Educators Rising, an initiative of PDK International, has developed five microcredentials that allow aspiring teachers to demonstrate what they know and are able to do through experiences very similar to what professional teachers do every day. [This article contains a sidebar: "Microcredentials in the Teacher Academy Classroom: Rigor,…

The writers describe how apparently ordinary decisions about what to say when talking with children can have substantial effects on their learning and development. The language we use with children influences, among other things, who they think they are, what they think they're doing, the relationships they have with others, the strategic…

Changing a child's life through education is by far the greatest gift an educator can give to a student. Every child deserves the opportunity to receive an education. Yet, some children are denied this privilege every day. Teachers play many roles in a child's life. On the first day of school when a child walks into a classroom, he is putting his…

This book is based on the author's 20-plus years of consulting with school districts and other educational organizations in designing, piloting, and training educators in the use of teacher-performance evaluation systems. Its primary purpose is to help both teachers and their evaluators collect more comprehensive and accurate assessment data for…

Most state regulations for early childhood programs focus on structural aspects of classrooms: class size, teacher/child ratio, teachers' professional degrees, curriculum, and so forth. Those are not the critical factors, according to Robert Pianta, director of the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education and professor of…

While there is a resurge of interests and writings on the differentiated instructional process (DIP), and reflection in teaching is important and perennial, there is no known writing which explicitly displays the role of reflection in the DIP. Using a synergistic review of literature, the author contributes to filling this literary gap and clearly…

As a general phrase, "cultural competence" can often conjure for the unfamiliar reader a vision of a person who is fair, just, and open, a person who is nice, someone who is a good person at heart. Cultural competence, however, goes far beyond the everyday meanings that its component words invoke, and it is an active area of scholarship and…

In this article, the authors begin with a look back at the emergence of English education in the social and political context of the United States as a nation, situating the development of the research-practice divide narrative in debates concerning the nature and purpose of English as secondary-school subject in changing times. The authors turn…

In this article, the author discusses how theories about the way teachers think and learn influence teachers' style of teaching. The author explains that if a teacher's theory of mind is essentially mechanical, then strategies based on reading mechanics will make sense to this teacher. He further expounds that teachers have an obligation to think…

In every classroom where interactivity is part of the learning process, teachers become facilitators. Facilitating in the multicultural classroom presents special challenges for teachers in overcoming psychosocial problems that may be present when people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds interact. Students represent different…

Using primarily online interaction, we worked with a grade one teacher to help her develop an understanding of community in her own classroom. Using an interpretive interactionist methodology, we theorized four domains in her view of classroom community: trust, membership, power, and capacity. The teacher's perceived success in creating community…

This paper is a reconsideration of the nature of teaching and learning in the language teacher education course room. Drawing broadly on sociocultural perspectives of Lave and Wenger and Vygotskian models of cognitive apprenticeship, it considers how to design the course room as a learning environment. It begins with a critique of…

Discusses the results of an attempt to provide an environment more conducive to the personal needs, learning styles, and interest orientations of elementary education majors in an introductory course in the biological sciences. (DDR)

In recent years, many distance educators and institutions have successfully adopted asynchronous text-based environments as the backbone of their online classrooms. Group email, electronic references, and course websites, coupled with online discussions, typically constitute the model of online course delivery. Although the structure and pacing of…

Promotes the improvement of school success for ethnically diverse students via culturally responsive teachers and the preparation of preservice teachers with necessary knowledge, attitudes, and skills to do this, highlighting: development of a cultural diversity knowledge base; design of culturally relevant curricula; demonstration of cultural…