In this commentary, summarized from a recent interview, the author reminisces about a career dedicated to critical exploration in the classroom. She discusses the formation of the Moon Group, a group of teachers who met over a period of 25 years to study the behaviour of the moon. Duckworth later describes an exercise in which her students…

In this interview conducted at the NAMTA conference, "Observation: The Key to Unlocking the Child's Potential", Molly O'Shaughnessy discusses the history of observation with Hilla Patell. Patell shares stories of the people who were instrumental in creating a culture of observation as an ongoing discipline to be practiced. She goes on to…

Although most teacher education programs include instruction in the basic science of psychology, practicing teachers report that this preparation has low utility. Researchers have considered what sort of information from psychology about children's thinking, emotion, and motivation would be useful for teachers' practice. Here, I take a different…

Anderson's central concern in his "ELT Journal" article (Vol. 69, No. 3, 2015) is to introduce several helpful changes teachers can make to a regular lesson plan pro forma due to a particular language learning environment and unpredictable events. In introducing these changes, Anderson discusses affordance, learning objectives, and…

Systematic Direct Observation (SDO) has played a pivotal role in the field of Emotional and/or Behavioral Disorders (EBD) since its inception as a key part of understanding more about the behaviors, contexts that impact them, and the effective supports necessary for this population. This methodology is an ongoing charge for everyone. The authors…

Lesson observation has been widely debated in education circles in recent times. From politicians to practitioners, everyone seems to have a view on it. Surprisingly, however, very little empirical research has been done on this important area of practice. With this in mind, this article explores some of the findings from a national research…

This article focuses on early childhood classrooms in which young children with disabilities are enrolled, ideally inclusive classrooms. A foundational assumption about which most early intervention professionals would agree is that young children with disabilities learn from: (1) their experiences (interactions) with their physical environments…

In recent years, pedagogical pragmatics has sought to improve the effectiveness with which learners express and interpret meaning, through awareness-raising activities that draw on authentic materials and break away from simplistic explanations of form-function correspondences. By and large, these efforts have been informed by an inductive…

This article presents an excerpt from a typed manuscript of one of many lectures Maria Montessori delivered in 1915 in San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. In this particular lecture, Montessori talked about how teachers can make a profound change in their way of teaching. Instead of doing the traditional lecture, teachers can learn how to…

In this article, I propose some new terminology and analytic tools that help us reflect on Israel educational activities with more sophistication. I analyze data from a four-week observation of a Jewish summer camp and new terminology is proposed from the analysis of the data collected during that observation. I argue that we may view Israel…

Inscriptions play a critical role in the creation and communication of scientific knowledge, yet are afforded little status in traditional science education research and practice. In the vast majority of science classrooms, K-12 and university alike, inscriptions are treated as transparent, unproblematic illustrations of the "content" rather than…

The authors advance an argument that placing observation of actual teaching as a central feature of accountability frameworks, teacher preparation, and basic science could result in substantial improvements in instruction and related social processes and a science of the production of teaching and teachers. Teachers' behavioral interactions with…

Identifies and describes six differences between formative and summative evaluation in career education. Formative evaluation involves more coordination, more stress, special observation and teaching skills, criterion-referenced measures, learner safeguards, and choosing priorities among objectives. (SK)

Educational criticism, based largely on a paradigm of the arts, is an evaluation mode which relies heavily on metaphor, other tropes, and artistic language in general, to convey the quality of educational experiences. Recently educational criticism came under fire by Patton, largely for its use of metaphor which Patton believes the critic brings…

Observational approaches used by ecological psychologists can focus on the behavior of persons or on their settings. The options for subject-centered observation are diary methods, specimen records, time sampling, and event sampling or critical incident recording. Serious limitations correlated to the time interval method, as it is often applied,…