Observing and Teaching Reform-Minded Lessons: What Do Teachers See?

We describe the way in which 12 primary-grade teachers responded to reform-minded teaching of multidigit addition and subtraction. Three teachers were hired to deliver 6–12 weeks of specially designed instruction; the other 9 teachers observed this instruction in their classrooms. Results of follow-up interviews showed that teachers who believed mathematics was more than a collection of skills and that students must construct their own understandings were inclined to interpret and appreciate the special instruction as the developers had intended. Teachers who believed mathematics was primarily a set of skills they must teach focused on a few individual features of the instruction, usually the use of physical materials, and, if they transferred any of the special instruction into their own teaching, often distorted the developers' intent. The more intensive involvement of the hired teachers led to more positive assessments of the instruction, but even here antithetical beliefs constrained later practice. Observations are provided on the nature of effective teacher development programs. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

What Do Student Teachers Want in Mentor Teachers?: Desired,Expected, Possible,and Emerging Roles

Research has shown that mentor teachers play varied roles. Using a conceptual framework grounded in these roles, the researchers explored what seven student teachers said during multiple interviews about the roles they wanted for their mentor teachers. Findings showed that while some participants preferred emotional support and others wanted instructional support, none wanted socialization. The researchers identified a new category–mentor as gatekeeper–to capture the preferences of one participant and concerns of others. This category reflected a focus on the credentialing aspect of student teaching as something that students must complete before licensure. Implications for teacher education included additional support for mentor teacher–preservice teacher pairs such as conversations about desired, expected, possible, and emerging roles during the mentoring process.     

What Role Do We Expect Secondary Master Reading Teachers to Play?

In this article, we explore and identify the varied roles that have been assigned over time to the master reading teacher at the secondary level. Despite the fact that there are fewer master reading teachers (MRTs) at the secondary level, they are often required to take on even more responsibilities than MRTs at the elementary level. Secondary MRT roles have included working as a reading interventionist and instructor, reading coach, and school liaison to homes and community. Additionally, secondary MRTs also take on the role of content/disciplinary reading expert. Based on our literature review, we argue that the wide-ranging and multi-faceted roles assigned to the secondary MRT may not be the best deployment of responsibilities. We suggest that the roles of the secondary MRT be re-examined for the purpose of defining specific and limited roles and responsibilities to be assigned to these professionals so as to maximize their effectiveness within those identified domains of responsibility.     

Teachers’ Classroom Teaching Practices in Amhara Region and Addis Ababa City,Ethiopia

The purpose of the study reported on was to investigate the current classroom practices of teachers. Using multistage sampling, 245 teachers were selected from primary and secondary schools in the Amhara Region and Addis Ababa City, Ethiopia. A survey design was used for the study. The major results obtained showed that problems were observed in implementing active teaching methods; applying a variety of assessment techniques; questioning skills; providing feedback; managing classroom behaviour; and establishing a positive classroom climate. The study results revealed that primary school teachers performed better than secondary school teachers and also female teachers performed better than male teachers in most teaching-learning activities; but there was no difference in terms of regions for most teaching-learning activities. Some of the recommendations are: training on active learning methods and assessment; providing feedback; student management; action research; and so on.     

Will Teachers Create Opportunities for Discussion when Teaching Proof in a Geometry Classroom?

This study presents an analysis of whether geometry teachers create opportunities for student discussion when engaging students in proving as revealed through the use of a multimedia survey instrument. We presented 42 secondary mathematics teachers with 8 multimedia narratives set in the situation of doing proofs in high school geometry and asked them to choose what they would do next, presenting options that included a normative instructional action which closed off discussion and less typical actions that encouraged student discussion. Our analysis provides insight into the professional obligations that teachers use to justify their departure from the norm in order to encourage student talk as well as the background variables that are associated with such decisions. We found that while secondary mathematics teachers frequently chose to promote discussion in their classrooms, the rationale that they chose for this decision and the reasons they might choose not to immediately encourage discussion differed according to the amount of experience they had teaching geometry. We use these differences to illustrate how the professional obligations can be used to better understand how teacher decisions are rationalized at the level of the instructional situation.     

What is Intended,What is Realized,and What is Learned? Teaching and Learning Biology in the Primary School Classroom

Within the framework of variation theory, 7- to 12-year-old students’ ways of understanding cellular respiration and photosynthesis were investigated against the background of their teachers’ teaching. Eighteen students were selected by the teachers and interviewed by the researcher. Lessons were observed and video recorded, and stimulated-recall interviews with the teachers were conducted. The students’ understanding of the function of oxygen and sugar in plants was described in four categories. The study concludes that young students can develop complex understanding if opportunities to learn are presented. The opportunities depended mainly on the language used by the teachers, such as metaphors, pointing out critical aspects of the object of learning. The study has implications for the relationship between teachers’ competence and students’ learning.     

