Teacher Development

Chapter one will review teacher development in Sudanese state primary schools, as well as the poor resources available to teachers. It discusses the need for teacher development and training to help with the transition to a new curriculum written for these schools, and the challenges faced by the teachers, as the new curriculum is quite different from the previous one taught in state schools. This chapter describes a case study using a qualitative ethnographic research methodology that examines the significant role of developing resilience and grit within a pre-service teacher education program. Chapter three discusses the broad interface between the concepts of agency, professional identity and creative insubordination. It presents discussions about the agency and professional identity of teachers in narrating their actions of creative insubordination. It aims to map and analyze written narratives, identifying insubordinate actions revealed by teachers teaching mathematics and discuss how these attitudes, incorporated into teaching practice, contributed to the effectiveness of teaching statistics in their mathematics classes in Elementary School. The following chapter will employ a critical analysis of an instrumental theory-building pre-service teacher case-study as the foundation of a theoretical-based, cyclical, self-reflective teacher cultural competence professional development model. In this chapter, attention will be paid to the modern environment, which is a complex phenomenon revealing many interesting trends. The spate of events, civilization's progress, the cult of performing different tasks, and professional duties all disrupt the rhythm of work and rest. These disproportions take their toll on everyday existence in the teacher`s profession. The final chapter uses evidence from reports prepared for governments' quality agencies, plus papers and seminars given by the author, to document the changing face of teacher education in Lithuanian and Latvia, from 2003 to date.