This article explores how a Midwestern Christian university's doctoral program aligns an authentic assessment process of evaluation, in lieu of comprehensive exams, with the university's tag line to "Shape Lives that Shape the World." The process of assessing "authentically" comes from the belief that evaluating students on…

Several proposals for addressing religious literacy or including religious content in American public schools point to potential advantages for intellectual and moral development. These proposals include moral arguments, which suggest that religious literacy is an individual and social good. Although the proposals selected for this analysis span…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to work toward more fully conceptualizing literacy practices as social by theorizing the combined relational and intellectual context for learning. This context is created through students' and their teachers' uses of language. In particular, the quality of language that creates this intellectual relational…

Conducted in an urban alternative education program for adolescents ages 17-21, this study provides an overview of a professional development program that sought to support teachers in developing unit plans that incorporated backwards design principles and culturally relevant and sustaining instruction. The authors offer a qualitative thematic…

While previous research has examined outcomes related to academic rigor, mixed findings have resulted from differing conceptualizations of rigor as well as varying methodological approaches. Defining rigor as those in-class practices and assignments that require students to engage in deep learning and demonstrate cognitive complexity, we use…

Millions of Muslim children around the world participate in Qur'anic schooling. For some, this is their only formal schooling experience; others attend both Qur'anic school and secular school. Qur'anic schooling emphasizes memorization and reproduction (recitation, reading, and transcription) of Qur'anic texts without comprehension of their…

This article discusses how teachers in child care and elementary schools learn to work with Reggio-inspired pedagogical documentation. While teachers grasp the value of such documentation theoretically, it is most challenging but exciting to use in practical settings. Documentation illuminates teacher theories about children's understanding:…

This study reports the impact of a professional development course on experienced, highly qualified secondary school teachers of English as a foreign language in preparation for their becoming paid assessors of student teachers on practicum. The course concerned a literacy-oriented pedagogy informed by literacy pedagogical content knowledge…

Beyond Crossroads is a call to action. Within this call, AMATYC has updated its 1995 Crossroads standards, developed a new set of guiding principles, and created a blueprint for implementing these revised principles and standards. The principles guiding Beyond Crossroads are a significant overhaul of their predecessors and are bold statements that…

The traditional "developmental" lesson in which the teacher tried to develop ideas and insights is impossible because student reading abilitiy has deteriorated. The ability to read is seen as a source of liberation, but it is dependent on the degree of literacy and the quality of what is read. (MLW)

Discusses problems that educators face in attempting to emphasize high-level cognitive skills in their curriculum. Identifies four elements of informal learning that guide the creation of these skills, through a comparison of the characteristics of formal and informal learning environments. Notes benefits for development of students' conceptual…

Addressing major themes of the commission's "Open Letter to the American People," this article discusses reading and writing skills development, and the cognitive skills involved in these processes. An effective teaching method, the Language Experience Approach based on aural/oral language with reading and writing combined, is detailed. (MBR)