An English-as-second-language (ESL) teacher could not interest her students in their work until she changed her perception of education by reading books on unschooling and meaningful learning by Holt, Dewey, and Freire. By combining solid language acquisition research with holistic learning theory, she was able to transform the experience of…

Explores the process of implementing the Nebraska Foreign Language Frameworks in an urban, Midwestern school district. Participants were two elementary, two middle school, and two high school teachers; the languages taught were French and Spanish. Findings show that the six teachers implemented the frameworks differently, depending mainly on…

This paper relates the story of two professors that have made a bridge between the two cultures, science and humanities. They teach a humanities course together in which they explore the nature of the two cultures, their differences and their commonalities. The processes of team-building and planning produced five heuristic questions for the…

This study considered curricular and instructional influences on early Chinese literacy attainment in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. The participants included 198 pre-school children, their teachers and parents. Children were administered the Pre-school and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of either two or three years, and again one…

This study was prompted by the current availability of newly designed mathematics curriculum materials for elementary teachers. Seeking to understand the role that reform-oriented curricula might play in supporting teacher learning, we studied the ways in which 8 teachers in the same school used one such curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data,…

This study was designed to determine the differences in the teaching patterns of student teachers as compared with experienced teachers in urban, rural, and suburban schools. Lessons were videotaped and behaviors were analyzed to determine the instructional tendencies of the teachers. Conditional probabilities were juxtaposed on a matrix to show…

This paper is based on a research project that explored a UK Government initiative to improve the quality of teaching adults, numeracy, literacy and English as a second other language. The findings will be of interest to teacher educators generally and also to those involved in teaching adults, language, literacy and numeracy. The paper reports on…

In this paper, we present a theorized case study of one pre-service teacher's understanding and practices of care in teaching. We argue that the notion of care can be used as a lens through which to explore relationships between and among teachers and students, as well as the cultural, institutional, and societal contexts in which these relations…

Studies of the relationship between policy and practice typically focus on the formal policy system alone. Yet, the public policy system does not exist in isolation. A host of nonsystem actors promote, translate, and transform policy ideas as they carry them to teachers. This study draws on neoinstitutional theories of organization to investigate…

Many mathematics educators have found that prospective elementary school teachers' beliefs interfere with their learning of mathematics. Often teacher educators consider these beliefs to be wrong or naive and seek to challenge them so prospective teachers will reject them for more generative beliefs. Because of the resilience of prospective…

Using an ecological model, this study explored the effects of distal and proximal sources of influence on students' learning. We first examined three markers of teacher qualification--elementary education credential, years of education, and years of experience--on observed classroom practices across three dimensions--warmth/responsivity,…

How people experience, interpret, and enact time--personally, collectively, and transcendentally--is educationally significant. One's temporal hopes and fears, limitations and potentials, are the fundamental stuff out of which is forged "the constitution of human life in time." In this article, the author offers various perspectives on individual,…

The advent of high stakes state testing in K-12 education and The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, with its focus on "scientifically-based research" (SBR), has opened new challenges for both undergraduate and graduate preparation programs in education. This address will report on how we are currently preparing our undergraduate and…

Since the 1970s, participatory development has become part and parcel of most practitioner-oriented development studies programs. This reflects a shift in the field of development that has been going on for the past few decades. "Participatory Rural Appraisal" (PRA) is one approach to participatory development that has received much…

New educational technologies and online learning environments (OLEs) are infiltrating today's college classes and campuses. While research has examined many aspects of this permeation, one research gap exists. How do faculty perceive the learning experience in courses that use OLEs compared to courses that do not? One important factor that may…