For more than 30 years, Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) devoted his life to educating orphaned Jewish children, and he stayed with them to the end as they all perished in the Treblinka concentration camp. In his teaching and writing, Korczak encouraged teachers to become autonomous knowledge producers by questioning and interrogating their work.…

Traditional assessment is based on perceiving and measuring knowledge possession and practical performance. This kind of assessment provides limited information about the capability of the learner to develop as a professional and to learn at work. In a typical skill test situation the teachers estimate how well the students know knowledge content…

This paper explores differences between traditions in relation to teaching and learning. As a relative newcomer from the Anglo/American curriculum tradition, I seek to highlight the ways in which Central and Northern European tradition of Didaktik has offered a new dimension and fresh insights to the notion of reflective practice. In particular,…

An underexamined yet critical aspect of any theory of reflective thinking is its ontological foundations--the view of reality that it embraces. This article makes an argument that realist assumptions, such as those advanced by John Dewey, provide a basis for teacher learning superior to theories of teacher reflection resting on nonreal…

In this article, the author recounts her experience, through three practices: collaboration, inquiry, and reflection, when she first encountered the practice of Critical Friends Groups (CFGs) and describes how she creates a CFG-inspired learning environment. As a middle-school principal, she has found that the three practices--collaboration,…

This article will discuss issues concerning the potential of videopapers, drawing on a research project investigating the use of videopapers as a tool for reflecting on practice and as an assignment in initial teacher education. Student teachers engaged in initial teacher education programmes often find it difficult to "see" what is…

Although teachers are engaged in many field-trips, they seldom have the pedagogical knowledge and experience to enact them. This article presents an effort to support reflective practice of teachers in the outdoors. The teaching experience of five pre- and in-service teachers included preparation for teaching in the outdoors, designing learning…

The socioemotional factors, which influence students' trajectories on their pathways to reading success, are often overlooked in literacy screenings and reading instruction. This article outlines the connections between personality factors, in particular resilient personalities, and early literacy success. It also offers teachers a series of six…

The opportunity for high-achieving university students to take on leadership roles in mentoring and peer learning contexts is perhaps underutilised. Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) programs are an example where the role of the peer leader, who facilitates the study session, is crucial to the success of the program. The implementation of PASS…

This article features an innovative project called the "Teacher Learning Center" (TLC) that is jointly funded by the South Dakota Department of Education, Black Hills State University (BHSU), and the Spearfish School District in Spearfish, South Dakota. The purpose of this project was to provide opportunities for preservice and new…

At the 2007 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, we presented a workshop entitled "How to do the Scholarship of Teaching." The workshop had three main goals: to introduce participants to the literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to various SoTL outlets, to guide participants in the process of doing…

"A Nation at Risk" sounded the call for school improvement and offered recommendations for bringing it about. "No Child Left Behind" was even more prescriptive in its approach to raising student achievement. However, as the author of this article points out, for all their recommendations and strategies, both reform efforts neglect the essential…

Background: In exploring the complexity of teaching, scholars have suggested that greater attention needs to be paid to the teachers' thoughts and actions and to how these affect quality teaching. Up to today, very few studies have investigated the relationship between teachers' beliefs and practices even though it has an important role to play in…

Educational researchers have recently suggested that Schon's influential model of the "reflective practitioner" lacks a prospective, or future, dimension. In this study, we examine instances of future-oriented talk produced by novice English as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers during mentoring meetings in one North American university…

In Vietnam, despite the introduction of a new curriculum based on a child-centred education approach, there exist many problems and challenges in the educational process. To overcome these problems, the Vietnamese and Japanese governments have been conducting an in-service teacher-training programme, including school-based observation and…