This paper addresses the question of how teachers learn from experience during their pre-service course and early years of teaching. It outlines a theoretical framework that may help us better understand how teachers' professional identities emerge in practice. The framework adapts Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, and Valsiner's Zone of…

In today's results-oriented, fast-moving business environment, it is critical for trainers to demonstrate the value of training to the organization: There is nothing inherently valuable about training. It is performance gains that training catalyzes that give it worth (Graber, 2000). This is why evaluations tied to business results are becoming…

This study examined student writing over the past decades. The National Study of Writing Instruction addressed questions through analyses of existing data sets, particularly those from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which include background questions on instructional practices in U.S. middle and high schools. NAEP…

A qualitative study was conducted interviewing eleven teachers and artists about their classroom experiences during artist residencies in participating schools. A conversation, from the vantage point of the teacher and artist, was created in both a narrative and a video product revealing the confines and collaborations present during artist…

The Data Collaborative Model (DCM) assembles assessment literacy, reflective practices, and professional development into a four-component process. The sub-components include assessing students, reflecting over data, professional dialogue, professional development for the teachers, interventions for students based on data results, and re-assessing…

Educators love to say it takes a village to raise a child. This task is accomplished through the skills, talents, and support of good teachers. This manual is designed to help school administrators help their teachers and students reach their maximum potential. It contains tools, tips, and guidelines that school leaders around the nation use to…

This book offers essential guidance to preservice and inservice teachers seeking to create, revise, and/or add new strategies to the teaching of the language arts block. The book's focus is on how to implement effective strategies in the context of a well-planned classroom and smoothly choreographed daily schedule. A series of case studies in the…

The tradition of a mentoring relationship is embedded in a personal/business relationship between a wise teacher and someone who needs to learn a trade. Learning sessions have occurred over the years in many types of settings, including one-on-one mentoring, conferences, meetings, telephone, and fax. As society looks to technology as a vital…

The California History/Social Science Project is using an action research model to investigate the use of online discourse in professional development and K-12 History/Social Science classrooms. There are three goals--to investigate ways of enhancing students' historical thinking and understanding; to use technology to manifest methodologies and…

This study explored how six preservice teachers who participated as interns in a Professional Development School (PDS) program experienced learning to teach in the PDS context. The paper explores the scholarship of learning to teaching, highlighting the disjuncture between the complexity and contexts of school-based practicums, restructuring of…

This document is a PowerPoint presentation intended for K-12 public school educators, administrators, and policy analysts as well as college and university educators involved or interested in teacher preparation programs. The presentation chronicles the partnership between Oswego State University and Parish Elementary School in north central New…

The purpose of this volume is to provide a current view of the evolving professional development movement in community colleges. Chapter authors provide descriptions of how their institutions have addressed issues through professional development, created institutional change, developed new delivery systems, reached beyond development programs…

This inservice professional development module, part of the Alabama Reading Initiative, presents research summaries, notes for presenters, and activities. The Phonemic Awareness and Phonics module clarifies that skilled readers are accurate and automatic decoders (i.e., they have the alphabetic principle). Phonics instruction must empower all…

This document is comprised of 7 issues of a newsletter for the 25 leaders of citywide after-school initiatives in major cities across the United States who comprise the Cross-Cities Network for Leaders of Citywide After-School Initiatives, funded through the National Institute on Out-of-School Time. Each issue of the newsletter provides…

This publication is intended as a practical resource to assist school-based teams in effective implementation of the new provisions to the Individuals with Disabilities Education (IDEA) Act. Chapters include: (1) "The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997: Implications for School-Based Teams" (Mitchell L. Yell,…