A new type of teacher is needed in the contemporary classroom--one who is not just a mere technician, but who can keep an open and critical mind. Today's teacher must adjust to a fast-changing reality and the demands of the surrounding world, and internalize the ever-growing flow of information while reflecting on both personal and professional…

A theory of professional action is developed based on the 3 modes of inference: abduction, induction, and deduction. The theory explains how professionals reflect in action by combining a single case to their professional repertoire. With teachers in religious education (RE), the problem is focused on how they link students' new and individual…

Spirituality is becoming an increasingly significant aspect of contemporary art education theory. The manner in which one conceives of holistic art education curricula is partially shaped by one's understanding of a more spiritual approach to reflective thinking and practice in teacher education. Definitions of reflective practice and…

This article presents a systematic method for examining and evaluating written commentary. When used by writing instructors in authentic responding contexts, these reflective models can help instructors better understand their commenting practices in light of current response theories, establish clearer goals for making written commentary, and…

In this article, the author describes how keeping an academic journal has helped him to become a more insightful and relentless evaluator of his teaching expertise, and to acquire an academic conscience. The keeping of such an journal can inspire teachers to continually evaluate unrehearsed events and can help them get down to the true heart of…

As teachers reach out to families in new ways, attempt to learn from them, and connect that knowledge to instruction, what do the teachers reflect on and consider? This article explores this question based on the experiences of two teachers involved in a multi-year study focused, in part, on school-family connections. Findings emerged from data…

This narrative case study of a Black female middle grades mathematics teacher in an urban school provides an in-depth look at one teacher's life story, resilience, and teaching practices in a racialized environment. The study gives particular attention to the factors that contributed to her strength and resilience: family and faith. This view of…

Purpose: To describe an exploratory study in which an online learning system was used to provide an intercultural experience for pre-service education students from New Jersey and Namibia. Design/methodology/approach: Pre-service education students from New Jersey and Namibia were enrolled in an online course in the fall of 2004. The following…

The present study explored how cross-cultural collaboration involving university lecturers from Norway (the North) and Egypt (the South), and student-teachers from Egypt, can be an arena for facilitating student-teachers' reflection and for challenging student-teachers' preconceived beliefs and perspectives about disability and education. The…

Within teacher education the position of educational foundations courses is increasingly precarious. Such courses are often declared irrelevant by students who embrace the aims of training and immediate practicality over education as the essence of learning to teach. Drawing on student and instructor diaries and diary summaries, the article…

Can the perceived boundary between professor and student be crossed? Can technology be used as a pathway to cross that boundary? These questions were answered as a result of a project initiated to meet the requirements in creating an honors option for an undergraduate educational psychology course. In constructing the course requirements, the…

Reporting on the results of an action research study, this manuscript provides examples of strategies used to integrate technology into a content methods course. The study used reflective teaching of a social studies methods course at a major Southwestern university in 10 course sections over a four-semester period. In alignment with the research…

The aim of this study is to understand the influences on chemistry professors' use of educational technology. For this, we use activity theory to focus on two university chemistry professors and the broader activity system in which they work. We analyse their beliefs and past experiences related to teaching, learning, and technology as well as…

This article describes how first graders' sense of number can be developed through the perspective of measurement. (Contains 5 figures.)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the peer coaching model as a professional development tool for pre-service ESL/EFL teachers, and its possible applicability to the Binational Centres in Brazil, as well as to teacher development programmes in general. Peer coaching, a reflective approach to teacher development,…