Nearly two thousand years ago, Quintilian wrote a guide for the education of the ideal citizen which combined theory with educational practice. He believed in the importance of early education, the place of play and joy in learning, the necessity to base education on students' individual patterns of growth and learning, the magnitude of the…

"Strategies for Effective Elementary Classroom Teaching" is an introductory course offered at the authors' university that impart instructional techniques and management strategies for the elementary classroom. Due to the course's limitations, the authors revised it in two ways: (1) Establish more strongly the connection between theory and…

One pressing issue that students in the new millennium must know more about is the uneasy bilateral relationship between the United States and Japan. In this study, I examined how 33 teachers from 21 schools, who participated in the "Japan Today" Program, taught about Japan, continued teaching about Japan after a one-year commitment,…

This paper discusses a combined university-school research project involving three associate teachers from the pre-service teacher education degree at the University of Otago, New Zealand in the examination of their literacy teaching practice. The provision of resources for this collaborative study allowed the teachers to design the project in…

In this article two teacher educators describe an approach they have used with preservice early childhood and early childhood special education majors. They explain how the approach that they call "stories about teaching" resembles, yet differs from case study methods. The authors explain the process they used to develop, pilot, and use stories…

Theory has always possessed an elusive, intangible, and almost ethereal quality. Comprising nothing but ideas compressed into words, it is supposed to guide literacy interactions and transactions. Theory provides the "why" that underlies the "how to" of teaching. Yet the author, a teacher, has often struggled with the effort of translating theory…

This paper reflects our commitments as teacher educators to develop the skills, knowledge and interests amongst "nearly qualified teachers" to establish action learning as an integral part of their professional practice. We outline the development of an undergraduate unit that is endeavouring to achieve this at Edith Cowan University,…

This article considers the development in understanding of aspects of formative assessment of students' writing at Key Stage 3 (11-14 years) by a group of trainee English teachers. An "analysis and application" approach to writing development, which requires students to master categories and processes then apply them, is outlined and…

In the UK Centres of Excellence were funded by the DfES to model high quality, multi-agency, early years services for young children and their families. They were precursors to Children's Centres to be established across the UK. Early Excellence Centres were evaluated at national and local levels. This article will draw on data from local…

A bilingual model has been applied to educating deaf students who are learning American Sign Language (ASL) as their first language and written English as a second. Although Cummins's (1984) theory of second language learning articulates how learners draw on one language to acquire another, implementing teaching practices based on this theory,…

The primary purposes of the study reported here were to investigate Greek mathematics teachers' beliefs regarding the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning, and to explore the various links between these beliefs and instructional practice. Two orientations that are characteristic of secondary mathematics teachers' beliefs…

This article describes the conversational interactions of one online learning group whose task was to identify themes of human development from life histories of the group members. The data were analyzed by a research team using the hermeneutic circle, which involves continually looking at parts of the text in light of the meaning of the larger…

This research aims to build upon current research in the area of teaching and learning at tertiary level and explore the nature of learning communities in tertiary science and engineering. This study uses a sociocultural approach to address the following question: "What are teachers' and learners' perceptions of the nature of the learning…

The purpose of this literature review is to look at brain research and its effect on educational practice. For the last several years, educators, parents and policymakers have become increasingly interested in the potential role of positive early childhood experiences in promoting a child's emotional and intellectual well-being (Ellison, 2001).…

This paper reports on a study to determine what various groups of teachers and prospective teachers consider to be the aims of the Hong Kong education system in relation to their teacher education courses. The participants were uncertified preservice teachers in their second and third years of study, certificated inservice teachers, and…