Federal and professional mandates call for increased family involvement in education, yet most teacher preparation programs do not teach skills necessary to engage families in a thorough or systematic manner. The current project addressed this training deficit by offering a program that included a sequence of three graduate courses to a cohort of…

This paper summarizes the results from a study that was conducted of students at a midsized Midwestern doctoral-granting liberal arts university. Students were asked whether a hypothetical professor's behavior in 42 described classroom scenarios was always, often, sometimes, rarely, or never appropriate. The purpose of the study is to provide…

In this study, the actual position of collaborative learning (CL) in teacher education is examined. One hundred and twenty teacher educators and 369 student teachers are surveyed on general educational beliefs, mental models and conceptions related to CL. The self-efficacy and the implementation of CL are also taken under scrutiny. The results…

This paper provides a detailed description and evaluation of a three-year professional development project in a large urban setting in the southwestern United States. The impetus for the project was curriculum development focused on integrated scientific inquiry. Project goals included the development of a professional learning community, reformed…

Understanding the emotional energy of teachers may provide evidence for the nature of the learning environment. Herein, the concept of overexcitabilities (OEs) was used to explore the ways that teachers of general and gifted classes describe their own intensities or emotional preferences. Q methodology was used with 24 teachers from American and…

Lave and Wenger have greatly influenced existing views of learning and teaching, but relatively little has been written about the implications for the understanding of teacher behavior and teacher learning, and for the pedagogy of teacher education. Based on their work, a three-level model of learning is used to analyze the friction between…

Problems with parents take many shapes: disorganized parents who lose papers, hovering moms and angry dads, and of course absentee parents who never show up for anything. Private schools take even more heat, with high academic goals and expectations. Richard Arends, in "Learning to Teach," cites two studies indicating that teachers want…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a professional development (PD) workshop on teachers' knowledge and use as related to the integration of online resources. In addition, this study attempted to examine whether teachers' aptitude was a moderating factor in the impact of the PD workshop. Moreover, it explored how teachers…

The authors take the opportunity to respond to the commentaries that were written regarding their article (in the March 2009 issue of "Educational Researcher") summarizing the conceptual and empirical basis for using standardized approaches to observing teachers' practices in classrooms and the potential that such approaches have for addressing…

Inquiries into the state of mathematics and science education in Australia express the need to make curriculum and teaching practices more relevant and meaningful to students' lives. This vision requires that teachers understand how relevance can enter the classroom in meaningful, appropriate, and subject-specific ways. In this paper I use…

In this qualitative study, we examined a pilot program for graduate student instructors (GSIs) in a peer review of teaching program at Duke University, a medium-sized research university. We noted key elements that participants identified from their experience that may be distinct from models of peer teaching review developed for faculty. These…

The purpose of the two studies reported in the article was to determine whether or not a relationship exists between preservice music therapists' and teachers' nonverbal behaviors and their perceived rapport. In study 1, evaluators (N = 56) viewed a stimulus tape consisting of 15 45-second segments of 15 preservice music therapists leading songs…

This study examines the extent to which faculty members in the disparate academic environments of Holland's theory devote different amounts of time in their classes to alternative pedagogical approaches and whether such differences are comparable for those in "consistent" and "inconsistent" environments. The findings show wide variations in the…

This study provided information on the impact of graphical feedback on teachers' frequency of use of a specific teaching strategy as a supervision method which might be used to measure a change in behavior. Graphical feedback allowed for a systematic application of support and mentoring to the teachers which was displayed as data in a…

The Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a randomized, classroom-based mental health intervention, aimed to improve teachers' behavior management of preschoolers' dysregulated behavior. The current follow-up study examines potential impacts on academic skills of first graders by enhancing their ATL. This investigation seeks to answer three…