Teaching is a complex profession that involves grappling with a variety of management styles; federal, state, and local mandates; local policies and agendas; and informed curriculum practices that affect pedagogy. Teachers work in increasingly diverse schools, and they must be reflective practitioners to deal with the many social and educational…

Narrative writing has been used to promote reflection and increased self-awareness among physicians. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of prompted narrative writing on reflection. Thirty-two interns at 9 internal medicine residency programs participated in a year-long qualitative study about personal growth beginning in July of…

When the parents of a preschooler at a university lab school questioned the classroom practice of Leader of the Day, with its "special privileges," it gave two teachers pause to think. They share their reflections about the purpose of the practice; what it means to the children; and what the children learn from it. Following guidelines from the…

The University of Ottawa in Canada offers a peer-mentoring program (whereby an experienced student provides support and guidance to another student) and an associated training program for all peer mentors through its Student Academic Success Service. In addition to the formal training, some peer mentors receive feedback and support through an…

This paper reports on the use of portfolios in a continuing professional development programme to advance teachers' skills in their pedagogy of argumentation. The programme adopted a cyclical process of expert input-teacher practice-sharing practice, in order for professional learning to include reflective analysis of growing accomplishment.…

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is an approach that could be used by undergraduate educators that appears to meet the suggestions by Dewey to integrate students' interests and experiences with content knowledge. The IBL approach has been described as "a range of strategies used to promote learning through students' active, and increasingly…

Creating a culture of inquiry rather than continuing to work in a culture of isolation represents a significant change within schools that must be supported. In this article, the author presents and discusses a well-constructed agenda template which shows topic, purpose, guiding questions, and background or process. He states that an agenda…

The idea of teachers and teacher educators engaging in research is not, in itself, new, but in recent years the propagation of this idea seems to have become really popular. This growing popularity brings the risk that practitioner research will degenerate into an increasingly vague and obscure "container concept". The aim of this article is to…

This article examines 14 teacher educators' development of standards-based electronic portfolios. The research focused on the participants' interpretation of the standards and how they conceptualized the portfolio development process in relation to their professional practice. For one year, participants interacted around the Association of Teacher…

This paper describes an arts-based Action Research project in which Forum Theatre (FT) was used to explore classroom management issues with pre-service teachers. Both participants and author were engaged in inquiry: the pre-service teachers tested different management strategies, immediately experiencing the consequences of their actions; the…

In the School of Education at the University of Adelaide, the use of oral evidence is increasingly common as students engage with reflective practices now dominant in teacher-education programs. These experiences offer both a dynamic perspective and a challenge to academic assessors and raise three questions, each of which are addressed in this…

This article analyses the concept of organizational culture and the relationship between the organizational culture and the performance of staff work groups in schools. The article draws upon a study of 12 schools in Wales, UK, which despite being in disadvantaged settings have high levels of pupil attainment. A model is developed linking the…

This paper contends that history of education should be a required part of teacher preparation. The discipline's languishing status in schools of education is widespread, and should be seen in relation to the general decline of humanities and social science subjects as foundations of teacher training. This paper examines the reasons for the…

In 1999 a critical thinking syllabus was issued by the education authority to all junior secondary school English language teachers in Hong Kong. Different from the earlier curriculum guidelines, the syllabus highlights the importance of thinking in English language teaching and learning, and developing students' critical thinking through the…

Instructors of elementary science methods classes have long lamented the significant difficulties their students exhibit when trying to understand the many complexities of teaching science. As noted by some researchers and practicing teachers, preservice teachers often fail to developmentally function at desired levels with respect to…