Initially, the author began her teacher inquiry project by focusing on the superhero play she had been observing in her classroom and on her concerns about how it might be impacting the classroom community. Through an ongoing process of self-reflection and reading research, she was able to open herself up to interacting and engaging with the…

Teachers' subject knowledge is recognized as an essential component of effective teaching. In the foreign language context, teachers' subject knowledge includes language proficiency. In New Zealand high schools, foreign languages (e.g. Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish) have recently been offered to learners earlier in their schooling,…

Observes literacy instruction in five first-grade classrooms. Finds classrooms headed by most-effective-for-locale teachers were characterized by excellent classroom management based on positive reinforcement and cooperation; balanced teaching of skills, literature, and writing; scaffolding and matching of task demands to student competence;…

After presenting two contrasting team teaching methods in the same course, students were administered a Likert-type questionnaire with items which were designed to ascertain student opinion regarding their experiences under each method. First, an overall comparison of effectiveness between team teaching and traditional teaching revealed that: 1)…

This exploration of the essential knowledge offered by research on teacher planning is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the kinds of knowledge derived from research on teaching. It is noted that teacher effectiveness researchers have been primarily concerned with producing knowledge about the observable behavior of effective…

This article examines a key factor of the National Literacy Strategy, interactive teaching, and looks in particular at how it may be affecting teacher autonomy. It traces the development of this approach in the Literacy Hour and describes a research project which showed that many teachers have their own sophisticated ideas about interactive…

This study examined the effectiveness of a cooperative learning model for the teaching of Freshman English at the college level. The model involved student presentations based on assigned readings from the texts, nine compositions and daily quizzes on the reading material, and peer grading of the daily quizzes as well as mid-term and final exams,…

Presenting a portrait of a high school literature classroom, this paper gives a detailed, evocative characterization of what one particular and well-regarded high school literature teacher actually does in her classroom. The paper describes how the teacher-researcher chose a colleague whose experience and expertise were generally thought to be…

A study examined the effectiveness of a collaborative learning model for the teaching of a modern English grammar class at the college level. The model involved student presentations based on the explanation of material from assigned readings in the texts; daily quizzes on the material from the assigned reading; and peer grading of the daily…

Although the research base on teaching, learning, and effective schools has expanded, the results of that research have been implemented only to a limited degree, either in the classroom or in the training of teachers. One of the accusations that have frequently been made against teacher education is that it does not use a theoretical,…