded in wider transnational policy movements, the author suggests a framework for exploring the trajectories between equity policy and different types of curricula with implications for what counts as knowledge. The results suggest that the technical form of the curriculum can have determining effects on the meaning of knowledge acquisition and that the capabilities approach offers an important frame of analysis for understanding how different aspects of equity are included or excluded in curriculum.