What do good teachers do and how can they learn to do it better? These were two of the basic questions underlying the Lesotho Action Research Group's (LARG) year-long confrontation with their teaching. We sought the answers through undertaking some systematic enquiries into what went on in our classrooms; in the process, we learnt much about action, enquiry, reflection, research and the connections between them.

Reflective or inquiry-oriented programmes represent one model of teacher education, emphasizing the goal of preparing thoughtful, self-monitoring teachers with a critical attitude to what they do. This contrasts with alternative programmes which stress the development of specific technical skills, or the teacher's personal and psychological development, or the gaining of traditional craft knowledge (Tom (18]).

Constance. I felt that I was in the way of everybody.... Like that whole 
school did not appreciate that I was there... 
C.M. 
Could you be specific? 
Constance. I only got to teach the whole class about maybe four times [this 

One of the central and ongoing concerns of educators is assessing the effects and outcomes of particular teaching practices and learning conditions. Our interest lies not only in the extent to which students have learned something, but also in the extent to which what they have learned is related to what has been taught and how it has been taught. The processes that constitute that relationship are seldom directly accessible, however, either to those immediately and actively engaged as participants or to observers.

While different types of research techniques such as ethnography, case study and illuminative evaluation have gained increasing prominence, they have rarely been used in the context of comparative research on teachers (Broadfoot [3]). Drawing upon a comparative study of teachers' conceptions of their professional responsibility and classroom practice in two different national contexts and educational traditions – England and France – this paper emphasises the importance of such ethnographic research techniques used in conjunction with more quantitative methods.

This paper will have immediate relevance to British readers, but the ideas behind and impact of the research cited should have application to primary (and perhaps secondary) schools in general. In questioning whether education actually promotes development this paper focuses on the primary school with its child-centred philosophy.

For all social and educational researchers schools and classrooms have a familiar ring about them, not least because most researchers have spent around ten years as pupils in schools and classrooms and several have experience as teachers. Furthermore, schools and classrooms are very similar in their physical features with blackboards, noticeboards, chairs, desks and tables.

A paper entitled “From Classroom Research to Professional Practice'' ought to be entitled “Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning”, because the basic question underlying the relationship between research and practice must concern the issue of how research can improve the quality of education. This relationship is a major theme of the papers in this collection.

This article explores the main initiatives by the Jamaican government since 2005 to address thefunding of the public education system as it implements the education transformation programme. First, it looks at the emphasis placed on a sector-wide approach to address the funding of the transformation process. The article then discusses the options available to Jamaica and other developing countries with similar backgrounds and goals to fund major efforts to transform their education systems.

The participation of high school students in extra-curricular activities is an issue of increasing interest in much of the developed world. There is a growing consensus that youth participation in such activities has beneficial effects on many facets of development. Using data collected from four countries in the Eastern Caribbean, this paper, based on a UNICEF sponsored project, seeks to fill this gap. The study found that student involvement in extra-curricular activities was relatively high in most of the countries, but male participation overwhelmingly took the form of sports.