Teacher education programs have increasingly come under fire for not providing pre-service teachers communication skills training. Given that such training is essential to address diversity in the classroom and to meet the day-to-day functioning of teachers, higher education must provide communication skills training for teacher certification.…

Continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers is a neglected area of teacher development in South Africa. The introduction of a new national curriculum in the post-apartheid era presents enormous challenges for teachers. CPD initiatives in South Africa thus far have been fragmented, diluted and have had little direct influence on teachers'…

This article attempts to hold thought open in a textual space that often forecloses thought. The authors present arguments but work them through poetry, memoir, pictures, and exposition. They frame this work in particular as an improvisation around--and intervention into--more familiar practices of collective biography, narrative, and art…

In this article, the curriculum workshop (CW) is elaborated as an approach to professional learning, deliberation and inquiry. It offers a comprehensive framework for school-based deliberation and inquiry, is rooted in curriculum theory, promises a broad range of applications in teacher education and provides tools to assess the trustworthiness of…

This study measures changes in teachers' attitudes, content knowledge, and spatial ability following a two-year visualization workshop experience. The workshop involved intensive, half-day sessions over three weeks for two consecutive summers, in which the participants worked with three-dimensional models and computer-generated images. No changes…

Rhetoric about "all children" abounds in public education, yet many aspects of schooling continues to marginalize large numbers of students. Despite good intentions, the assumptions, attitudes, and conditions that can preclude students' success are often invisible to educational policymakers and practitioners. These students are not…

This article introduces drama pedagogy as an approach with great potential for foreign language acquisition, addressing students' multiple skills and facilitating their communicative and interactional competence. A strong emphasis is placed on social, emotional, and kinesthetic learning that is traditionally neglected in instructional settings.…

In today's rapidly changing world, people must continually come up with creative solutions to unexpected problems. Success is based not only on what one knows or how much one knows, but on one's ability to think and act creatively. In short, people are now living in the Creative Society. Unfortunately, few of today's classrooms focus on helping…

Throughout much of northeast Thailand (Isan), Lao is the dominant local language. Today, however, central and official Thai is rapidly becoming the dominant language throughout Isan. It is feared that Thailand may become monocultured and its citizens may lose their diversity in languages and culture. In this article, the author describes a…

Lance Armstrong (2000) authored a book titled "It's Not About the Bike -- My Journey Back to Life," regarding his battle with testicular cancer. It became a "New York Times" Bestseller and was selected by the "School Library Journal" as one of the "Best Adult Books for High School Students for 2001." The goal of the project described in this…

In colleges of agriculture leadership education is one area of study where enrollment and demand are outstripping the capacity of institutions to deliver the coursework. However, few faculty members are prepared to teach leadership contextually based in agriculture. Responding to this challenge, the Leadership Education Institute (LEI) for faculty…

In April 2009 a workshop was held to explore how engineering curricula could be enhanced to better prepare future engineers. The workshop, summarized in this volume, included individuals from industry, academia, government agencies, and professional societies. During the workshop participants addressed the rationale for the scope and sequence of…

A comparative review of the research literature regarding the effectiveness of continuing professional development (CPD) demonstrates that a range of different factors needs to be present if it is to have impact in the classroom and that short CPD episodes are unlikely to be effective. The Earth Science Education Unit approach to CPD had to be…

Arising from a longitudinal study examining the influence of school reform on teachers' knowledge communities and communities of knowing, this narrative inquiry traces the development of a workshop approach to reading and writing, principally through the introduction of a staff developer, to the school's professional knowledge landscape and to the…

In this paper, I consider one mechanism by which racial categories, racial "common sense," and thus the social organization of race itself, are reproduced in interaction. I approach these issues by using an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze a range of practices employed by participants of a "race-training" workshop.…