A successful collaboration resulted in a researcher and a teacher linking professional development with change in small-group reading instruction and student achievement. The context was a two-way Spanish-English bilingual immersion first-grade classroom with many English language learners (ELLs), located in a low-performing, high-poverty school.…

In this essay, five researchers, who are also English educators, describe the research they have crafted to improve the quality of classroom literacy education. They begin by describing their common perspective afforded by linguistics, discourse analysis and related social theory. Their framework and studies describe their action-oriented…

We analyze a two-year Faculty Fellows Program designed to enhance the service-learning pedagogy and scholarship at a regional comprehensive university. The impact of the program was analyzed using initial questionnaires, meeting notes, final reports, and faculty reflective essays. Participation in a faculty fellows cohort program provided a sense…

In a two-day workshop, 12 teachers who had not previously used graphics calculators not only learnt how to use a calculator but also completed calculator tasks designed to explore their misconceptions and then learnt about students' difficulties. Observation of lessons taught subsequently by 6 of the teachers, and interviews with 15 of their…

Given the drive in higher education institutions to employ web-based learning (WBL) technologies in their curricula, this article sets out to address the question of how staff experience the incorporation of such technologies into their educational practice. The study focuses on an initiative involving four institutions in South and West England…

Roads Scholars, a teacher-driven, interdisciplinary student service program, represented the completion of a goal the author had set when he first became Centennial High School's principal five years earlier--to create an environment where staff members felt empowered to dream, create, and implement programs without seeking his consent. To…

In this article, the author discovers the cultural challenges and rewards of starting a center for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). When she became the principal of a middle school outside of Baltimore, MD, she learned that her first year would also be the school's first year as a middle school English for speakers of other…

This paper uses in-depth interview data to explore aspects of the lives of non-native speaking English educators working in the state education system in Sri Lanka. In so doing the research focus is on the educators themselves and the paper will discuss such issues as: careers as English teachers--motives for entering teaching, career progression,…

Words Work! is an approach to improving literacy outcomes for children through teacher development and parent engagement. In this article the authors describe the pilot phase of the project. The staff at Words Work! created an assessment system that aligns curriculum with assessment and collection of student data and teacher planning. Teachers use…

The business services department staff found they could make a difference in a districtwide literacy initiative when they joined in school leaders' professional development.

This article describes a writing-across-the-curriculum project that was born of one university's commitment to writing and ubiquitous computing. Faculty members across the disciplines, seeing an opportunity to re-introduce WAC on its campus through a curriculum development initiative funded out of an internal teaching, learning, and technology…

This article reviews and discusses certain ideas and initiatives found in the scholarship on faculty motivation, roles, and service and outreach involvement. It is intended as a resource for formulating practical applications for use in encouraging broad faculty participation in the Partnership for Reform in Science and Mathematics (PRISM), a…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Beyond Auto Shop 1: Is Career and Technical Education a Promising Path for High School Reform? (Lucy Hood); (2) The School Readiness Gap:…

"Alabama Education News" is published monthly except for June, July, and December by the Alabama Department of Education. This publication, authorized by Section 16-2-4 of the "Code of Alabama", as recompiled in 1975, is a public service of the Alabama Department of Education designed to inform citizens and educators about…

This paper's charge is to lay out the central ideas about learning and teaching that run throughout contemporary educational discourse. It details nine concepts of learning, knowledge, and teaching that have formed the basis for recent education reform. Specifically, this report explores the nine concepts that emphasize "active construction of…