This paper distils 24 years of classroom research into promoting quality learning in science classrooms to develop an overall framework for better understanding and describing both the learning and the teaching approaches that stimulate and support it. For me, quality learning is characterised by adjectives such as informed, purposeful,…

This article reports on an action research project in which two New Zealand classroom teachers worked with a university researcher to investigate the effects of their knowledge, thinking, and beliefs on the ways in which they mediated students' learning in teacher-student interactions. Working in a small community of practice over a two-year…

Describes teacher inquiry in the University of Georgia's National Reading Research Center's School Research Consortium (SRC). Discusses reasons to formalize the teaching and reflecting process by conducting research, how SRC members are becoming researchers, and what impact SRC research is having. (SR)

Examines the roles and relationships involved as a first-grade teacher and her students built a classroom community that supported the children's acquisition of literacy. Shows how the teacher helped the children and how she got out of their way to allow them to take control of their own learning and curriculum. (SR)

Discusses the development and implementation of an approach to studying classroom practice called "video visits," used in a research project on portfolios. Casts light on specific information about portfolio use and considers the possibilities and potential of video visits as a research tool. Notes disparities and reinforcements between…

Grounded in a communication theory that assumes that the form of communication affects the content of the knowledge that a teacher conveys to his or her students, a study attempted to determine how violence is treated in the classroom. The site for the study was Darbin Elementary School, in a suburb of San Francisco. The method was observation,…

Continuous Attitudinal Response Technology (CART) is an alternative approach to testing students' instantaneous response to teacher behaviors in the classroom. The system uses a microcomputer and video technology device that allows researchers to measure subjects' instantaneous responses to static and continuous stimuli, graphic or verbal. A…

A study was conducted in a Korean language preschool in Koreatown, Los Angeles, California which used student-teacher interactions to examine how a teacher's use of deixis socializes children about what constitutes good eating practices and what cultivates them. The data for this paper came from a larger study of language socialization practices,…

As teaching argumentative and persuasive writing returns to the classroom, so does the question of how to do so effectively. Process writing reforms over the past 30 years have sought to change the ways writing is taught from drill and practice in grammar exercises to a focus more on continuous writing and revision. Arguing from an ecological…

A series of steps needs to be taken in preparing for research-based inservice programs: training individuals to assume the role of facilitators of inquiry; developing materials and strategies for working with classroom teachers; developing appropriate evaluation procedures; and structuring opportunities to bring together the researchers and…

This text introduces teachers to research methods they can use to examine their own classrooms in order to become more effective teachers. Becoming familiar with classroom-based research methods not only enables teachers to do research in their own classrooms, it also provides a basis for assessing the findings of existing research. McKay…

The Consumer-Validation approach to applying educational research in classroom settings is described. The model, developed in Murfreesboro (Tennessee), provides a way to disseminate research findings as well as to allow teachers to test the validity of findings drawn from classroom research. (CJ)

Explores vocabulary-learning opportunities in a seventh-grade literature-based reading program. Discusses how this program supported vocabulary teaching and learning both explicitly and implicitly, and shows how varying classroom configurations expanded learners' word knowledge and enhanced their word-learning abilities. (SR)

Based on the premise that portfolios form part of a process to enable the teacher more truly to become a facilitator, this report presents the narratives of an 8th-grade reading workshop teacher and a 12th-grade honors course teacher. The report begins with a brief section explaining the principles of the project. The format of the report is a…

This portrait of a high school literature classroom is one of a series of several such portraits which depict diverse classroom settings of high school literature, and which result from the second year of a teacher-research project in the greater Albany, New York area. This article portrays teacher Karen Dunne and her tenth-grade class of average…