Field experience can be a rich site for prospective teachers to develop the knowledge and skills they need for effective teaching, however little is known about how structures for supporting interactions between mentor and prospective teachers can maximize prospective teachers' learning. Lesson study has been shown to enhance practicing teachers'…

This narrative chronicles the story of the Lunch Bunch, a group of 4 students with autism, 1 student with a specific learning disability and their art educator/researcher as they ate lunch together and discussed creativity and at times made art. A chronological story of the Lunch Bunch was crafted utilizing narrative inquiry as the overarching…

This is a story about teachers engaging in mathematics teacher leadership. The focus is on the teachers' learning, and the purpose is to illuminate the process. The setting is a semester-long graduate class called Teacher Leadership in Mathematics Education, and the characters are elementary and middle school teachers. Those in this group…

In this nested mixed methods study I investigate factors influencing preservice elementary teachers' adaptation of science curriculum materials to better support students' engagement in science as inquiry. Analyses focus on two "reflective teaching assignments" completed by 46 preservice elementary teachers in an undergraduate elementary science…

The conditions that supported the development of a highly successful collaborative partnership between a college literacy program and a nonprofit center for refugee children are discussed. This three year partnership produced three inquiry-based projects, grant opportunities and increased collaboration among graduate literacy students, center…

Current educational standards call for students to engage in the skills of research and inquiry, with a focus on gathering evidence from multiple information sources, evaluating the credibility of those sources, and writing an integrated synthesis that cites evidence from those sources. Opportunities to build strong research skills are critical,…

Many general education educators have little pre-service preparation or in-service professional development for teaching students who are English language learners (ELL). Yet, ELLs are one of the fastest growing student populations in the United States. While teachers typically espouse the view that all students can learn, they do not often have…

In 1973, Jim Gallagher convened an interdisciplinary group of eminent scholars and practitioners to address the critical issue of underrepresentation of minority children within gifted education. Underrepresentation of culturally different children stems from a complex combination of societal, economic and political, and personal factors. J. J.…

This study utilized an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach to explore randomly assigned treatment and control participants' frequency of inquiry instruction in secondary science classrooms. Eleven treatment participants received professional development (PD) that emphasized a structured approach to inquiry instruction, while 10 control…

This report describes how teachers support ninth-grade students who are doing scientific investigations in Natural Sciences in South African schools. This is of interest as allowing students to participate in inquiry-based investigations is a significant shift from traditional practices. It presents a new challenge to teachers as it signals an…

The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to better understand teaching assistants' (TAs') perceptions of training in a guided inquiry undergraduate general chemistry laboratory context. The training was developed using existing TA training literature and informed by situated learning theory. TAs engaged in training prior to teaching (~25…

In this article, we tell the story of inquiring about, designing, implementing and studying our enactment of non-traditional assessment practices in our elementary education university methods course. We organized this article using a theater playbill metaphor, starting with a prologue, followed by three acts and an intermission, and concluding…

This Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study represents a collaboration with six students from alternative education to inquire about the experiences of vulnerable youth--students in alternative education and youth who have dropped out of school. Utilizing the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique, youth researchers asked their peers what…

This paper proposed a method for developing capacity for lifelong learning in open spaces, defined here as places without predefined learning structures or objectives, through the cultivation of aesthetic literacy. This discussion will be situated within fieldwork performed by the authors in Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, in 2013. Based…

As schools become living sites of evidence-based practice, teachers increasingly accumulate large quantities of observations and records. In these times of an overabundance of documentation, there is a need to find the "unit of analysis" that determines the essence of what matters for assessment. In drawing upon cultural-historical…