Factors leading to successful professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely discussed in the West, but little is known about how/whether teachers' beliefs contribute to PLCs in the Chinese context. This qualitative case study aimed to investigate teachers' beliefs about teacher learning in PLCs and their influence on collegial learning…

Using the case of a secondary English department in Ontario, Canada, this article examines the constraints that academic departments face in transforming themselves from communities of practice into learning communities. This distinction between a community of practice and a learning community has taken on heightened importance as increasing…

Undertaken during a period when changes in the assessment of English in public examinations at 16+ were becoming embedded in classroom practice, this comparative research explores where poetry is located within the newly aligned examination assessment frameworks of New Zealand and England. It comments on how these frameworks are locally…

Describes a five-meeting cycle which enables a high school English department to cooperate in making constructive curriculum changes. (DD)

Describes the results of a questionnaire survey of English department heads regarding teaching load and teaching conditions. (DD)

Describes the Modern Language Association (MLA) teacher education project. Hopes that the departments participating in the project would develop different exemplary programs appropriate to their departmental and institutional missions, faculty commitments, student needs, and state and local requirements concerning the preparation of secondary…

Two education professors conducting research on the curriculum planning at a high school near Boise (Idaho) found that their status as observer and/or participant in discussions among teachers, administrators and parents made things more difficult. Usually in ethnography it is assumed that the hard part is to achieve insider status--to be accepted…

This study describes professional and curricular innovations in a traditional high school English department within one academic year, resulting from a self-evaluation prepared for the regional accrediting association. The study provides an overview of the school's community, a description of the faculty and student body, and a portrait of the…

Discusses the process of writing as a way of learning and "Writing across the Curriculum Programs." Outlines the program developed at Williamson High School in Alabama that successfully trained the English department to serve as consultants to the school in developing such a program. Includes two figures and references. (MD)

A survey of what English department chairpersons look for from reading specialists. (RB)

This booklet describes the English curriculum at Narrabri High School in Narrabri, Australia. Discussed are such topics as the district of Narrabri, the policy of the high school, the English department and its policies (homework, faculty meetings, discipline, textbooks, and faculty library); a model of English studies, reading, writing…

A Paper presented at annual conference of National Association for the Teaching of English (7th, University of Exeter, England, April 10-13, 1970). (RD)

Describes one school's plan for mixed-ability teaching that utilizes the knowledge, skills, and experiences of all English department members by providing an integrated and coherent curriculum pattern.

Discusses the many contributions of Rewey Belle Inglis, a secondary English teacher, university English educator, and textbook publisher, as well as first woman president of the National Council of Teachers of English (1929). Discusses her professional credentials, her place in history, her writings (about teaching grammar and literature, teacher…