According to General Schwarzkopf, great leaders do not stand in front of a platoon and see a platoon. They see 44 individual soldiers, each with his or her own values, goals, and skills. Schwarzkopf encouraged educators to get to know each soldier so that they could effectively tailor their motivation techniques to the individual soldier.…

An introduction to the concept of the teaching portfolio, this article provides several short- and long-term strategies related to documenting teaching-development efforts. In particular, it provides a persuasive rationale for why one should consider dedicating precious time and resources documenting teaching goals and development and how the…

Based on the theoretical framework of reflective practice and teacher education, this article shares portions of a personal experience research project designed to gain understanding of teacher learning through nonfictional narrative story. Excerpts comprise the stories of learning-based journeys shared by five East Texas teachers that focus on a…

In this article, we review approaches to prepare future faculty for their teaching responsibilities and summarize best practices with regard to training topics, methods, and resources. We present longitudinal data regarding new psychology instructors' confidence in their ability to perform teaching related tasks. We complement this quantitative…

In this article, the author describes a pedagogical approach to teaching theory to pre-service teachers. This approach involves articulating academic texts that introduce theoretical ideas and tools with carefully selected popular culture texts that can be taken up to illustrate the elements of a particular theory. Examples of the theories…

In addition to the challenges faced when delivering a marketing course to international students in general, the challenges are compounded when the students have little interest in the subject and the students are located in a country in transition. This study examines the experiences of the author in teaching marketing theory to first-year…

This article examines the experience of "stage fright" in teachers in higher education, drawing on the dramaturgical perspective from sociology. Interviews were conducted with 10 "novice" and "expert" lecturers, alongside focus groups with undergraduate students, to compare their perceptions and expectations. The students defined a good lecturer…

This article presents three transcripts of the speeches delivered by panelists Gregory G. Gaydos, Philip H. King, and Howard A. Doughty at the the Fifth Annual Hawai'i International Conference on Education last January 2007. The main purpose of their panel discussion was to look at the trends in higher education through the lens of years of…

New teachers need to know about the political context in which they are working, and the best way to do this is to adopt and maintain a quiet watchfulness and avoid allegiances. Listening and observing, reserving judgments, reflecting on the motivations of the participants in the debate--these are the crucial behaviors for the teacher learning the…

Finding few resources on how to teach a yearbook class, high school teacher Christina M. Vettraino set out to create her own. She offers a detailed, classroom-tested approach to producing an award-winning yearbook. Students on the staff and in the yearbook class learn the purpose and the concept of a unifying theme, graphic design, writing, and…

Applying his experiences teaching photography to teaching English, high school teacher J. Scott Shields cultivates students' original writing by promoting imitation. Students learn to develop their literary voices by crafting verse-narratives that mimic the character, plot, and stylistic devices of Dante and Chaucer.

Algebraic reasoning skills can be enhanced by building connections among symbolic, tabular, and graphical representations. But how do classroom teachers change traditional teaching practices to foster the use of different representational forms? This article explores how I learned to incorporate representational fluency in teaching and assessment.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of developmental faculty regarding the effectiveness of developmental education. Today, many individuals believe developmental education programs should not be a part of the college curriculum. They believe that developmental courses should be taught in high school or some other program…

Education authorities continue to experience difficulty in recruiting and retaining teachers in rural and remote schools. In Western Australia (WA), a state noted for its vastness and number of schools located in rural and remote settings, a scheme developed by the Western Australian Department of Education and Training (DET) and the WA Chamber of…

Teachers need to expand their understanding of language in order to meet the diverse language and literacy needs of their students. Students may demonstrate deficits in the domains of language form (phonology, morphology, syntax), content (semantics), and use (pragmatics). However, existing studies have only investigated teachers' knowledge of…