Cross-disciplinary self-studies and peer coaching have separately been shown to offer teacher educators meaningful professional development opportunities. However, the teacher educator literature has said little about combining cross-disciplinary self-studies with peer coaching. In this article, the authors report a two-year cross-disciplinary…

Curricular demands and best practices for middle school require interdisciplinary units. Arts integration can provide motivation and a new pathway to learning. This unit focused on inquiry into the natural history of artifacts and rocks recovered from the exposed subsoil of an area near Cedar Falls, Iowa that had been bulldozed as part of…

Adding instructional time and holding teachers accountable for teaching social studies are touted as practical, logical steps toward reforming the age-old tradition of marginalization. This qualitative case study of an urban elementary school, examines how nine teachers and one administrator enacted district reforms that added 45 minutes to the…

Numeracy is a fundamental component of the Australian Curriculum as a General Capability in each subject. Here, we report on an aspect of a larger project that aims to provide insight into how teachers can assist their students to develop a critical orientation to life-related situations through a cross-curricular approach to numeracy.…

Employing the research approach known as portraiture, this study investigated the varying ways in which three secondary English language arts teachers at a visual and performing arts high school conceptualized and designed multimodal literacy learning. Also studied were the ways in which their students responded to these designs; and in keeping…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of integrating theatre-arts strategies and traditional strategies in high school English classrooms. The sample consisted of one eleventh grade English class of twenty-one students. Data were collected from students' cumulative grades. The study was conducted throughout an eighteen-week term,…

The present study examined middle school teachers' perceptions of literacy demands in their disciplines and specific literacy strategies they used to teach their disciplines. The eight participants in this multiple case study included 2 middle school teachers from each of 4 disciplines (i.e., English/language arts, science, social studies, and…

This article explores the development of a professional learning community through a case study of three teachers--an ESOL specialist, a literacy specialist, and a fifth-grade teacher--who engaged in co-teaching and collaboration. The emerging community of practice offered these teachers a space to learn and problem-solve by utilizing their…

This article reports on a middle school literacy intervention implemented during a yearlong teacher-researcher collaboration. The purpose of this collaboration was to combine and adjust commonly recommended pedagogical approaches to address the literacy needs of a heterogeneous group of seventh graders attending an urban school. University…

This study examines vodcasting as an effective instructional activity that can transform students' negative feelings about reading and book reports into more positive experiences. The study employed a qualitative research paradigm and single-case study research design to investigate the impact of using vodcasting in a middle grades language arts…

This study was presented at the American Educational Research Association 2012 conference in Vancouver, Canada. The study explored how action research of arts-based teaching (ABT) impacted at-risk students in three urban public schools in southern California, USA. ABT was defined as using arts, music, drama, and dance in teaching other subjects. A…

Using a unit on earthworms, this article shows how science and language arts can be successfully integrated in a middle school classroom through hands-on observation, interviewing, and writing exercises. The integration process engages students, uses class time more efficiently, encourages dialog, and improves outcomes and appreciation of the…

Action research involving curricular integration of Math and reading is described in a personal account. Research supporting the benefits of subject integration is illustrated. An Action Research project in a third grade classroom of 26 participants was designed to determine and analyze students' connections between math and literature. The…