Results of this study indicated that university supervisors encouraged their students to participate in post-observation conferences more than cooperating teachers did. Their feedback was evaluative, prompting students to think critically about their teaching. Cooperating teacher feedback focused on events and telling the student teacher how to…

Examines family beliefs about alternative educational assessment, using observations of 84 families' interactions and surveys of 172 families' beliefs about assessment, teacher ratings of children's efforts and involvement on alternative assessment measures, and discourse analysis of parents' interactions during interviews and assessments.…

All classes at the K-8 (40-student) Aleknagit School in southwest Alaska revolve around a theme that has a science or social studies emphasis. A thematic approach encourages holistic study of a subject and reflects the most recent research on how the brain comes to know. According to three teachers involved with the program, results have been…

Summarizes an evaluation of teacher appraisal in schools within one (British) local education authority, using interview data gathered from teachers over a five-month period. An overwhelming majority of interviewees felt they had been well trained to participate in the appraisal process and had benefited from the experience. Several commented on…

A Nebraska consultant/former teacher explains his role in developing Internet accounts for teachers while working on a wetlands distance-learning project and an arts-education consortium. He explains ARTnet and other Internet services, including Telnet, FTP (file transfer protocol), the Gopher retrieval system, NetNews, and Listservs. Sidebars…

Describes a self-study in which a group of part-time composition instructors examined their practices for commenting on students' papers. Concludes that their commenting pedagogies had more to do with ubiquitous political ramifications of being marginalized part-timers or temporary appointees than they would have liked to admit. (RS)

Describes several encounters with a student which led a composition instructor to conclude that she had been favoring analysis of completed works over self-analysis (in the form of a writing log kept during drafting and revising) of an essay in progress. Suggests that teachers continue to hone their response skills. (RS)

Describes a 15-hour staff development training program on using cooperative learning strategies in middle school classrooms and evaluates subsequent implementation of these strategies. Initial parental and teacher concerns included grading procedures, group composition and membership, and classroom arrangements and constraints. After the training…

Discusses the challenges of classroom decision making. Offers an organic framework for teaching reading strategies, focusing on the teacher's decision points. Uses hypothetical scenarios of whole-class instruction to show how basic beliefs about literacy can be interwoven into a decision-making cycle. (SR)

In 1987, the Rochester Teachers Association and the Board of Education negotiated a contract that created a professional career ladder for teachers, mandated shared decision making at the school level, and called for strengthening the relationship between teachers and their students' families. This article examines teacher response to these…

Twelve adults were asked to teach four pairs of preschool children in which one member of the pair exhibited problem behavior. Results indicated that the adults engaged in teaching activities with nonproblem children more often than with problem children. When an adult worked with a problem child, the breadth of instruction was more limited.…

Addresses the issues of whether students derive satisfaction from writing and whether they consider their writing tasks to be purposeful. Discusses teacher responses to student writing, and asserts that most responses indicate an almost exclusive emphasis on secretarial shortcomings. Suggests that teachers draw attention to clarity, honesty,…

Policy initiatives from Kentucky to California are espousing curriculum based on NCTM-backed core concepts that students understand through induction rather than memorization, teaching based on guided mastery rather than didactic instruction, and assessment that is open-ended rather than machine-scorable. This article highlights obstacles to…

The (British) National Curriculum Council emphasizes the importance of cross-phase curriculum continuity when students pass from primary to secondary learning stages. This article summarizes results of a survey examining how primary-secondary school liaisons handled one cross-curricular theme--economic and industrial understanding--across years…

Evaluates a small New York school district's efforts to reorganize its two K-5 elementary schools into one K-2 primary grade school and one 3-5 intermediate school, focusing on student, staff, and parent reactions. Although the new arrangement created more focused schools, the intermediate principal misses the energy deriving from the Kindergarten…