This collaborative paper explores the process of creating a learning community as a complex learning system in an early childhood graduate course. Reflected here are the course instructor's experiences and those of various students who took the course at different times. This exploration was inspired by the students' (re)created and repeated…

This paper focuses on the use of images to promote reflection and analysis of inclusive practices. The image-based work was set in the context of a two-year action research study, which took place in Tanzania and Zambia, 2001-2003, in collaboration with researchers from the Enabling Education Network (EENET), based at the University of…

A case is made that professional development activities in science, when designed as generic programs, can limit pathways individual teachers may take or even select to meet their specific professional development needs. Teacher professional development programs in science have consistently been designed to address system wide needs. These needs…

This paper reports on a study that attempts to encourage teachers to use a visual and verbal approach to storytelling as a method of critical reflection. It demonstrates and discusses how one teacher uses the visual images to comment critically, adding a playfully ironic dimension to a verbal perspective of everyday teaching activities. Many…

In this article, an approach to the final assignment for a seminar class in early childhood education is discussed. The goal of the project was to give practicing teachers a sense that they could make changes in their thinking and therefore their practices, in the present time and in the future, and see themselves more clearly as leaders of their…

In this paper, the author proposes that a social reconstructionist framework of reflective practice provides an important orientation for preservice teachers to more successfully negotiate the rapidly changing contexts in which they will no doubt teach. She first illuminates the influence others have had on her understanding of reflection,…

An integrated mathematics and science methods course was designed to focus on the knowledge, skills, and beliefs of teacher candidates. Teacher candidates were involved in experiences that would prompt them to consider the influence of their experiences on their beliefs, the influence of their beliefs on their instructional decisions and the…

Teaching reform in higher education has frequently been informed by investigations into conceptions of learning held by students and by teachers. Such work has been extended into research education, with the study of experienced researchers' conceptions of research providing a basis for enquiry into the way research is experienced by the various…

This article discusses a "peer mentoring" teacher education initiative that aims at developing pre-service teachers' capacities to participate successfully in learning communities, both during their initial teacher education and throughout their teaching careers. Peer mentoring utilizes the latest conceptualization of mentoring, that of…

Being a Master of Business Administration (MBA) instructor can be a satisfying, as well as a frustrating experience, but instructors can avoid becoming discouraged if they know and apply some important teaching strategies. In this article, the authors offer four teaching strategies that have made the difference between success and failure in the…

Power Teaching weaves four factors into a seamless whole: standards, teaching thinking, research based strategies, and critical inquiry. As a prototype in its first year of development with an urban fifth grade class, the power teaching model connects selected district standards, thinking routines from Harvard University Project Zero Research…

Background: The use of research evidence produced by others is seen as central to the reflective practice of school teachers. There have been many recent UK initiatives aimed at improving access to research evidence, but there are still concerns about the lack of engagement by teachers. Previous research has looked at this issue from different…

This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's article titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." The author discusses the "role" of teacher, which includes: engaging students in an academic subject each teacher has mastered, mentoring a particular small group of students about the…

The values that school principals use when solving organisational problems were studied. Data were collected by a think aloud procedure, in which the participants verbalised their thoughts while working on a set of five administrative problems. The results show that the principals referred to seven values that had subtle but important sub-texts:…

September 11, 2001, was a critical teachable moment that provided the author of this article and his team with an avenue to middle level curriculum that was relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory. Hurricane Katrina opened a similar window of opportunity for middle level educators to focus the minds of young adolescents on important…