This report details five principles for creating powerful classrooms and offers a new vision for professional development: (1) High Structure; (2) High Challenge; (3) Intensity; (4) Intentionality and Learning How to Learn; and (5) Inquiry and Making Learning Visible. Included are recommendations drawn from the work of the 11 community college…

Although the conditions for successful technology integration finally appear to be in place, including ready access to technology, increased training for teachers, and a favorable policy environment, high-level technology use is still surprisingly low. This suggests that additional barriers, specifically related to teachers' pedagogical beliefs,…

This book addresses the crucial and controversial questions that face today's reading scholars, educators, and professionals. Contributors to the book offer their insights and expertise on such issues as the phonics/whole language debate, the state of reading comprehension instruction, the validity of and need for standards and assessment,…

Proposes that technical writing teachers ask their students to analyze the ethos--the revelation of a writer's character through the rhetorical choices a writer makes--of the profession they are preparing to enter. Provides examples of such analysis. (RL)

Discusses how three different models can be used to serve gifted children: separate classrooms, resource rooms, and the consultant-teacher model. How differentiated curricula can be used in inclusive settings and the characteristics of a differentiated classroom are highlighted. The need for appropriate professional development is emphasized. (CR)

Generally speaking, reading is not taught beyond the third grade in most school systems. If a student has not mastered reading comprehension skills by the fourth grade, chances are that she/he will struggle with learning in grades four through twelve. Many middle school and high school students lack the ability to use communication skills…

As this feisty teacher/professor conversation shows, there are no quick fixes for motivating students and maintaining classroom discipline. Teacher education programs should require a comprehensive, teacher-taught course in discipline that includes a full year of student and substitute teaching experience. Professional development schools, team…

Offered as a policy statement rather than as a how-to manual, this program advisory provides the policy direction and instructional guidance needed to support the improvement of reading achievement in California through the development and implementation of a balanced, comprehensive reading program in prekindergarten through grade 3. The first…

An eduator's self-analysis of changing beliefs about classroom relationships over the last 20 years are presented in this paper, with attention given to the philosophical and political issues of caring and controlling. Three phases of experience--student teaching, graduate school, and university teaching--are highlighted. The educator's approaches…

In response to the growing shortage of teachers, some schools and colleges are recruiting professionals from the private sector and government as classroom teachers. Considerations for professionals contemplating a career shift to teaching include choosing the proper grade level and subject area, obtaining teaching credentials, certification…

Suggests second language acquisition research can help promote change in language teachers' methodological beliefs and practices. Drawing on diffusion of innovations research, an area of sociological inquiry, examines a theoretical framework for understanding change in language education, and discusses practical applications supporting…

Discusses how teachers can learn to capitalize on the moment of understanding in students. Suggests the opening into young minds is ephemeral, and once the opportunity to answer or confirm or pursue a topic is lost, the opportunity is difficult or impossible to recapture. (ET)

A growing body of research indicates that teachers have different job skills, knowledge, behavior, attitudes, and concerns at different points in their careers. Many of these changes seem to follow a regular developmental pattern from which three stages can be discerned. Stage I is the survival stage, during which beginning teachers are concerned…

Describes how teachers' casual talk is, in fact, instruction and can have as much effect as direct instruction. Examines the impact on students of the teacher's language behaviors and how changes in those behaviors can change student classroom responses. (ET)

Describes how the personal narratives of Vivian Paley led one early childhood specialist to surprising insights about the ways young children and adults learn. Focuses on the role of children's storytelling and playacting in supporting thinking, classroom discipline techniques, and using children's thinking to improve one's teaching skills. (KB)