Educational reform sits at top of the list on the world agenda. Since the introduction of international comparison tests, nations have been in serious competition with one another. Educational improvement has become a $2-trillion business annually. Policymakers are seeking the next-best thing to lift local and national scores. Their mandates, however, can only be realized by teachers who will “implement” them. For their part, teachers want to be curriculum makers, not curriculum implementers enacting others’ demands. They know that policies cannot be implemented cleanly due to classroom complexities.

In this Research Topic researchers from different nations are welcome to choose a reform policy that was adopted, to name the “deficiencies” it was expected to address and to illuminate how it affected teachers’ practices in anticipated and unanticipated ways, using their preferred research method. The intent of this Research Topic is to connect theory, practice and policy in tangible ways through presenting a variety of international research exemplars.

Keywords: Reform, Teacher Education, Teacher Practices, Policy, Theory

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.