Background: There have been repeated calls for more widespread use of inquiry-oriented science instruction in K-12 education. At the same time, questions have been raised regarding whether the amount of time in school schedules for science instruction is sufficient to support inquiry-based teaching. This study investigates the relationship between…

Background/Context: There is a strong sense in education that creativity should be nurtured in classroom settings, yet there is little understanding of how effective and creative teachers function (Cropley, 2003; Robinson, 2011; Sawyer, 2011). Existing research has recognized that successful/creative people in any discipline use creative…

Background/Context: A person's socioeconomic class is not a stagnant category based on her income level, but is rather an ongoing lived identity that includes a dynamic process of political struggle. In our self-study, we unpack both our poverty and upper-middle-class experiences and in so doing examine our intergenerational cross-class identity…

Background: Educational outcomes for language minority (LM) children are of great concern across the nation because these students have lower grades, are rated by their teachers as having lower skills, perform worse on standardized tests, and are more likely to drop out than are non-LM students. Given this context of underperformance, there is a…

Background/Context: Increasing teacher retirements and persistently high turnover have ignited interest in teacher recruitment and retention in recent years. Nowhere is the need to understand these issues more urgent than in low-income schools. These schools face especially large challenges in attracting and retaining competent and committed…

Background/Context: There is an extensive body of research on school and student characteristics associated with teacher career decisions that has contributed greatly to our knowledge of teacher preferences. Yet this research also has a number of limitations, including a lack of attention to the sociocultural influences on teacher careers and the…

Background/Context: In this article, we trace the development of a prospective secondary science teacher as she begins to examine her identity as a White person. We explore how the social languages of her teacher education program challenge, intermingle, and blend with ones she brought to the program from her midwestern small-town childhood and a…

Their cumulative schooling experiences dictate the way most teachers carry out their roles. Changing teaching requires changing the environment in which teaching occurs. Colleges can contribute to reinventing teaching in several ways. Many of the educational principles which promote student learning also promote teacher learning and better…

Teacher educators must understand how personal histories influence the development of new teachers' pedagogies to influence how personal histories shape conclusions preservice teachers reach during college. The article examines insights gained from personal histories, discusses pedagogical thinking, and explains the impact educators' personal…

Highlights the recent history of South African education using life histories of two black teachers (one beginning and one experienced) whose careers as students and then teachers evolved against a backdrop of social and political conflict. The article considers ways that selected theories of oppression and resistance explain or fail to explain…

Teacher networks used in California and Vermont are examined. Interviews, observations, and document analyses identified how teacher beliefs, teacher experience, social influences, and practical circumstances interacted with program goals and methods to shape teachers' experiences with networks, views of teaching and learning, and classroom…