Becoming a teacher is hard work. A sizable body of research indicates that student teaching internships or other field-based practica are a particularly difficult part of this process. Many preservice teachers have misconceptions about the work of teachers and teaching; when they begin their field placements they often feel disillusioned by the…

Community colleges--institutions that serve disproportionate numbers of poor, working-class, first-generation, non-traditional, and minority students--are uniquely positioned to provide liberating educational experiences to a diverse spectrum of society. Cross (2000) aptly describes the current interest in cooperative and/or collaborative learning…

This study investigates whether proficient second language (L2) speakers of Spanish and English use the same parsing strategies as monolinguals when reading temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, such as "Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California."…

The project described in this article is less about the content area, computational cell biology, and more about the educational practice of the students and faculty involved. Over the course of the past four years, Dr. Raquell Holmes has worked to create curricular resources that support the integration of modeling methods in biology education.…

This article uses critical discourse analysis to show that a series of advertisements by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are premised on a discourse of sameness that constructs difference negatively. The article moves from deconstructing these advertisements to possibilities for reconstruction that show difference as a positive…

In 2000, the Arizona Proposition 203 campaign gained overwhelming public approval by claiming that Arizona's bilingual education programs impeded English-language learning of language-minority students. Established within a context of educational and social antipathy, it is necessary to look at the impetus for language policies like Proposition…

In keeping with the scientific ideals and goals of actual practice, the concept of scientific literacy that drives the national science standards for elementary and middle school students also focuses on the process of science: observing, inferring, describing, asking questions, constructing explanations, and communicating ideas to others…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed into law in 2002, bears certain resemblances to the war on terrorism in Iraq. Of course, NCLB will not directly produce any civilian casualties or smashed buildings, but the political strategies used to roll it out have been eerily similar to those used in the war against terrorism. Disturbing rates of…

This volume presents the 2007 Yearbook of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA). This year's theme is "At the Tipping Point: Navigating the Course for the Preparation of Educational Administrators." This yearbook contains six parts. Part 1, Invited Chapters, includes the following: (1) President's…

In adopting the "Education White Paper 6. Special Needs Education: Building an Inclusive Education and Training System" of 2001, the South African education system mandates teachers and schools to address the various intersecting factors that act as barriers to learning for all learners. Using drawings and metaphors with a group of…

The No Child Left Behind Act, the major education initiative of the Bush Administration, was intended to raise educational achievement and close the racial/ethnic achievement gap. Its strategies include focusing schools' attention on raising test scores, mandating better qualified teachers and providing educational choice. Unfortunately, the…

Children's writings seem to elicit a somewhat narrow range of adult responses. More often than not, the adult tendency is to read children's fictional writings as autobiographical. The adult critic can, that is, think of the child author as a collection of biographical facts, a series of life experiences with an end point marked by the production…

Designed as a textbook for language teachers and students of linguistics, this volume explores the system underlying three related areas of language: semantics, lexicon, and vocabulary. The first part is concerned with semantics and semantic analysis, including semantic features and feature analysis, semantic field analysis, core meanings and…

This research analyzes language development in the classroom as fostering the development of students who are community builders, problem solvers and critical thinkers. Examples of both positive and negative classroom situations are used to illustrate these three language domains. Successful classrooms are safe communities where children are…

Because students often come to a literary text without the prerequisite knowledge to understand or explicate it fully, they can be thought of as outsiders, needing the help of insiders, or experts in literature, to "learn the text's secrets." Moreover, students often do not fully comprehend how much of literature rests on symbolism that demands…