Drawing from a two-year ethnographic study, this article establishes jazz as an epistemological metaphor for critical participatory action research. The author juxtaposes the tensions inherent in jazz music and critical participatory research methodologies to provide a framework for understanding how dissonance can become a productive element for…

Using the analytical tools of broadening, burrowing and storying and restorying, this narrative inquiry examines a middle school teachers' knowledge of her pedagogical practices through the strand of pearls' metaphor that she employs to explain her teaching to herself, a beginning teacher whom she mentors and ourselves as researchers. Throughout…

The process of writing successful grant proposals has received not so dubious attention in the last several decades. This article provides contextual significance resulting from a review of literature spanning 1975 to 2013. I identify essential vocabulary stemming from the literature review to familiarize the reader with the terminology associated…

This study aims to explore Turkish elementary teachers' (1) perceptions of classroom management, (2) classroom management problems they experience, (3) factors causing these problems, and (4) their classroom management practices. The study employed phenomenological research design in the qualitative tradition. The participants included 15…

Metaphors representing the practice of teacher educators were the data for this collaborative self-study by a small group of teacher educators from across the USA. Seventy-five pre-service teachers and practicing teachers enrolled in teacher education courses were asked to create metaphors to represent the teaching practices of the authors, who…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which charter school leaders influence the understanding and conception of accountability policy and how that understanding translates into practice. In particular, this paper draws from sense-making theory and research on charter school leaders to identify their pre-existing…

This Southeastern state was awarded one of the first two Race to The Top (RTTT) grants the U. S. Department of Education funded. A key piece of the state's winning application was a legislative mandate to implement an intensive, quantitative, and accountability driven teacher evaluation system beginning with the 2011-2012 school year. The new law…

A critical task for communication educators is preparing students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for active and responsible participation within a rapidly changing global community. Given the complex nature of the challenges citizens will tackle in this century, there is a pressing need for educational approaches that will cultivate…

The paper reports on a study of emergent adult instructed L2 German writing ability in a college-level program that developed an explicit curriculum-based approach to supporting L2 writing. It uses systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) as its theoretical framework and traces writing development through a central construct in the theory, the…