Teaching,Learning, and the Public: Interpretations of Teachers’ Classroom Images

Interchange - This article presents findings from an interpretive study of teachers’ visualized and publicly shared depictions of teaching and learning. Drawing on images posted by teachers...     

Home Visits: How Do They Affect Teachers’ Beliefs about Teaching and Diversity?

Based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, this qualitative study examined the impact of home visits on a group of six Head Start educators. Each participant conducted two home visits. For the first home visit, participants were not provided any guidance. On the second visit, participants were provided a handout with questions intended to guide their visit. The participants were asked to document, in a reflective journal, their feelings and attitudes toward the children’s families on two visits. Additionally, participants commented on their teaching beliefs and practice as impacted by their home visit. Results of the study indicated that home visits enabled participants to see the families and children that they work with from a different and more positive perspective. The guided home visit questions allowed participants to better understand children and their families from historical and cultural perspectives. Also, participants were better able to create a more multicultural learning environment and lesson plans for their children.     

School Counselor Preparation in Kenya: Do Kenyan School Counselors Feel Adequately Prepared to Perform Their Roles?

School counselor training in Kenya is a relatively new phenomenon. This study examined Kenyan school counselors’ perceptions of the adequacy of their preparedness to perform their roles within the school setting. The survey was administered to 105 school counselors in four counties. The findings revealed that Kenyan school counselors perceived themselves as being adequately prepared; however, participants revealed deficiencies in their preparation and ability to deal with a wide range of student issues. Implications of these findings to the training of school counselors and counselor training programs are discussed.     

What Jim Crow’s Teachers Could Do: Educational Capital and Teachers’ Work in Under-resourced Schools

This article explains how Jim Crow’s teachers—former teachers of legally segregated schools for blacks—prepared and motivated disadvantaged students in spite of funding and resource deprivation. According to the author, black teachers fashioned situated pedagogies for the acquisition of educational capital that could be used in exchange for jobs, rights, and social power. Findings reveal three strategies of opportunity which provide some clues to how urban teachers today can educate poor children of color in under-resourced schools, such as generating materials and supplies, situating curriculum and instruction, and mobilizing human resources. The analysis draws upon 44 oral history interviews with former teachers in the coastal plains of North Carolina, as well as secondary historical sources.     

Model-Based Teaching and Learning with BioLogica™: What Do They Learn? How Do They Learn? How Do We Know?

This paper describes part of a project called Modeling Across the Curriculum which is a large-scale research study in 15 schools across the United States. The specific data presented and discussed here in this paper is based on BioLogica, a hypermodel, interactive environment for learning genetics, which was implemented in multiple classes in eight high schools. BioLogica activities, data logging, and assessments were refined across this series of implementations. All students took a genetics content knowledge pre- and posttests. Traces of students' actions and responses to computer-based tasks were electronically collected (via a log file function) and systematically analyzed. An intensive 3-day field test involving 24 middle school students served to refine methods and create narrative profiles of students' learning experiences, outcomes, and interactions with BioLogica. We report on one high school implementation and the field test as self-contained studies to document the changes and the outcomes at different phases of development. A discussion of design changes concludes this paper.     

Do Pre-service Chemistry Teachers Reflect their Beliefs about Constructivism in their Teaching Practices?

This study aimed to explore pre-service chemistry teachers’ beliefs about constructivism and the influence of their beliefs in their teaching practice. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were carried out with eight pre-service teachers in order to understand their belief structures. Pre-service teachers’ beliefs about constructivism were classified in three categories which are weak, moderate, and strong conceptions of constructivism. For detailed exploration, three cases of pre-service teachers representing these three categories were selected. The findings of this study showed that most pre-service teachers in this study did not have a strong conception of constructivism and the relationship between the pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their practice was not clear-cut.     

