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Teacher effectiveness has been a matter for extensive research and public debate, anchored around the need to capture its essence. While the complexity of teacher effectiveness in higher education ...

This study explored the perceptions of 25 secular teachers employed in American, Australian, and Israeli Jewish religious schools regarding disparities between their secular identity and their scho...

Widespread neoliberal approaches to education consider schools increasingly accountable for self-management and ‘client’ recruitment, encapsulating economic ideologies that assume privatisation is ...

For decades, policymakers deliberated whether student perception surveys (SPS) should be a component of teacher evaluation programmes in schools. However, much research has focused on SPS’ reliabil...

Historically, the professional structure of higher education has provided restricted employment, career, and leadership opportunities for women. This is exacerbated where there is an intersection between gender and race, culture, religion, or age. Women continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership positions across a range of disciplines, and this lack of representation of women within the professional structure of higher education itself acts as a barrier for more women reaching senior levels within institutions. More women are needed in higher positions to increase representation and visibility, and to encourage and mentor others to then aspire to follow a similar path. This critical review examines gender equity across the major career benchmarks of the academy in light of the impact of the personal contexts of women, systemic processes, and cultural barriers that hinder career progression. Research-based systemic solutions that work towards improved gender equity for women are discussed. The findings from this critical review highlight the need for global systemic change in higher education to create ethical equities in the employment, career, and leadership opportunities for women.

Student perception surveys (SPS) play an increasing assessment role envisioned to improve teaching. Yet, it is unclear what their impact is on teachers' practice. Data collected from Australian teacher interviews, student focus groups and SPS based on validated frameworks of effective teaching revealed no significant change in teachers' practice; illustrating student skepticism in the power of their voice, and teacher resistance and struggle to act upon SPS. Contributing to the literature on effective teaching, teacher resistance and student voice, the study's implications call for teacher education that treats SPS as diagnostic tools that empower teachers in their search for autonomy.

Administrators often struggle in getting teachers to trust their school’s evaluation practices – a necessity if teachers are to learn from the feedback they receive. We attempted to bolster teacher...

This case study examined 12 American secondary school teachers' ethical predicaments involving reflective practices in professional development programs (PDPs), and the impact of these predicaments on their school's work processes. Qualitative measures revealed ethical ramifications of professional development's (PD) reflective procedures, whereby teachers experienced deleterious effects regarding their students and their colleagues, to the extent that teachers may have experienced moral injury. Furthermore, findings showed that teachers who served as group facilitators struggled to set an ethical balance between formative evaluation and summative evaluation, to the extent of violating confidential PD codes. Implications for reflective practices in PD are discussed.

This study examines students’ perceptions of disparities between teachers’ views and the school ethos in a religiously oriented school, and dissects the implications of such disparities on the children’s right to adaptable education. The study draws on 102 essays of students enrolled in an American Jewish high school that employs a diverse teaching staff. Findings demonstrate that teacher diversity in a religiously oriented school may fulfill the children’s right to adaptable education by motivating children to engage in social perspective taking, and to interact with multiple spheres of cultural affiliations. Teacher diversity may also serve children as they formulate their own views, while not undermining parental impact. In addition, the findings portray the children’s perceptions of the teachers’ duty to respect the communal spheres of adaptability by eschewing indoctrination, remaining open and respectful, and attending to age differences. Subsequently, we offer policy recommendations regarding the need to encourage teacher diversity in religiously oriented schools.

Grade inflation is a global phenomenon that has garnered widespread condemnation among educators, researchers, and the public. Yet, few have deliberated over the ethics of grading, let alone the ethics of grade inflation. The purpose of this paper is to map out and examine the ethics of grade inflation. By way of beginning, we clarify why grade inflation is a problem of practical ethics embedded in contemporary social practice. Then, we illuminate three different aspects of grade inflation—longitudinal, compressed, and comparative—and explore the ethical dilemmas that each one raises. We demonstrate how these three aspects may be seen as corresponding to three different victims of grade inflation—individuals, institutions, and society—and hence also to three potential agents of harm—teachers, schools, and educational systems. Next, we reflect upon various compelling reasons that these agents inflate grades, whether from an ethic of care, fiduciary responsibility, or simple self-preservation. Subsequently, we consider a variety of means of combatting grade inflation, and invite more educators and philosophers to delve into the complex practical ethics of grade inflation.