This study looks at how student teachers learn to teach during school-based teacher education. It explores the changes that occurred in the practical theories of the student teachers and how the student teachers made these modifications. Eight student teachers were closely monitored during their training. The study's findings show that all student…

Background/Context: Meganarratives, or "grand stories," are composed of loosely held ideas about standardization, the rhetoric of education for all, the focus on individual success, and the appearance of representative diversity that rarely take into account human diversity embedded in deeply rooted value systems and authentically…

This essay is a call for a continued attention to all that is new and multiple in texts, media, and literacy practices. At the same time, it is a call for rigor and systematicity. It is a call for new ways of theorizing and analyzing the new and for positioning it in relation to the "old." Indeed, the author argues for an analysis of new and old…

Few school leaders are experiencing a shortage of data. Most are actually drowning in data, with a wealth of test scores, student demographic information, and an increasing load of "formative" assessment data that may or may not be worthy of the name (Popham, 2008). The challenge is facing both an overabundance of data and a scarcity of…

The last decade of education change has been characterized by the rise of evidence-based policy and practice agendas. Internationally, we are witnessing efforts to increase and incorporate research use in public services. This article examines efforts in education to address the research-practice gap through an emerging field we term knowledge…

This article examines the role of direct instruction in promoting listening and reading comprehension. Instructional examples from 2 programs of intervention research focused on improving comprehension; the Story Read Aloud Program and the Embedded Story Structure Routine are used to illustrate principles of direct instruction. An analysis of…

Action Research is an applied scholarly paradigm resulting in action for continuous improvement in our teaching and learning techniques offering faculty immediate classroom payback and providing documentation of meeting our educational responsibilities as required by AACSB standards. This article reviews the iterative action research process of…

This article charts the progress of one cohort of student-teachers (variously known as beginning teachers and pre-service teachers) training to teach English in London secondary schools during 2008-9. The research focuses specifically on the experiences which facilitate their development as confident and creative teachers and assessors of reading…

Preparation for a career in the field of public relations (PR) is based on a set of unique core competencies typically found in liberal arts. Though PR professionals rarely gain business degrees, they acquire knowledge, skills, perspectives, and strategies well-suited to executive-level positions in business. Additionally, managerial positions in…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Video Games Take Testing to the Next Level: Researchers See Promise in Game-Like Assessments That Measure Complex Skills (Robert Rothman); (2) An Academic…

The current study seeks to build on to the existing literature on career interventions by empirically examining possible outcomes of two of the most widely utilized career interventions, career counseling and career courses. This investigation used Critical Ingredients (Brown & Ryan Krane, 2000; Brown, et al., 2003; Ryan, 1999) to assess the…

This article argues that the work of school principals in South Africa is shaped by two major sets of constructs or "landscapes": the literature on leadership and management which provides particular constructions of the field and its changes; and the terrain of new policy frameworks adopted after apartheid to transform the education…

Prompted by restricted funding for a lab which supported student software development work on real-world projects, a contribution program was established to facilitate monetary support from the external clients. The paper explores the relationships between instructor, students and client and how a funding component can affect these ties.…

"Strategy" is an ambiguous term in the field of educational leadership. This article reports on a study in which I sought to investigate how practicing school principals and the literature construct the concept. Specifically, I investigated the congruence between two sources of data: the transcribed texts of interviews with practicing principals…

This article focuses on a recently implemented general music curriculum in secondary public schools, whose main goal is to address social issues in Costa Rica. The author describes and discusses its context, rationale, theoretical tenets, and proposed practices with the purpose of advancing theory-practice reflection on music education practices…