Elementary Teachers’ Beliefs About Teaching Science and Classroom Practice: An Examination of Pre/Post NCLB Testing in Science

The impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated state science assessment on elementary teachers’ beliefs about teaching science and their classroom practice is relatively unknown. For many years, the teaching of science has been minimized in elementary schools in favor of more emphasis on reading and mathematics. This study examines the dynamics of bringing science to the forefront of assessment in elementary schools and the resulting teacher belief and instructional shifts that take place in response to NCLB. Results indicated that teachers’ beliefs about teaching science remained unchanged despite policy changes mandated in NCLB. Teacher beliefs related to their perceptions of what their administrators and peer groups’ think they should be doing influenced their practice the most. Most teachers reported positive feelings and attitudes about science and reported that their students had positive feelings and attitudes about science; however, teachers reported teaching science less as a result of NCLB. Implications for elementary science education reform and policy are discussed.     

Teaching Thinking Skills in Context-Based Learning: Teachers’ Challenges and Assessment Knowledge

For an educational reform to succeed, teachers need to adjust their perceptions to the reform’s new curricula and strategies and cope with new content, as well as new teaching and assessment strategies. Developing students’ scientific literacy through context-based chemistry and higher order thinking skills was the framework for establishing a new chemistry curriculum for Israeli high school students. As part of this endeavor, we developed the Taste of Chemistry module, which focuses on context-based chemistry, chemical understanding, and higher order thinking skills. Our research objectives were (a) to identify the challenges and difficulties chemistry teachers faced, as well as the advantages they found, while teaching and assessing the Taste of Chemistry module; and (b) to investigate how they coped with teaching and assessing thinking skills that include analyzing data from graphs and tables, transferring between multiple representations and, transferring between chemistry understanding levels. Research participants included eight teachers who taught the module. Research tools included interviews, classroom observations, teachers-designed students’ assignments, and developers-designed students’ assignments. We documented different challenges teachers had faced while teaching the module and found that the teachers developed different ways of coping with these challenges. Developing teachers’ assessment knowledge (AK) was found to be the highest stage in teachers’ professional growth, building on teachers’ content knowledge (CK), pedagogy knowledge (PK), and pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK). We propose the use of assignments designed by teachers as an instrument for determining their professional growth.     

Teaching Latinx students: Do teacher ethnicity and bilingualism matter?

Prior research has indicated that both mainstream (e.g., positive classroom behavior management) and culturally responsive teaching practices (e.g., cultural socialization in the classroom and promoting parent involvement), as well as teacher-student ethnic match, are associated with greater academic achievement for students of color. The purpose of this study was to examine teacher-student ethnic match and culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy as predictors of self-reported teaching practices used with Latinx students. The present study used a sample of 236 teachers (38.6% Spanish-speaking Latinx) of Latinx students in New York City public schools. We found that bilingual Latinx teachers reported using more effective mainstream and culturally responsive teaching practices compared to non-Latinx teachers (who did not speak Spanish). Using structural equation modeling, we found support for a model in which greater reported use of effective teaching practices by bilingual Latinx teachers is mediated by their greater culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy. Taken together, the findings suggest that greater confidence with culturally responsive teaching among Spanish-speaking Latinx teachers contributes to improved classroom environments for Latinx students.     

Professional Development for K–12 Math and Science Teachers: What Do We Really Know?

Abstract

As investments in K–12 math and science professional development programs expanded over the past decade, researchers and policymakers have questioned whether and how such programs work to improve student learning. This article summarizes the current knowledge-base and offers a theoretical framework researchers can use to design studies that explore mechanisms through which professional development programs influence teacher knowledge, teacher practices, and ultimately student achievement. We quantitatively pool the most rigorous evaluation research available to determine whether currently held beliefs in the field are supported by the evidence. Although this study does find some support for the guidance propounded by experts, it cautions policymakers and practitioners that the current evidence base is thin. We urge researchers to build on what we have learned through theory and practice to increase the rigor of evaluations on this important topic by incorporating valid and reliable measures of professional development components as well as valid measures of teacher knowledge and practices.     

What Do Teacher Mentors Tell Student Teachers About Pupil Learning in Infant Schools?

Abstract

Recent emphases on experiential classroom learning in the induction into expertise of student teachers may over‐estimate the learning support that class based practitioners offer students. Current understandings of teachers' thinking and planning suggest that expert practitioners may not be best placed to provide student teachers with frameworks for understanding what Shulman (1987) categorises as general pedagogical knowledge. Data from a sample of 11 UK infant school teacher mentors in the form of 5 hours of taped planning and evaluatory conversations with 20 students have been content analysed. Teacher‐talk related to explanations of how pupils learn forms the focus of the paper. Implications for mentor training and school‐university partnerships are drawn from the analysis of the data. Finally the need to confront the language difference that obtains between schools and universities in order to develop the theoretical base of teacher education is asserted.