"Transformative Critical Service-Learning" offers hands-on tools for implementing, reflecting on, and assessing critical service-learning in classrooms and community spaces. Answering a need from practitioners for a practical tool for making sense of critical service-learning, the authors introduce the Critical Service-Learning…

This tool is intended to help educators reflect on the ways they are or are not facilitating the integration of social-emotional learning through the mindsets, actions, and instructional practices that they bring to the work. Through reflection statements and accompanying sample indicators, practitioners are able to take stock of the ways in which…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively," offers educators three specific, evidence-based recommendations that address the challenges of teaching students in grades 6-12 to write effectively. This summary focuses on the second of the three recommendations: Integrate writing and…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively," offers educators three specific, evidence-based recommendations that address the challenges of teaching students in grades 6-12 to write effectively. This summary focuses on the first of the three recommendations: Explicitly teach…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are composed of three intertwined dimensions--disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts--that provide a foundation for what students should know and be able to do at various grade levels. The eight science practices outlined in the NGSS are critical components…

Dialogic teaching--a pedagogical approach that involves students in a collaborative construction of meaning and is characterized by shared control over the key aspects of classroom discourse--has been largely advocated by contemporary research and theory. However, studies in the US and UK continue to document the persistence of monologic…

Mathematics teachers confront dozens of daily decisions about how to instruct students. It is well established that high-quality instruction provides benefits for students with diverse learning and family backgrounds. However, it is often difficult for teachers to identify the critical aspects of a successful mathematics lesson as they strive to…

Learners are multi-faceted, unique people. Discovering the whole individual is incumbent upon realizing the teaching/learning environments, common social and societal realities, and belief and value systems respective of academic and socio-societal factors that establish who one is as a learner and teacher. In "Learning and Teaching," the authors…

As the instructor of a multicultural education course for preservice teachers, I have attempted to guide my students in critiquing and reconceptualizing the deficit view of students, particularly minority students, endemic to the American school system. Yet I am faced with a dilemma: Is the fact that I believe my own students have deficit views of…

The lesson study model of professional development that originated in Japan is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. At its core, lesson study is a means of bringing teachers together to carry out the process of planning a lesson, implementing and observing it, and then examining it during a debriefing session. The debriefing…

One vision of education evolution is to change the modes of thinking of students. Critical thinking, design thinking, and system thinking are higher order thinking paradigms that are specifically pertinent to business education. A model-directed approach to teaching and learning higher order thinking is proposed. An example of application of the…

The goal of this article is to describe a continuum of levels of reflection. It briefly focuses on Deanna Kuhn's research into the development of scientific thinking and Robert Kegan's Object-Subject Theory of Development applied to the problems of inspiring students to be able to reflect. Assignments for improving students' ability to reflect are…

These authors have been working with a school in New Zealand that teaches mathematics, in the Maori language. In the last two years, the focus has been on improving the quantity and the quality of writing in mathematics. For the authors, "writing" meant using words, diagrams, symbols and graphs, either individually or in combination.…

How can teachers ensure instruction is aligned with 21st century demands for self-directed, collaborative problem solvers? Practice exercises are not the answer. Instead, here's a book that explains why the key is to use explicit instruction that includes proficient models, specific feedback, and supportive coaching. Rhoda Koenig gives you insight…

Many models of planning and lesson construction in the United States advocate an objective-driven approach whereby teachers create performance-based goals that their students should accomplish by the end of the lesson. Teachers then evaluate lessons by determining if students have accomplished these objectives. Often, this model of planning…