Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are becoming increasingly commonplace in America's schools. As part of the school community, physical educators are positioned to add and receive value within PLCs. Given that school-based PLCs are driven by collaborative teams, reaching high performing status requires external supportive school structures…

This article is a translation, with accompanying comments, of an address given by Paulo Freire in 1985. Freire deals with his vision of the virtues necessary in a teacher. He considers eight virtues, the final one underpinning the others. For Freire, this final virtue--the necessity of reading the text from reading the context--means that critical…

Mathematics education research has focused on developing teachers' knowledge or other visible aspects of the teaching practice. This paper contributes to conversations around making a teacher's thinking visible and enhancing a teacher's pedagogical reasoning by exploring the use of pedagogical documentation. In this paper, we describe how a…

Academic institutions worldwide, from primary schools to universities, use grades or marks as a fundamental sorting and signaling mechanism for students. The grades awarded to students should be indicative of learning outcomes. However, do the grades awarded today accurately reflect student achievement in the classroom? Grade inflation has become…

Stavros Demetriadis is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) in Greece. He also earned his Bachelor's degree in Physics and a Master Diploma in Electronic Physics from AUTh. He became interested in information and communications technologies when he was a high school…

Imagine a school where students hold doors, make welcoming comments, and offer to carry packages into the building. Or a school that's distinguishing feature is a culture of respect and helpfulness that manifests daily in positive student behavior. Or a school where even such seemingly small events as tornado and fire drills, which can be quite…

We describe a model for new and senior faculty members, integrating a behavioral approach to enhancing teaching skills with research from the field of positive psychology on virtues and character strengths. The Teacher Behaviors Checklist (Keeley, Smith, & Buskist, 2006) identifies target behaviors amenable to modification, derived from…

This bulletin contains the current specifications from which the questions on the professional education subtest of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination were developed. Information is provided on: (1) competencies and subskills tested by the subtest; (2) generic competencies evaluation strategies; (3) the content base for the professional…

The Nebraska University Secondary Teacher Education Program (NUSTEP) incorporates educational equity concepts through a four-phased, theory-to-practice performance- and field-based teacher training program. The program was developed by college faculty, resource personnel in educational equity, and staff representatives from the Lincoln Public…

An experimental Interactive Video Disc (IVD) assessment program, funded partially by the National Science Foundation, was developed to assess science teachers' knowledge of safe management of lab facilities and activities. The IVD program contains two phases: (1) panoramic view of the lab room, including safety equipment and storage of chemicals;…