This article seeks to contribute to the emerging body of research on learning to teach a second language (L2). Specifically, it examines the learning-to-teach experience of a preservice German language teacher from her own perspective illuminating the contextual, biographical, academic, and cognitive factors affecting her development (Freeman &…

The study focuses on teachers' perceived certainty, a concept which is understood as being made up of didactic, practical and relational certainty, and its relationship with teacher collaboration, role ambiguity and job satisfaction. Analyses draw on data from 1,153 Norwegian elementary and junior high school teachers. Results indicate that there…

In 1999, all student teachers at secondary I level at the University of Bern who had to undertake an internship were asked to participate in a study on learning processes during practicum: 150 students and their mentors in three types of practicum participated--introductory practicum (after the first half-year of studies), intermediate practicum…

"Lesson plan study" (LPS), adapted from the Japanese Lesson Study method of professional development, is a sequence of activities designed to engage prospective teachers in broadening and deepening their understanding of school mathematics and teaching strategies. LPS occurs over 5 weeks on the same lesson topic and includes four opportunities to…

This case study aims to investigate the role of teachers' personal practical knowledge in interactive decision making for three pre-service non-native ESL teachers. The research question is: What role does pre-service ESL teachers' personal practical knowledge (operationalized as teaching maxims in this study) play in their interactive decisions…

The authors describe a journey of self-study during which one author shifted from traditional, teacher-driven approaches to a more problem-based inquiry approach to teaching mathematics. He videotaped a series of lessons taught to sixth-grade students over a semester and analyzed his teaching during discussions with his mentor at the university.…

Children arrive in classrooms with varied background knowledge, which means that teachers must select instructional methods, materials, and techniques to meet multiple needs. A carefully planned approach that includes direct and explicit instruction--as well as extensive opportunities for reading, writing, speaking, and listening--can help…

The "teaching point" persists, and will no doubt persist further, but this article reviews decades of thinking to challenge it as prime unit of "planning" for language teaching and proposes instead the "learning opportunity" as a unit of "analysis" with major implications for planning. This proposal leads me to advocate practitioner research…

The food science course developed in Missouri combines basic scientific and mathematics principles in a hands-on instructional format as a part of the family and consumer sciences education curriculum. Throughout the course, students conduct controlled experiments and use scientific laboratory techniques and information to explore the biological…

Teachers can promote long-lasting learning, build higher-order thinking skills, develop individual student accountability, and increase student achievement by incorporating performance learning tasks into the curriculum. In this second edition of "Performance-Based Learning," Sally Berman demonstrates how this model can be modified for learners at…

Teachers may be the most important element of an effective school, but does that mean that K-12 improvement must wait on the ability of schools or systems to recruit, nurture, and retain outstanding teachers? Such a strategy implies that widespread excellence hinges on the ability of publicly funded school systems to attract more than 3.3 million…

This practical, how-to guide makes it easy for teachers to incorporate the latest technology in their classes. Employing an informal workshop approach, the book avoids technical jargon and pays special attention to the needs of teachers who are expanding the use of computers in their classroom. The authors focus on what teachers do and how they…

This case provides a real-world semester long project-oriented case study for students enrolled in an electronic commerce course that has a significant development component. The case provides the technical framework in the form of functional requirements for students to design and build a fully functional transaction processing e-commerce Web…

A school social work intervention called the "Getting Better Phenomenon" is redesigned as a curriculum resource for eighth- and ninth-grade teachers. The activities in the curriculum represent a synergy of provincial learning expectations; academic assessment and evaluation structures; teacher-guided delivery of student-generated "course" content;…

This paper reports the results of 3 years of Chinese language instruction experience at the Rochester Chinese Institute. The author designed, implemented, and evaluated a comprehensive instructional curriculum in Chinese language for students aged 11-17 years. Students were first generation American Chinese children of Chinese interracial…