This paper reports on an ethnographic study of 25 teacher leaders in five schools within a large midwestern city school district. Data was collected through unstructured interviews and observations of teachers. Three central themes appeared repeatedly, and explain the presence of and support for teachers as leaders, including: (1) specific school…

This study focuses on observations of classroom conversation as an approach to assessment of relationships between a teacher's teaching and pupils' learning and identity-development processes. Detailed observation notes from two conventional conversation situations from a first grade classroom are written down as narratives and analysed within a…

As a result of recent changes to U.S. undergraduate mathematics instruction, graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) may now be asked to teach in ways that they did not themselves experience as students. One such example is the use of collaborative group learning. The preparation TAs receive to teach in these new ways has the potential to shape…

The first portion of this article describes the development and validation of a classroom observation measure. The goal of the measure was to assess the quality of reading instruction provided to first-grade English learners. We report the internal consistency reliability, interrater reliability, the development of empirically derived subscales,…

Peer observation has become a feature of university practice over the last decade, the primary impetus for its introduction being the political drive to raise teaching quality via the development and sharing of 'good practice'. Peer observation within higher education (HE) involves observing colleagues in the classroom and has the further aim of…

Many national policymakers and experts believe that professional development, which teachers often have regarded as wasted time, is potentially an important tool for improving student learning. Some of the current attention to professional development grows out of several studies in recent years that have highlighted the central role that teachers…

This study examined teacher candidates' observations and perceptions of classroom print-rich environments during field observations. The focus is on what the teacher candidates report and believe they have observed in classrooms regarding print-rich environments. The subjects were 35 undergraduate teacher candidates enrolled in two language arts…

This paper reports a study on classroom organization, carried out in 2000 in kindergartens in Hong Kong. The findings contribute to understandings of current cross-cultural studies on classroom organization. Half-day session classroom observations of nine kindergarten teachers from three schools in Hong Kong were carried out. Data sources included…

This article describes the development and field-testing of an observational tool, the Volunteer Tutor Instructional Practices Checklist. It is an example of action research in a clinical setting and will be of interest to all educators, including special education and reading center directors, in the training and ongoing supervision of community…

Research on new teachers identifies two critical challenges in relation to how novices view their students: practice shock that results in an over focus on controlling students and a cultural mismatch that causes novices to see diversity as a problem. This article explores how mentoring strategies intervene at this critical phase, influencing…

This study explored teachers' pedagogical strategies for using multimedia simulation to structure and support secondary science teaching. Expertise was investigated across a range of classroom settings to analyse how specialist knowledge is situated within and adapted to the teaching and learning context. Analysis of data arising from 10 lesson…

Quality in primary education is currently high on the education agenda in developing countries. What is quality? How can we effectively measure it? How can we achieve it? How can we improve it? The author considers two suggestions to be critical to answering these above questions and engages with them in this article: (1) place what is happening…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to record and summarize the tensions and problems experienced by a high school administrative team as they attempted to change supervision alongside instruction in a transition to a new block schedule. Design/methodology/approach: A case study method was used. As a case study, the research is contextual in…

This study examines how teachers actually cope with behavioural problems of included students. In order to understand the impact of individual differences on teachers' coping strategies, the authors looked at the relationship between these strategies and teachers' democratic beliefs and self-efficacy. Participants were 33 teachers in Israel, who…

In this article, the author examines the link between high-stakes testing policies and classroom instruction. Using data from classroom observations and interviews with teachers, he argues that these policies influence instruction but are mediated by teachers and filtered through their collegial interactions. He shows that teachers link the…