This case study addressed a gap in literature by focusing on how teachers perceived the impact of mentoring programs on the support and collaboration of first-year teachers. A qualitative case study design was conducted using semistructured interviews and documents. A sample of 16 teachers from two different school districts in New York State…

This qualitative self-study focused on the mentoring experiences of three junior faculty members and their mentor. Using portraiture as the methodology, we created dialogic word "portraits" to illustrate our mentoring processes based on retrospective reviews of emails, discussion transcriptions, and free-writes. The portraits were…

The juxtaposition of the 2012 national elections and the marginalization of social studies/citizenship education in the pre-K-12 school curriculum has been both coincidental, and, in a way, an opportunity for social studies teachers, supervisors, and teacher educators to find ways to restore creative classroom instruction about history,…

The Curriculum Topic Study (CTS) process, funded by the National Science Foundation, supports teachers in improving practice by connecting standards and research to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Designed for facilitators, this guide provides a robust set of professional development tools, templates, and designs to strengthen mathematics…

School librarians need a simple action plan for overcoming the barriers to adopting School Library 2.0. This book provides one, and describes how fully integrating technology would dramatically benefit 21st-century schools. Despite the substantial efforts that have been made to bring schools into the 21st century, research indicates that the…

Four university lecturers at an Australian university have been undertaking an action research project for almost two years to improve first year mathematics teaching. The project is analysed here through the single idea of "connection". Making new connections or changing the nature of existing connections with colleagues and especially…

This is a collaborative lesson written by the authors. The lesson pairs two unlikely grade levels together to complete a touching and unique collaborative project. The collaboration aspect of this unit opened up endless possibilities for future collaborations.

In this era of collaboration, educators are frequently expected to co-plan with one another on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the expectation of co-planning is not often accompanied by the time required or by the strategies necessary to plan effectively and efficiently for the inclusive classroom. This article provides 10 concrete tips for…

During the author's first year of teaching, she connected with her students and their families but hardly talked with anyone outside her grade level, which is kindergarten. As she started her second year of teaching, she reached out to communicate with other professionals. She also became a part of the Afterschool Matters Practitioner Research…

This paper reports the findings from a project focused on teaching secondary aged pupils with moderate learning difficulties (MLD) using Lesson Study methodology--a collaborative approach for teachers to assess, evaluate and plan a sequence of lessons that focuses on the learning of one to two focus pupils identified as having MLD. The research…

This article describes the case of a Japanese junior high school that experienced a turn-around in three years from one of the worst schools to one of the best by utilizing lesson study for learning community (LSLC) as a managerial tool. It will focus on how the principal: (i) established a vision of reform, (ii) organized LSLC to involve the…

Through the concept of teacher identity, this article examines in detail the factors in the process through which the two teachers under study changed from traditional teachers into co-teaching professionals. The interview data were analysed by thematic narrative analysis. The results showed that the teachers' own attitudes, conflicts in their…

More collaborative work in the humanities could be instrumental in helping to break down the traditional rigid boundaries between academic divisions and disciplines in modern universities. The value of the traditional model of the solitary humanities scholar or the collaborative science paradigm should not be discounted. However, increasing the…

The inclusion of language learners and the imperative to meet the needs of English language learners in the mainstream classroom call upon teachers of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL teachers) and mainstream teachers to work together; however, little research has been done in US contexts to understand collaborative efforts between…

Teachers in secondary education mainly feel responsibility for their own classroom practice, resulting in largely autonomous and isolated work and private learning activities. Most teachers teach separate classes behind closed doors and learn about teaching by teaching, often described as trial and error (Hodkinson and Hodkinson in Stud Continuing…