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Bibliography: leaves 486-504. ; The thesis is an action research study of the work of a university-based facilitator and a total of 34 teachers from four african primary schools in Cape Town between 1987 and 1989. The study is premised on the argument that teachers are important in developing quality schooling, and that teachers should be active producers of pedagogical knowledge, shaping the curriculum through their engagement in a process of reflection-on-practice. It examines a relatively under-researched area in action research studies - namely the role of the facilitator in the process of educational change. The reflective practitioners of the thesis title are both the university-based facilitator conducting 'second-order' action research into her own educational of practice, and the teachers Both levels of the 'first order' reflective practice which the facilitator tried to encourage reflection shape and are shaped as facilitator and teachers explore together the limits and possibilities of curriculum development. The second order research thus: informs the facilitator's action with teachers; generates practical knowledge for INSET; contributes to knowledge of staff development processes; contributes to the general literature on action research; and also provides a comparative dimension for those working in developing countries. The study outlines the historical and political context shaping educational work in schools between 1987 and 1989, including an account of the nature of intellectual production at african teachers' colleges. It highlights two key dilemmas in the facilitator's practice the dilemma of democratic vs directive practice, and the dilemma of only reforming the form and content of the curriculum vs the transformation of teaching. The study found that a recessive role for the facilitator was not appropriate where bantu education has severely limited teachers' exposure to alternative ideas of teaching and learning. The tension was for the facilitator to learn how to share expertise within a participatory framework in which teachers would take responsibility for their own learning. The study explains how teachers changed, or failed to change, in the areas of new methods, new materials and changing pedagogical assumptions - and the influence of the facilitator's interventions in all this. The limits of technical knowledge divorced from critical thinking, and the limits of emancipatory knowledge without technical skills are revealed in the work of both the facilitator and the teachers. A more nuanced reading of the reform-transformation dilemma, arising from the concrete experience of participants in this study, is suggested. Action research is evaluated as a project of possibility, both for teachers and for teacher-educators to research their own practice in pre- and in-service work. Based on the findings generated by this study, suggestions are made for democratic and reflective forms of INSET for teachers, as a contribution to the reconstruction of education in a democratic South Africa.

As a teacher educator and a sociologist of education, I have been struggling for some years now to bring the insights developed by the latter field to bear on my work within universities and on that of my students, teachers-to-be. This has not been an easy task for a number of inter-related reasons. In the first place, the brand of sociology and educational theory which inspires much of my work, namely critical theory, is notorious for the level of abstraction at which it works, and the often convoluted and obscure language in which it is expressed. Student-teachers trying to make connections between theory and practice find many of the readings available on the subject hard to understand, let alone to apply to the challenging situations they encounter in the classrooms. In the second place, critical theory and education often address a metaphysical level in their insistence on the emancipatory potential of engaging with the world as it is, in order to imagine and bring about a world as it could and should be. The normative dimension to the task of teaching is of course crucial if one is to challenge the increasingly technocratic view that is being promoted for schooling world-wide. It does, however, raise important questions such as 'Are schools the best places to promote emancipatory rationality?' and, even more centrally in terms of the concerns of this book, 'Can teachers be expected to participate in this emancipatory venture, given their social class location and the constraints of the cultural terrain in which they must carry out their work?' In other words, how can a teacher-educator ask student-teachers to consider schools as sites for liberation, when changes in the social and bureaucratic status quo may ultimately work against the interests of this particular group of professionals? In the third place, much that has emerged from the critical theory tradition has appealed to the individual level of consciousness-raising, and hence depends on the notion of 'conversion' to points of views which, while leading to a disposition to act truly and rightly (phronesis), nevertheless are short on a consideration of strategies for the mobilization of resources and people so that the desired state of affairs does in fact come about. Quite a number of students following my courses on critical education are seduced by the invitation to become reflective practitioners with a commitment to promoting justice and equality, but even the most dedicated among them are culturally, if not ideologically, incorporated in the centralized, exam-oriented bureaucratic school system that is to be found in Malta as in many other countries. The heightened consciousness that critical teachers have of their role in the perpetration of symbolic violence in schools can in fact lead to an even deeper sense of frustration and despair, rather than to the transformation of people, situations and structures. This paper will give a brief overview of the curricular, theoretical and political ways in which I have attempted to tackle the three challenges posed by critical theory to teacher educators as outlined above. In other words, the question this article will address -:- though, of course, not fully answer - is the following: How can critical education be taught in such a way that it is understandable, theoretically and practically appealing, and politically effective? ; peer-reviewed

Effective implementation of any programme, especially that of improving the performance of the teacher, no doubt depends largely on continuous development and update of relevant educational materials. While many nations around the world have embraced, the need for education to achieve sustainability, only limited progress has been made at the level of secondary education, especially in Abia State. This limited progress emanate from many sources. In some cases, lack of vision or awareness has impeded progress, in others; it is lack of policy or funding. It then requires the government at all levels addressing issues that are specific to the immediate or local conditions. For example, the quality of relationships between the school principals and the teachers is an area that requires attention.

