In this commentary, summarized from a recent interview, the author reminisces about a career dedicated to critical exploration in the classroom. She discusses the formation of the Moon Group, a group of teachers who met over a period of 25 years to study the behaviour of the moon. Duckworth later describes an exercise in which her students…

Although most teacher education programs include instruction in the basic science of psychology, practicing teachers report that this preparation has low utility. Researchers have considered what sort of information from psychology about children's thinking, emotion, and motivation would be useful for teachers' practice. Here, I take a different…

Anderson's central concern in his "ELT Journal" article (Vol. 69, No. 3, 2015) is to introduce several helpful changes teachers can make to a regular lesson plan pro forma due to a particular language learning environment and unpredictable events. In introducing these changes, Anderson discusses affordance, learning objectives, and…

The author always turns to children to be her teachers when she comes up against new ideas and challenges. She believes that observing closely and reflecting on how children engage in exploration and discovery reinforced the notion that children, in fact, do more with less! Supporting children in developing self-regulation is not an easy task in…

As many states and districts rethink teacher supervision and evaluation, the team at the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has analyzed thousands of lesson videotapes and studied the shortcomings of current practices. The tentative conclusion: Teachers should be evaluated on three…

This article focuses on early childhood classrooms in which young children with disabilities are enrolled, ideally inclusive classrooms. A foundational assumption about which most early intervention professionals would agree is that young children with disabilities learn from: (1) their experiences (interactions) with their physical environments…

In recent years, pedagogical pragmatics has sought to improve the effectiveness with which learners express and interpret meaning, through awareness-raising activities that draw on authentic materials and break away from simplistic explanations of form-function correspondences. By and large, these efforts have been informed by an inductive…

Inscriptions play a critical role in the creation and communication of scientific knowledge, yet are afforded little status in traditional science education research and practice. In the vast majority of science classrooms, K-12 and university alike, inscriptions are treated as transparent, unproblematic illustrations of the "content" rather than…

The authors advance an argument that placing observation of actual teaching as a central feature of accountability frameworks, teacher preparation, and basic science could result in substantial improvements in instruction and related social processes and a science of the production of teaching and teachers. Teachers' behavioral interactions with…

Considers the current relevance of the practice of observation of children through an exploration of the role of observation in the work of Friedrich Froebel, Susan Isaacs, and Margaret McMillan. (BC)

This article presents an excerpt from a typed manuscript of one of many lectures Maria Montessori delivered in 1915 in San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. In this particular lecture, Montessori talked about how teachers can make a profound change in their way of teaching. Instead of doing the traditional lecture, teachers can learn how to…

Presents the author's personal viewpoints on the University of Leicester's School of Education Observational Research and Classroom Learning Evaluation (ORACLE) project. (DS)

Proposes that environmental educators refocus their attention on the study of nature to reach the goal of environmental literacy. (MDH)

Discusses limitations of prescriptive methods of teaching with their preoccupation with rationality and technique. Argues for a more holistic approach to teaching involving observation and imagination. (PKP)

In this article, the author opines on teaching students in an easy, peaceful and happy manner. Realistically, however, this is not always possible. Oftentimes teachers labor over figuring out the reasons for children's strengths and attending to their needs. Here, she discusses the types of behaviors that may be exhibited by students during…