As part of an ongoing series of reports by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), "Learning About Learning: What Every New Teacher Needs to Know" makes broad claims about teacher education based on a limited analysis of textbooks and syllabi. The report argues that teacher education materials, specifically educational psychology…

"Great Teachers and Great Leaders" (GTGL) is one of six research summaries issued by the U.S. Department of Education in support of its Blueprint for Reform. This review examines the presentation of research about improving teacher and administrator quality in GTGL. The review concludes that there are serious flaws in the research summary. The…

The purpose of this study was to rethink the conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge based on our descriptive research findings and to show how this new conceptualization helps us to understand teachers as professionals. This study was a multiple case study grounded in a social constructivist framework. Data were collected from multiple…

This report examines the implementation of the first year of the Pennsylvania High School Coaching Initiative. Funded by the Annenberg Foundation, it is an on-site professional development initiative that employs instructional coaches using Penn Literacy Framework in an attempt to improve the level of teacher instruction in districts across the…

Teacher quality is widely recognized as influencing student achievement and success in school. In this article, we consider various approaches to the assessment of teacher quality, including process-product observational measures, evaluation checklists, professional standards, large-scale surveys, and commercially available observation systems. We…

Background: Many scholars have called for physical education to be part of interdisciplinary units at the elementary level. The study of Native American cultures is required in most North American elementary schools. Folk dance, however, has traditionally included Western European folk dances, square dance, and, more recently, line dancing. In our…