Observing teaching with a practiced, professional eye can yield valuable insights into the specific learning opportunities that students are (or are not) provided. However, recent policy initiatives have emphasized using formulaic rubrics and checklists to rate teacher behaviors and evaluate their use of particular instructional moves. Rather than…

Teacher effectiveness, which impacts student attainment even when controlling for student characteristics, is of key importance as a factor in educational effectiveness and improvement. Improving the quality of teaching is thus the primary means by which we can enhance student learning outcomes. Thus there has long been great interest in the…

A non-specialist teacher of mathematics is a school teacher who qualified to teach in a subject other than mathematics yet teaches mathematics to students in secondary school. There is an emerging interest internationally in this population, a brief report of which is given in the paper. Because of concerns about the quality of non-specialists'…

South Africa's esteem is low with regard to current learner achievement in mathematics. Results from international studies, such as TIMMS and SACMEQ, continuously indicate that South African learners perform below international benchmarks in mathematics. Research and evaluation studies assert that teacher practices and poor early mathematics…

Research that aimed to examine teachers' experiences whilst implementing a reform approach to mathematics teaching in an Irish primary school forms the basis of this paper. In particular, factors that contributed to changing mathematics practice in this case study school are outlined. The school engaged in professional development (PD) that…

What teachers attend to, how they make sense of, and respond to critical incidents in the classroom are important for improving teaching. However, seeing and understanding important features of critical incidents can be difficult. In this paper, I propose a notion of productive noticing, which I used to analyse a case study of what teachers…

This study explores the implications for mathematical knowledge and pedagogical practices of primary teachers in Papua New Guinea making a shift from a transmission approach to a connectionist approach to teaching mathematics. The research participants were engaged in a professional development program designed to support the teaching and learning…

Existing research from Western countries has consistently shown that the learning environment is an important factor for academic motivation. Self-determination theory, which serves as a theoretical foundation of the present study, suggests that teachers' involvement is an important element of students' learning, regardless of the cultural…

Observation measures of instructional quality tend to fall into two broad categories--those for use across subject areas and those intended for use in specific subject areas. The move toward content-specific measures is a result of research suggesting that effective teaching looks different across subject areas and that both content knowledge and…

Given the vital importance of using a scientific approach for curriculum development, the authors employed a design experiment methodology (Brown, 1992; Shavelson et al., 2003) to develop and evaluate, FUSION, a first grade mathematics intervention intended for students with or at-risk for mathematics disabilities. FUSION, funded through IES…

Since 1991, the National Science Foundation has funded 59 state, urban, and rural systemic initiatives to promote achievement in math, science, and technology. The Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) is a six-state consortium that focuses these efforts on low-income rural schools. A primary means of accomplishing this is a 1-day,…

Teacher-dominated classrooms with some student-centered elements are a perplexing phenomenon of Chinese mathematics classrooms. In-depth exploration of this phenomenon is helpful for understanding the features of mathematics teaching in China. This paper demonstrates how the teacher can encourage students to actively generate knowledge under the…

Mathematics lessons in 15 primary 5 classrooms were tape-recorded and coded to describe how teachers structure lessons and communicate with students. Few differences were found between experienced and probationary teachers. (f=fiche numbers). (CP)

This study describes problem solving instruction by nine seventh grade mathematics teachers and compares it to basic skills instruction. Comparison of the activity structures and teacher and observer ratings reveals few major differences between types of instruction. Between-teacher differences in activity structures were greater than differences…

Materials used in conducting a conference workshop on language immersion are presented, including an introductory overview, a guide for observing and analyzing immersion instruction, findings resulting from analysis of the program in question, and the text of a related presentation made at the same conference. The introductory section describes…