A reflective portfolio as a capstone assignment was selected to accomplish recognition by teachers completing a science, technology, mathematics, engineering master's program for elementary teachers about their professional and personal changes and to provide program evaluators additional qualitative data regarding attainment of program goals. As…

This paper sets out to explore science teachers' classroom assessment practices and outlines some of the tensions and synergies in changing assessment practices. It describes episodes from a collaborative action research project with science teachers designed to support the strengthening of classroom assessment practices--the King's Researching…

This article seeks to improve transition services for Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) with disabilities in secondary education. The authors provide recommendations to school administrators and educators on how to design a promising "transitional context" within classrooms and schools for EBs with disabilities. This article considers…

This research investigates the challenges faced in enacting instructional models that previous research has found to foster student learning. In order to complete this study, the researcher documented, through a strategy of reflective practice, his return to teaching high school science after having served for a time as a science specialist and…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." As a discipline, the teaching of rabbinic literature is still in its early stages of development. Levisohn's menu of orientations and reflections about its usefulness are welcome additions to the…

Contemplative teaching can offer both teachers and students a middle way between two reigning fundamentalisms: the secularist one of nonadvocacy, relativism, and equivocation and the forced univocity of fundamentalism. Its antidote is the depth, relatedness, and even transcendence of a contemplative teaching style. This chapter explores the…

Reflection on several decades of science teaching at the secondary-school level leads to the strong suggestion that a theory of science education should be based on arguments emanating from insights into the process of meaningful communication in the light of modern epistemology. These arguments show that the teacher's personality and engagement…

In this article, the author shares her experience when she wrote a poem anonymously to an English teacher, who never mentioned the poem, nor gave the tiniest suggestion that the teacher read or received it. In reflection, the author thinks that she had developed her personal and emotional literacy by composing a poem which might not have been very…

In recent years, elements of reflective practice have been popularized in state school professional development. As reflective practice has moved into the mainstream, dialogic protocols have been developed by numerous organizations to structure discourse for deep understanding, enhance professional practice and advance organizational learning.…

This article explores the role of teacher research as part of a robust program of professional development. Teacher research offers teachers at every stage of development a recursive and reflective means of bridging the gap between current practice and potential professional growth. The purpose of this dual level inquiry was to probe the concept…

Growing as an educator takes hard work and commitment. It requires the educator to engage in regular, objective self-examinations of instructional beliefs and behaviors. Although this task can be daunting, and unwieldy, due to the complexity of the teaching-learning exchange, it can also be undertaken in a systematic manner. This article proposes…

In this article, the author focuses on the importance of building teacher/student relationships. A successful teacher realizes that he or she must sometimes "trick" students into learning. That's why career and technical education (CTE) is so beneficial to students' academic success. Students learn science, technology, engineering and…

Reflective learning, a practice carrying relatively high educational value, has been with us for some time. Its popularity has grown to the extent that it is often adopted unquestioningly by educational practitioners. However, there are some important questions to be asked in relation to reflective practice. In reality, its impact on improved and…

Four factors in teaching intern effectiveness, as measured by a Praxis III-similar instrument, were found among observational data of teaching interns during the 2010 spring semester. Those factors were lesson planning, teacher/student reflection, fairness & safe environment, and professionalism/efficacy. This factor analysis was as much of a…

The concept of reflective thinking as a precursor for incorporating critical thinking has been not been adequately researched. Most research has not given any effective strategies on how to incorporate these two concepts. There is a constant need to incorporate critical thinking into the classroom without much success. This study will attempt to…