Section archive - Theories & Approaches

Teaching is a significant social good and therefore teachers as well as the state have to take responsibility for guarding the moral quality of the teaching practice. Based on this premise, the article describes and defends the view that these parties have their own particular role by means of literature review and theoretical and practical arguments. The authors’ first claim is that the role of the state is necessarily limited to articulating the minimal moral rules and obligations. The authors’ second claim is that teachers have to take responsibility for defining the optimal dimension of their professional morality. The article ends with some practical implications of the theoretical exposé.

This article reports on an in-depth study of assessment across one university, exploring views and practices in each of the five faculties. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with eight staff and small group interviews with 60 students. The data indicate that: there is very little common understanding of the terms often used to describe forms of assessment in policy documents and other literature; and students, contrary to popular belief, do value assessment that carries no marks, although a form of ‘deferred instrumentalism’ may be at work here. The article concludes by suggesting frameworks and terminology for future discussion and issues for staff development.

This study is the second from a longitudinal project examining students' motivation for teaching. This study examines motivation at the end of the course among the students who entering the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) course at four universities in Norway. The study also reports on their experiences with teacher education in relation to motivation. The results indicate stability in motivation among the prospective teachers. Moreover, the PGCE course fulfils the students' expectations in various degrees.

In this case study, an exemplary seventh grade science teacher’s beliefs, planning decisions, implementation, and student reactions to her student-centered methods were examined over a 4-week unit on genetics. This situation was unique because the teacher was new to the profession and her students had no prior experience with student-centered methods. Her students initially felt unsure about the tasks they were assigned and sought out more structure. However when the teacher began to scaffold the material, a balance was achieved that resulted in student engagement during the unit.