Reading instruction at the K-2 grade levels is of utmost importance for a student's education. The foundational skills acquired during this time period will serve a student throughout their life. Elementary teachers often feel unprepared for the demands of the struggling, proficient and advanced readers within their classrooms. The professional…

Although coaching is used in many schools to facilitate teachers' professional learning, few studies look closely at coaching discourse. Exploring how coaching facilitates teachers' professional development, this study used tape-recorded coaching sessions and individual post-interviews to examine the one-on-one coaching interactions of 4…

Despite 60 years of evidence linking juvenile illiteracy and delinquency, practitioners and policymakers have been painfully slow in the implementation of evidence-based reading interventions for incarcerated juveniles. We will present the Texas Juvenile Justice Tiered Instructional Model, an evidence-based reading program model created…

This dialogical narrative describes the observations and changes in instruction of an 8th-grade science teacher in an English language learner (ELL) sheltered science class before and after receiving instruction in ESL methods, and the backdrop for the teacher's growth, as narrated by the second language teacher educator who directed the teacher's…

Introduction: The perceived information needs of teachers who specialize in reading instruction for at-risk first graders were studied and related to frameworks for the role of social context in information needs, seeking and use. The frameworks considered were: disciplinarity, role theory in work settings, small worlds and information grounds and…

In "Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control" (1997), Albert Bandura writes, "Teachers operate collectively within an interactive social system rather than as isolates" (p. 243). Bandura's attention to the existence of the communal systems that exist in schools is an appreciation shared by many educational reformers, especially those who advocate…

The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed example of effective professional development for teachers that resulted in positive changes to the effectiveness of the school's reading program. This study describes the results of an intervention school-wide program that was conducted in a large urban school with a majority of minority…

The recent reauthorization and regulations of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) encourage the use of school-wide interventions including response to intervention (RTI; Bradley, Danielson, & Doolittle, 2007). RTI refers to a multi-tiered system that addresses the academic needs of all students by using…

As a result of the Reading First Program of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the view of reading has narrowed. Individual state's Reading First professional development programs, and hence reading teachers across the United States, have spent the six years since the funding of the program in 2002 focusing beginning and developmental reading on…

An area of particular concern in adolescent literacy is comprehension of informational text: many students can successfully decode words without actually being able to understand the texts they read. As they progress through school, they have to read increasingly complex texts but receive little if any explicit instruction to help them. Beyond the…

The National Writing Project at Work monograph series describes National Writing Project (NWP) work, often shared informally or in workshops through the NWP network, and offers detailed chronological accounts for sites interested in adopting and adapting the models. This monograph--"The Story of SCORE"--is a realistic look at how an…

Too many middle school students struggle to comprehend their textbooks in science and other content areas. Thus, many adolescent learners lag behind in developing scientific literacy, which the National Research Council has defined as sufficient understanding of the scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making,…

In March and May of 2002 two workshops on adolescent literacy, co-sponsored by several federal agencies and professional associations, were held. They included presentations, discussion panels, audience questions and comments, and small working groups. In the second workshop, examples of instructional models being implemented in middle and high…

This article is a descriptive account of a professional learning community established among university professors, university teacher candidates, a school district instructional supervisor, the high school principal, a high school literacy coordinator, and teachers of a Mid-Atlantic high school in the United States. This learning community…

This paper suggests that the idea of "taking stock" of the current program--reflecting on what educators believe to be best practice--and then "charting a course" of action to better align practice with vision is a deliberate way for teachers to build capacity to enact reform. It begins by providing a brief overview of the changing direction of…