Implementing the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) and/or the full inclusion philosophy (which advocates disabled students participating in regular classrooms) creates new needs and places new demands on public school personnel. This paper presents a review of research studies that examined the extent to which administrators had knowledge of…

Teaching practice in schools is an essential component of the professional practice courses for primary student teachers at the University of Waikato (New Zealand). During the first three years of their training, students have a combination of short term placement in normal schools, and longer blocks of teaching practice in other schools. During…

Describing how the experiences of nine cognitive researchers have influenced college writing classrooms, this book demonstrates the critical role of the learner in interpreting and responding to the texts they read, the tasks they are assigned, and the feedback they receive from instructors, readers, and collaborators. Growing out of a project at…

This paper addresses education reform efforts, specifically the need to improve schooling by improving the status, power, and working conditions of teachers through professional development programs. Two issues which continue to undermine the authenticity and social value of efforts to promote teacher development are addressed: (1) underneath the…

This paper, which is intended to assist adult literacy practitioners interested in conducting research about their programs, discusses the four stages of the action research process: identifying questions to guide the research, collecting information to answer the questions, analyzing the information collected, and sharing the results with others.…

This book describes how theater can create an impetus for productive learning across the curriculum. Dorothy Heathcote's "mantle of the expert" approach is discussed in which teachers and students explore, in role, the knowledge they already have about a problem or task while making new discoveries along the way. The book also presents a…

A study of post degree elementary interns at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) (N=25) was conducted to determine the main sources of information they employed in decision making related to teaching and relationships in the school. The study focused on: (1) the extent to which interns used the knowledge base gained from education classes in…

This paper explores the insights of five social theorists regarding families, schools, and parent-teacher relations. The five theorists are: (1) Urie Bronfenbrenner, a child psychologist and advocate of public policies that support families, who argues that frequent, positive communication between parents and teachers creates the optimal…

What difference should sociocultural difference make in early literacy theory and practice? In response to this question, this paper argues that such differences should lead to a reconceptualization that highlights the social nature and cultural meaning of child literacy development. Drawing on a recent ethnographic study of child composing in an…

This paper explores how various perspectives influence inquiry in education. Normative perspectives function as implicit theories of inquiry as a researcher undertakes formal inquiry, and such theories should be acknowledged. Epistemological as well as methodological issues raised by conceiving of such theories as normative rather than merely…

This booklet explores the use of national standards to structure work-based initial teacher training for teachers working within British further education colleges. Section 1 examines the following aspects of the use of Training and Development Lead Body (TDLB) and Management Charter Initiative (MCI) standards for initial teacher training: reasons…

Intended to guide writing teachers through the complexities of evaluation, the essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches to evaluation. The essays display, however, some common beliefs about what is fundamentally important to writing teachers' work--specifically, the need: to distinguish between "grading" and…

This study compared the ideas of researchers with those of practitioners in higher education regarding what is considered significant and useful literature in terms of content, methodology, and format. The findings were interpreted in terms of theories of action research and the quality movement. Data were compiled using focus groups of…

Educational researchers and practitioners have long advocated adopting a culturally appropriate curriculum to strengthen the education of Native youth. Such an approach uses materials that link traditional or cultural knowledge originating in Native home life and community to the curriculum of the school. Deeply imbedded cultural values drive…

Organized as a text for undergraduate and graduate students, this book presents the principles and practices of outdoor leadership in a variety of adventure applications: recreational, educational, developmental, and therapeutic. The introduction addresses the need for effective outdoor leadership and examines current research. Part I,…