Student disengagement can be a major impediment to effective student learning. When parents and educators cannot provide adequate reasoning to explain the value of what is taught at home and in school, students can lose their motivation to learn and be engaged in classroom activities. In this article, the authors explain the importance of teacher…

Discusses the challenges of classroom decision making. Offers an organic framework for teaching reading strategies, focusing on the teacher's decision points. Uses hypothetical scenarios of whole-class instruction to show how basic beliefs about literacy can be interwoven into a decision-making cycle. (SR)

This research probes the content and consequences of the decisions that teachers make while conducting a lesson. Subjects included 2 middle school teachers (grades 7 and 8) and 35 of their students. This research employed participant observation, informant interviewing, and shared viewing of a videotaped lesson to explore interactive decision…

This study compared the use of dialog and response journal formats in a graduate class for literacy educators. Data from student journals, interviews, and questionnaires indicated that students comparably completed each type of entry and believed the two formats served similar functions (promoting collegial consultation, improving task engagement,…