Book review

This book presents a story of school improvement activity in East Africa from 1985 to 2000, which focused on sustained teacher development. The core of the book consists of six evaluations of school-and district-wide school improvement projects (SIPs) supported by the Aga Khan Foundation in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. The case studies present an evolving body of knowledge about the successes and challenges of a comprehensive approach to school improvement grounded in a common set of strategic principles. The strategic principles embody the belief that the chances for quality improvement in teaching and learning are greater when change efforts *are school-based, *involve whole schools as the unit of change, *emphasize the ongoing professional development of teachers, *attend to school management and organizational conditions affecting the capacity of teachers to implement change, * prepare for the institutionalization of organizational structures and processes that enable continuous school development, and *evolve through partnerships among relevant education stakeholders. The book concludes with commentaries by international experts in school improvement and teacher development on the SIP project designs, implementation and outcomes, and on lessons that can be drawn from the projects and their evaluations for school improvement policy, practice and theory in developing and developed countries around the world.

Effective implementation of any programme, especially that of improving the performance of theteacher, no doubt depends largely on continuous development and update of relevant educationalmaterials. While many nations around the world have embraced, the need for education to achievesustainability, only limited progress has been made at the level of secondary education, especially inAbia State. This limited progress emanate from many sources. In some cases, lack of vision orawareness has impeded progress, in others; it is lack of policy or funding. It then requires thegovernment at all levels addressing issues that are specific to the immediate or local conditions. Forexample, the quality of relationships between the school principals and the teachers is an area thatrequires attention.

People love stories about real-life underdogs who overcome insurmountable odds to achieve success.This article chronicles one such underdog in the truest sense of the word. As one of the privilegedstudents to have had the opportunity to study under Dr. Lumsden, this paper is written as a tribute to thecontributions of D. Barry Lumsden to the contemporary practice of Higher Education. Lumsden hasdeveloped numerous teachers in the field of higher education. The information for this paper wasobtained through personal interviews with Lumsden, correspondence with his former students andfirsthand experiences as his student. Lumsden and I maintain a great friendship and I continue to bementored by him both professionally and personally.

This article draws upon the experiences of a five-year government-funded university–school partnership project known as the Partnership for Improvement of Learning and Teaching (PILT) (2004–09), aimed at supporting teachers through improving their teaching quality and enhancing their professional growth in key learning areas – particularly mathematics, education and personal, social and humanities education – and initial experience of another completed project, the School Improvement Project for Early Childhood Education (SIP-ECE). The article first describes the rationale and operation of the PILT and SIP-ECE, respectively, and then explores the application of a 4-P (problem clarification, planning, programme action and progress evaluation) action learning approach to the improvement of subject teaching practice. This is followed, through case studies, by an exploration of teachers' own perceptions and university partners' perceptions of professional development and instructional improvement through the project. The final part of the article refers to Western concepts of professional development and university–school partnership, and suggests ways forward for school-based teacher development and instructional improvement in Hong Kong.

This paper presents some initial lessons learned about the use of classroom observation data as a key form of evidence regarding improved teaching quality in a multi-year teacher development study series. This study series, commissioned by the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), involves the investigation of teacher development initiatives that are primarily designed to support the implementation of new primary curriculum in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos), Timor-Leste and Vanuatu. The overall aim of the study series is to understand the extent to which the Australian investment has improved teaching quality and student learning. This paper discusses the processes used to design, implement, analyse and report classroom observation data in the Laos study, and key lessons learned about these that could be applied to other contexts and programs.

The new B.Ed curriculum at the University of Kwazulu-Natal proposes the inclusion of a compulsory action research module to provide professional skills that teachers are expected to demonstrate. The Norms and Standards Policy for Educators requires teachers to be transformative. An appropriate educational component would therefore be required to fulfil this need. By acknowledging the potential that action research offers a transformational teaching model, this paper deals with a pedagogical journey from a product-oriented to a process-oriented teacher. Action research does not necessarily change the teacher but it sensitises the teacher to alternative, more democratic practices and a critically reflective disposition. In this paper a method of ?self-reflexive historiography? is used that involves reflecting retrospectively on professional development and identifying valuable lessons for the present. The context of the transformational experiences was an action research history teaching project conducted for a M.Ed degree (Davids, 1991). The research question that informs this article is: what are some of the lasting influences of an action research project on a teacher?s pedagogical comportment and what lessons were learnt that are relevant to teacher education today? Based on this case study, recommendations are made for the use of action research as pedagogy for professional practice in teacher education and in-service teacher initiatives.