In this article, Alfred Tatum argues that the current framing of the adolescent literacy crisis fails to take into account the in-school and out-of-school challenges confronting many African American male adolescents today, particularly those growing up in high-poverty communities. Using the metaphor of literacy instruction as a human body, he…

Teachers of the visual arts have long considered the importance of how to collect and display their students' work. Throughout history, bulletin boards have covered classrooms and school hallways neatly displaying children's art work. This article briefly summarizes how documentation functions within the Reggio Emilia approach and then discusses…

In evaluating the success of teacher development programs, valid and scalable measures of teaching practice are needed. We have developed and validated the Science Lesson Plan Analysis Instrument (SLPAI) for quantitative evaluation of teacher-generated multiday lesson plans. This paper presents the SLPAI as a complement to surveys and classroom…

Enacting the vision of NCTM's "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" depends on effective teacher professional development. This 7-year study of 48 projects in the National Science Foundation's Local Systemic Change Through Teacher Enhancement Initiative investigates the relationship between professional development and…

This exploratory study describes the provision of HIV & AIDS counselling services in Botswana junior secondary schools as perceived by teachers. A total of 45 teachers (age range = 20-55; teaching experience range = 0-21 years) from three schools participated. The participants completed a questionnaire on the types of HIV & AIDS-related…

As we engage our students in social studies topics--whether at the college level or the secondary level--we are charged with promoting habits of mind and thought that produce our country's citizens. If we are doing our jobs, we are insistent about finding ways to connect the democracy in our classrooms with the democracy in our culture, and thus…

Teacher diaries have wide-ranging applications for professional development, as they give teachers an increased sense of responsibility and seek new ways of improving their teaching. This article shares my personal experience of undertaking three teacher diary studies at two-year intervals and reveals how my teaching methodologies and philosophies…

Teacher turnover is significantly higher in hard-to-staff schools, and it is costly. Not only are billions of dollars spent annually to recruit and train new teachers, but students who are denied the best education possible often enter the workforce at a disadvantage. The problem demands strategies that work. This report identifies examples and…

This policy brief describes how the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has approached the objectives of educational equity and adequacy over the past decade and a half, and reveals how their current finance research has begun to explicitly link the level and use of resources with strategies that districts and schools can deploy to…

Changing demographics continue to challenge professional development programs to prepare school personnel to serve a rapidly expanding diverse student body. Popular diversity professional development models are on a continuum. They range from preparing teachers to design themes and activities that are culturally relevant all the way to enabling…

Peer coaching, or peer assisting, was established in 1970s by Joyce and Showers. Initially used in teachers' professional development, it refers to a process that two or more teacher peers evaluate current practice mutually; expand skills, extract and build new skills; share ideas, and review & solve problems of classroom teaching in a way of…

This article explores the expectations of support for and the experiences of substitute teachers in an urban school division in Saskatchewan. Data were collected in semistructured interviews with seven substitute teachers. The purpose of the study was to explore how substitute teachers frame their professional experiences and construct their roles…

In recent years, the teaching staff from the Central Queensland school of Wowan State Primary School have been responding to recently released Education Queensland initiatives or whole school literacy planning, "Literate Futures: Reading" (Education Queensland, 2002), and a framework for pedagogical reform, "Productive…

The U.S. educational system invests heavily, in both time and money, in continuing education for teachers. In this article Heather Hill examines the effectiveness of two forms of teacher learning--graduate coursework and professional development. She focuses first on graduate education. Almost half of all teachers have a master's degree. Many…

Mentoring is an important aspect of professional development, but can it advance substance use disorder skills in a national, interdisciplinary fellowship program? This evaluation study used a telephone survey to examine the influence of distance mentoring, interdisciplinary mentoring, and mentor functions on fellows' satisfaction, learning and…