Ethnography has the capacity to interrogate and unravel what Geertz called "webs of significance" in respect of difficult and perplexing cultural issues. One arena that is especially troubling at the moment lies in the need to pose questions and explore more robust explanations as to how it is that some teachers of young adolescents seem…

The progress of the first cohort of an innovatory "flexible" postgraduate initial teacher training programme in the North-West of England was tracked over a two-year period. The programme itself was introduced by the British government at a time of teacher shortage, and was designed to attract people into teaching from other careers. Its…

Based on Raven's (1992) power interaction model, situational and personal variables were examined as determinants of power choice in educational settings. The impact of educational sector (secular, religious), class level, gender and content of conflict on perceived power usage in teacher-pupil conflicts was analysed. A total of 370 elementary and…

Literacy assessments are transforming the contexts of secondary instruction. This article reports how literacy assessments are shaping the instructional choices of nine English Language Arts teachers who work in three different states in northeastern United States--New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Through interviews, the teachers reported…

Instructors at universities face many of the same concerns. They have to prepare and organize their courses, teach those courses and provide assignments, assess the learning of the students, and then evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching style. Even though these experiences are common, learning environments in higher education are…

The article describes a research conducted on students at the University in Pula, by which was attempted to establish whether there is a relationship between exam success and a type of online teaching material from which a student learns. Students were subjected to psychological testing that measured factors of intelligence: verbal, non-verbal and…

Web-based distance education has become a "real" teaching alternative which has instigated more research particularly in the past decade. This research has commonly focused on four major perspectives: (1) information-technology; (2) course management systems (including course communication tools); (3) information design; and (4) online…

Unlike many instruments used to measure the attitudes and practices of college composition teachers, the Survey of Attitudes and Practices of Teachers of Freshman Composition (SAPTFC) is based on a generalized theory of teaching at the college level, classifying instruction into three groups: didactic, heuristic, and philetic. In composition…

In separate but overlapping narratives, 3 women composition teachers ponder some of the challenges female instructors face in defining their role for themselves and the students they teach. Students and women instructors both experience considerable confusion over what role the woman instructor fills; both parties view her too often not only as a…

This paper reports on one secondary social studies teacher's efforts to engage students in learning about self, others, and the world. Modes of presentation and learning activities are the specific focus. Observations occurred during 160 class periods in four different social studies classrooms, tenth-grade world geography, eleventh-grade U.S.…

Two studies examined seven teachers' acceptance of a strategies-based approach to reading instruction during their first year of using the intervention. Interviews and observations revealed that the intervention, a long-term transactional strategies instruction program called SAIL (Students Achieving Independent Learning), was fully acceptable to…

Any college English teacher who seriously seeks to bridge the academic and corporate learning communities must learn from rather than laugh at the industrial mindset. Mediating between composition theorists' process-oriented pedagogies and the type of linear writing instruction the corporate mind values is essential in the corporate classroom. The…

An ethnographic study examined three new teaching assistants (TAs) from July 1995 to July 1996 at a state university. Data included observing their classrooms, gathering artifacts, and talking about their experiences to determine what types of training and experiences lead to a successful TA and what elements or characteristics comprise a…

A discussion of whether teaching is a science, an art, or both, and the extent to which it is either and why, is presented in this paper. Teaching-as-a-science (TAS) and teaching-as-an-art (TAA) are not specific teaching methods but rather two different ways to find teaching methods. Whether students learn as a result of the teacher's scientific…

A study examined whether expected behavior from teachers coincides with how women and men really teach their magazine-writing classes. Subjects, 120 of 198 members of the Magazine Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, responded to a 25-item questionnaire concerning their teaching techniques. Results…