This paper describes how research into approaches to university teaching, from a relational perspective, has been used to develop an inventory to measure the key aspects of the variation in approaches to teaching. The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) is one of several that derive from the research perspective applied by Marton and colleagues…

The present study examines relations between school policy, teacher responses to violence and students' victimization outcomes as reported by teachers in a nationally representative sample of schools in Israel. Data were analysed using Structural Equations Modeling for the full sample of teachers, as well as group comparisons by school level,…

This article examines the complex ways in which teacher constructions of their experiences of teaching in a rural, disadvantaged context shape their taken-for-granted understandings of barriers to basic education. This article attempts to deconstruct these value-laden understandings of barriers to education. We draw on Foucault's notion of…

Maja Wilson believes that efforts to standardize language through rubrics and generalized comments provide a disservice to students and undermine the power of the reading and writing experience. She advocates making use of our subjectivity as readers, conceding that her values cannot be standardized and often shift in response to interactions with…

September 11, 2001, was a critical teachable moment that provided the author of this article and his team with an avenue to middle level curriculum that was relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory. Hurricane Katrina opened a similar window of opportunity for middle level educators to focus the minds of young adolescents on important…

A study examined the perceptions of appropriateness regarding four types of touch between college students and professors. Subjects included 382 students, 108 men and 202 women, enrolled in a basic speech communication course at a large midwestern university. Using video depictions, an analysis of variance was conducted exploring differences in…

Teachers ought to know how to identify the alcoholic student (and also the student in early recovery), and how to help such students. Research indicates that alcohol is implicated in 38% of all academic failures. The alcoholic student may smell of alcohol, act in a disoriented manner, or drop out, but as many as one-third of students surveyed…

In this study, teacher language was described at the beginning and end of a school year. A third-grade teacher's language directed toward the entire class of 20 students as well as toward a group of 5 language-impaired children within that class was examined separately. The teacher's language content, form and usage were analyzed separately from…

This study was conducted at the University of Missouri, to examine the use of portfolio assessment in the classroom. Surveys were administered to composition teachers in the Department of English who regularly use portfolios for student grading. Generally, portfolio assessment means that students work on a set of papers during the semester and…

A study focused primarily on building-level leadership by observing how principals in 12 high schools (11 public and 1 Catholic) engaged in planning a structural change from a traditional schedule with 45-minute periods to the 90-minute periods of a block schedule. Using a concerns-based model of change, principals' behaviors and teachers'…

A series of taped interviews with undergraduates at Indiana University of Pennsylvania enrolled in a writing class yielded a number of findings about their responses to their instructor's marginal and terminal comments on their papers: (1) the comments least understood were the "blanket comments," those comments that the instructor used…

Recent research on teachers' expectations has begun to explore the factors underlying the link between expectations and performance. To investigate the relationship between the affective responses of teachers and students' attributions regarding effort versus ability, 130 college students (66 male, 64 female) were instructed in solving anagrams…

This study investigated the effects of goals and goal-progress feedback on children's reading comprehension self-efficacy and skill. Subjects, 30 lower-middle-class students from 2 fifth-grade classes in an elementary school who did not experience excessive decoding problems and who regularly received remedial reading instruction, were randomly…

This study investigated the extent to which school experience affects the perceptions and practices of teachers of gifted/talented children. A group of teachers with experience of school programs for gifted/talented children was compared with a group that had not been involved in any special programs. The experienced group showed greater…

Testimony concerning the proposed Regulatory Impact on Student Excellence Act (RISE), a bill to assist schools in improving student performance, is reported. The text of the bill is given in full. It begins with Congress's finding that: (1) public school teachers are currently spending more time on regulatory paperwork; (2) many teachers have…