Maintaining that urban teaching and learning is characterized by many contradictions, this book proposes that there is a wide range of social, cultural, psychological, and pedagogical knowledge urban educators must possess in order to engage in effective and transformative practice. It is necessary for those teaching in urban schools to be…

Using primarily online interaction, we worked with a grade one teacher to help her develop an understanding of community in her own classroom. Using an interpretive interactionist methodology, we theorized four domains in her view of classroom community: trust, membership, power, and capacity. The teacher's perceived success in creating community…

The necessity of the foundational courses that take place in teaching courses in teacher education programs is a much-debated topic. Some writers argue that these courses are important since they help teachers and teacher candidates understand the dynamics in the process of teaching and learning and assist teachers in thinking extensively about…

Objective: To assess the sexual health knowledge of teachers who contribute to secondary school sexual health education in order to determine whether teachers are adequately prepared to implement present government education and public health policies. Design: Results were obtained from a questionnaire as part of a two-phase intervention study.…

This is a cross-cultural comparative study that sets out to explore teachers' knowledge, understanding and practices of the teaching of Physical Education (PE) to students from different cultural backgrounds. More specifically, it explores key issues in the teaching of PE to Muslim students. Thirteen PE teachers, six from England and seven from…

The publication of the new curriculum and subject guidelines for the National Certificate (Vocational) marks an important development in policy by the Department of Education. To implement this new National Certificate (Vocational), the teaching staff at FET colleges should not only be familiar with the new curriculum and its pedagogic demands,…

This paper argues for civic education that helps students recognize that reasonable people will disagree about the best ways to live, and that this recognition should frequently impel us toward compromise and accommodation in the public square. Fostering this virtue of reasonable disagreement will require a concerted curricular effort toward…

This study investigated the current levels of teachers' knowledge about and views of the National Standards for Physical Education (NASPE, 1995) and factors that influenced the teachers' understandings and interpretations of the standards. Twenty-five elementary and secondary physical education teachers voluntarily participated in this study. Data…

This paper examines theoretical and empirical evidence related to primary teachers' subject knowledge in mathematics and considers the relevance of an audit of higher-level subject knowledge to the subject knowledge required for teaching primary mathematics. Questionnaires and interviews were carried out to determine the views of generalist…

This research examined concerns that primary teachers had in challenging gifted pupils in a normal classroom setting. Research findings in England indicated that children with high ability do not always attain highly, and within the context of primary science education underachievement was often linked to lack of appropriate challenge. The…

There is a strong international interest in the enhancement of teaching quality. Enhancement is a big job because teaching is an extensive activity. It is a complex job because learning to teach is not, mainly, a formal process: non-formal, practice-based learning is more significant. These two points, extensiveness and practice-based learning,…

The importance of the concept of professional identity lies in its relationship to professional knowledge and action, but these links are complex. A traditional notion of identity is of something essential about ourselves, a fixed and stable core of "self". More recently, however, identity has been seen as an ongoing and performative…

This project grew out of concerns expressed by several novice teachers about their lack of preparation to deal with common problems in the classroom. Several trends were evident with the teachers involved in this study. They all came to recognize the importance of effective, organized instruction during the term of the study, along with the…

Defining equity within the context of a diverse, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural society, and one where social class strongly influences one's life chances is problematic. This chapter reexamines equity in an attempt to advance the discourse beyond the debate about strategies to close the achievement gap between White…

The subject knowledge primary teachers have as a basis for their teaching has become a major concern in preservice and inservice teacher education. This paper reports on a study that investigated the science and pedagogical content knowledge of a sample of 42 preservice primary teachers in England. Assignments and questionnaires were used to…