Some district schools in Southwestern Idaho, particularly the Treasure Valley, have witnessed an important growth in the immigration of people from many areas of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, Central Europe, Mexico, and Latin America. The children of these immigrants and refugees, whose cultural backgrounds…

Creating a community of learners with and among students in a collaborative classroom environment provides the keystone for developing the skills necessary for success in the 21st century. Some preservice teachers envision that community building can enhance the learning experience for them and their students and want to learn and employ the…

School librarians know the importance of collaboration. They cannot run effective school library programs unless they work closely with classroom teachers. They have learned that deep collaboration is a fluid process that evolves over time. Only as connections are made and relationships are forged can real instructional progress occur. Yet it…

Testing to build research-based evidence to support teaching methodologies that promote student learning has become increasingly important in a standards-based educational system in the United States. One challenge is the lack of studies that support specific methodologies so teachers and administers can make professional development and…

Students' lack of understanding about the relationships between geometry in two and three dimensions led the author to a surprising source of inspiration--the ancient philosopher and geometer Plato. From a theoretical perspective, the author's approach embodies the four instructional strategies that Eggen and Kauchak (2001) suggest for engaging…

Research suggests that effective teaching is a significant, if not the most significant, indicator of student success. However, because teaching has become an increasingly challenging profession, school reformers have advocated that educational practices be based on evidence of student learning, suggesting that teachers should develop a stance…

The role of social presence as defined by the community of inquiry (CoI) framework is critiqued through a review of recent literature. Evidence is presented that questions the actual extent of knowledge co-construction that occurs in most higher education settings and therefore challenges the framework's underlying assumption of the need for…

Evidence-informed collaborative inquiry is central to the improvement of teaching and learning for diverse students. This research investigated the impact of a professional learning intervention on the improvement of social studies teachers' practice, and their students' learning. Data were gathered from 26 primary and secondary teachers before,…

Digital history refers to "the study of the past using a variety of electronically reproduced primary source texts, images, and artifacts as well as the constructed narratives, accounts, or presentations that result from digital historical inquiry." Access to digitized primary sources can promote active instruction in historical thinking. A…

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on our efforts to balance consistency in our multi-year participatory action research study with the need to adapt our research protocol to what we are learning along the way. While both are important, we share several examples of how our flexibility and openness to adapt our protocol to our research…

This study focuses on elementary teachers' comprehension of flooding before and after inquiry-based professional development (PD). There was an improvement in teachers' understanding toward a normative view from pre- to post-test (n = 17, mean gain = 4.3, SD = 3.27). Several misunderstandings and a general lack of knowledge about flooding emerged…

This paper presents the findings of a research project in which we transformed a primary (grade) 3 science curriculum for delivery via mobile technologies, and a teacher enacted the lessons over the 2009 academic year in a class in a primary school in Singapore. The students had a total of 21 weeks of the mobilized lessons in science, which were…

This article traces the development of the theory and practice of what is known as "community of inquiry" as an ideal of classroom praxis. The concept has ancient and uncertain origins, but was seized upon as a form of pedagogy by the originators of the Philosophy for Children program in the 1970s. Its location at the intersection of the…

Along with inquiry-based teaching, exploring the elements of art can guide students to view and represent objects realistically. Understanding line, shape, color, value, form, space, and texture helps bridge the gap between what students actually observe and what their preconceived ideas about the object may be. This type of explicit instruction…

This article takes issue with the notion that professional learning communities need to be more focused on teacher expertise through the use of online videos of lessons taught by expert teachers that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards. The authors argue that the use of externally developed, research-based, and standards-aligned…