Recent research showed that the 1st year of teaching is challenging, and that teachers deserve a smoother transition into the classroom. The purpose of this study was to explore how 1st-year teachers served as a support network for each other and what benefits derived from their interactions. This led to a theory regarding the first-year teacher…

In the fast paced, fluid contemporary world, and in a headlong rush to invent the future, there is a tendency to jettison aspects of the past as flotsam and jetsam, unworthy of a place in steerage into the future. This paper argues that is some respects the ordinary heroes and heroines who enact school leaderships, and from their practice…

Most mathematics teachers and literacy teachers believe they live and function in separate worlds. This paper presents a professional development project designed to encourage middle school mathematics teachers and literacy coaches to work collaboratively within a constructivist model to explore how mathematics and literacy skills and strategies…

Despite a history of research in general education on novice teachers, researchers have only recently begun to investigate the experiences of beginning special educators. Many of these studies describe problems encountered, noting the high attrition rate among beginning special education teachers and emphasizing the importance of keeping qualified…

The present article reports on a cooperative research with a small group of teachers studying for a professionally accredited master's degree (MTeach), leading to the professional award of Chartered Teacher status, at a Scottish university. The aim of the study was to explore teachers' perceptions of the impact made on them and their practice as a…

Teachers are often confined to their classrooms with limited or no time to share with colleagues the difficulties they face, their concerns, and their successful initiatives. This leads to a situation where they end up teaching in ways and approaches they believe to be best with no chance to know how others may be approaching similar difficulties…

Teachers who are positive deviants are the most effective teachers, able to produce results and solutions to problems that others in the learning community cannot. As a result, students in their classrooms usually produce assessment scores that are higher than those of students in their colleagues' classrooms. Teachers willing to learn from their…

While schools play a major role in promoting parental involvement in schooling in many countries, few comparative studies examined the level of school expectation for parental involvement and its effect on student achievement. Using the TIMSS 1999 dataset, this study examined the level of school expectation for various types of parental…

In this paper, the literature related to collaboration in teacher education programmes is reviewed. The authors discuss the benefits for teacher educators who collaboratively plan and develop team-taught coursework and monitor the impact of their collaboratively developed pedagogy. Gaps in the current knowledge and research are delineated, and…

As professional learning communities (PLCs) are proliferating as a form of teacher professional development, it is important to understand what "PLC work" is and how it impacts teacher learning. This article reports on secondary science and mathematics teachers' participation in PLCs and engagement in collaborative inquiry. The PLC provided a…

Research suggests that community-referenced pedagogy initiatives foster academic inclusion for minority students. However, we know little about such engagements' benefits for teachers. This study provides insights into teachers' dispositions toward school-based parent involvement in education based on ethnographic data collected through…

We discuss the results of a study aimed at shedding light on the influence that the sharing of professional teaching experiences may have on teachers' professional learning. The focus is on the uses that participants make of their notes about their lesson planning experience in an in-service blended learning course, and the mediation strategies…

Although coteaching has become a widespread instructional option for students with disabilities, there are concerns regarding its effectiveness on student achievement especially at the secondary level. The authors examined whether ninth grade students with learning disabilities (LD) who received instruction in a resource classroom achieved at a…

There were 282 special education teachers enrolled in an alternative certification program in education at a university in southern California who were surveyed over the course of two years to determine the extent of their training in working with paraprofessionals and the professional development they received on how to successfully work with the…

Students who are English Language Learners (ELLs) form the fastest growing segment of the American school population. Prompted by the call for scientific literacy for all citizens, science educators too have investigated the intersection of language and science instruction of ELLs. However these studies have typically been conducted with…