While field experiences and student teaching make up a cornerstone of teacher preparation, what counts as "practice" has typically focused on specific pedagogical approaches, rather than on more holistic frameworks. Thus, there has been a presumed split between learning about specific pedagogical practices and other relational and…

Automatic assessment of the quality of classroom discourse can have a transformative effect on research and practice on improving teaching effectiveness. We improve on a previous automated method to measure teacher authentic questions -- open-ended questions without pre-scripted responses that predict student achievement growth -- using classroom…

Schools in underserved districts experience pressure to improve achievement outcomes, trapping curricula, teachers, and students in a skills-driven literacy framework, repeatedly reinscribing a racist pedagogy. Although the research community recommends resisting skills-based literacy, researchers often neglect to commit to a research-practice…

Project based learning (PBL) provides opportunities for teachers and students to create learning spaces that are authentic and relevant. Much of this work is taking place in STEM contexts, with few studies exploring PBL integration in English language arts (ELA) classrooms. In this co-design project, we collaborated with 13 9th grade ELA teachers…

This proposal presents findings from the large-scale study "Literacy Teacher Educators: Their Backgrounds, Visions, and Practices" which includes 28 literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) from four countries. Five LTEs who use a constructivist approach are presented. Three aspects of their constructivism are discussed: knowledge is…

The qualitative study reported in this paper focuses on the ethical dimensions of curriculum and its interpretation and implementation by secondary school teachers. It explores what teachers do to respond to a curriculum that increasingly adopts a values-laden perspective (e.g., social justice education, critical literacy) that establishes…

This study explores secondary history, literature, and science teachers' learning in cross-disciplinary professional development (PD) designed to support inquiry in disciplinary literacy instruction. As part of a larger design-based research project, teachers participated in a three-year Teacher Network designed to build knowledge and pedagogical…

This study examines teachers' initial conceptions of an integrated STEM-PBL approach and their perceptions of what facilitates or hinders implementation in their schools. This study took place within the first year of a three-year STEM Professional Development (PD) program for middle school math, science and English language arts teachers. The two…

With the pressure to improve student achievement, and the propensity to use PD to influence instruction, it is easy to overlook the complex process of teacher learning. The Vygotsky Space represents iterative learning within public and private dimensions, where teacher knowledge building is positioned as interactive cultural events situated within…

The paper reports on a research study investigating the professional identity of English teachers in the secondary school in the UK, and the effects of their subject philosophies and their conceptions of learning on their teaching. The various and often competing definitions of the subject have a long history, and a number of factors have been…

Many American colleges and universities that train English majors for careers in secondary schools (Eastern Washington University, for example) expose students to two radically different modes of literature pedagogy. In the majority of courses, literature is approached as artifact and students are instructed in ways to analyze literary text, with…

The distinguishing feature of the secondary level language arts methods course at the University of North Florida is that all readings, assignments, and class activities are designed to promote the highest possible degree of student participation in and responsibility for the learning process. Underlying all course activities is the premise that…

Prompted, in part, by a concern over the surprise and disillusionment many new teachers have expressed about the problems they encounter in the classroom, an instructor of an advanced writing class (required of all English majors and minors in the teaching curriculum) distributed to his students a five-page questionnaire/survey to see how they…

This paper describes an in-service workshop on writing, which begins by having teachers air negative feelings and false conceptions about the writing process, involves the teachers in writing and introduces the writing process concept. A sentence completion activity, integrated with the viewing of a videotape, helps teachers examine their…

The University of Tennessee trains its graduate students to become composition teachers by requiring them to assist composition instructors with the teaching of their classes, to grade papers, to confer with students, to compute final averages, and to plan daily classes. The graduate assistant is also allowed in the course of a year to work…