In this article, the author shares her experience and the lessons learned in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for a decade. After thousands of lessons, uncountable revisions to those lessons, numerous hours of professional development, access to dozens of talented colleagues, and an abundance of thoughts and insights from…

In this paper we examine aspects of the construction of authentic membership, competence, and sense of shared purpose within a professional community of educators accomplished by a class of pre-service teachers during a spontaneous electronic conversation. Implications for teacher education are considered.

Effective integration of learning technologies into classrooms is a continuing issue, with many instances of new technologies making minimal impacts on classroom practice. Reports on the introduction of interactive whiteboards into UK schools over the past decade have revealed that their impact on both pedagogy and learning is at best neutral.…

Despite the prevalence of professional development in schools and the variability in its implementation, little research has been conducted on how professional development makes its way into the classroom. Even when teachers participate in high-quality professional development, there remains a large and often undocumented variability in how…

More than 400 educators in the Miami-Dade County, Florida, school system take part in a professional-development and curriculum program that attempts to build students' science knowledge while also helping them master English. Developed by researchers at the University of Miami, the Promoting Science among English Language Learners program…

Three teachers, who held extreme preferences for the ways they learn, participated in a year-long professional development course, designed to sensitize teachers to their own and colleagues' individual learning differences (ILDs). The case study focuses on their extreme learning preferences and discusses the impact of these preferences on their…

Designing effective professional development experiences for technology-enhanced inquiry instruction is the goal of the Technology Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) NSF funded Center for Learning and Teaching. In order to provide this type of support to a large number of teachers, we devised a "targeted professional development approach."…

A student's inability to keep pace with the demands of the classroom can produce painful feelings of inadequacy, performance anxiety, depleted motivation, and even behavioral maladjustment. Too often, schools respond to such students with well-intentioned procedures or guidelines that fail to meet the needs of the thwarted learner. However, in…

There is an increasing awareness of the social dimension in mathematics teacher education. Collaboration and co-operation are regarded as key factors in professional development. In this paper I will analyse some tensions that might arise when the professional development of mathematics teachers is considered a collective enterprise. I will…

This article reports on an exploratory, longitudinal study, which examined six teachers' views on the factors that affect technology use in classrooms. The research examined teachers of grades 4, 5, and 6--for three years, studying the teachers both as a group and as individual case studies. Three case studies were selected for analysis, with the…

This article examines Mary Budd Rowe's groundbreaking and far-reaching contributions to science education. Rowe is best known for her research on wait-time: the idea that teachers can improve the quality and length of classroom discussions by waiting at least 3 s before and after student responses. Her wait-time research grew from and helped…

For educational reform to succeed, the nature of teachers' jobs must be reconceptualized. A balance must be restored between art and technique in teaching. Includes references. (MD)

Research on effective classrooms found that outstanding teachers had all been through an evolutionary process of growth, for which they needed time to participate in workshops, visits to other classrooms, and other professional development activities. The evolutionary process must be supported, and a series of workshops that help do so are…

As in many professions, elementary and secondary school teachers are expected to participate regularly in professional development activities. These activities may be intended to help teachers to learn new teaching methods, broaden their subject matter content knowledge, or stay informed of changing policies, among other purposes. Researchers have…

This handbook, aimed primarily at the inexperienced teacher in higher education, but useful also for the more experienced faculty member, provides practical advice on teaching, learning, and assessment that incorporates recent research findings. Following a "User's Guide" (Heather Fry, Steve Ketteridge, and Stephanie Marshall), the chapters of…