In this Voices Inside Schools essay, Dr. Pat Clifford and Susan Marinucci take us inside a classroom engaged in "genuine inquiry." As we follow Russell and his fellow fifth-grade scientists through their exploration of desalination, we witness the evolving nature of questioning, learning, and understanding in spaces of inquiry. The authors offer…

Recently, a debate has begun over whether in-class laptops aid or hinder learning. While some research demonstrates that laptops can be an important learning tool, anecdotal evidence suggests more and more faculty are banning laptops from their classrooms because of perceptions that they distract students and detract from learning. The current…

Including classroom research methodology in undergraduate is not a common practice. In order for practicing teachers to conduct classroom research in their own classrooms it is critical that they are involved in some form of planning preparation during their pre-service years. In this study, classroom research was included in one undergraduate…

As the nation witnesses a distinct decline in civic engagement among young adults, political science instructors across the nation face the formidable task of engaging students in lower-level, general education courses outside students' primary domain of interest. The research presented here seeks to understand if visually enhanced lecture…

Recent research on mathematics reforms in the United States indicates that the reforms are not yet widely implemented. Generally, this claim results from looking at the extent to which teachers use curricular materials or engage in particular classroom practices. This article moves beyond disparate questions of use and practice to examine…

A survey of administrators and faculty of AACSB-accredited business schools provided insights into current classroom technology infrastructure, attitudes towards technology and learning, and the use of web course tools in business school classrooms. The results of the survey provided four major findings: business schools are utilizing high levels…

This article examines the extent to which classroom instruction conveyed challenging learning goals in writing through a range of teaching activities and how well the participating students understood those goals. We report an empirical study that examined the quality of writing instructional goals, how well they were conveyed to students through…

This article presents a framework for establishing inquiry as a foundation of a teacher education program to help prospective and practicing teachers view inquiry not as a project but as a stance. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) assert that "working from an inquiry stance involves a continual process of making current arrangements problematic,…

This paper reports on findings from a five-teacher, exploratory case study, critically observing their implementation of a technology-intensive, augmented reality (AR) mathematics curriculum unit, along with its paper-based control. The unit itself was intended to promote multiple proportional-reasoning strategies with urban, public, middle school…

This article reports on the construction process of inclusion/exclusion for high school chemistry students in two schools in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. We examined the interactional accomplishment of inclusion/exclusion of four students, two from a private school and two from a public school. The aim of this article…

Background/Context: Research in the self-determination theoretical (SDT) tradition indicates that teachers' autonomy-supportive behaviors result in students' greater perceived academic competence, better academic performance, and increased achievement. This study describes autonomy-supportive teacher behaviors in schools participating in…

The social world of young adolescents comes into the classroom with them. It can cause kids to sit with blank or glum faces while teachers present their most fascinating assignments. It can drive them to make inappropriate comments at moments that should elicit serious thought. Although teachers tend to think of middle schoolers as risk-takers,…

This paper reports on the second phase of a joint teacher/researcher project that explored teachers' understandings of the potential of the interactive whiteboard (IWB) as a tool for primary school children's collaborative group work. By examining teachers' written analyses and discussions of work carried out in their own classrooms, the paper…

Don Zancanella challenges us to step away from the everyday tasks of teaching English to reimagine the larger idea, asking, "What should high school English be?" Eight teachers, researchers, and writers briefly answer this question, offering their versions of what high school English could be.

This study demonstrates the potential for teacher research to lead to critical inquiry and change in social studies classrooms. It presents four portraits of experienced social studies teachers engaged in critical teacher research. These teachers posed critical questions about the means and purposes of schooling, while engaging their students in…