This book discusses the first order principles (FOPs) of college teaching and their role as the easiest route to working happily and successfully in the classroom. Part 1 lists the 10 principles: (1) moderate classroom incivilities with prosocial immediacies; (2) wait actively for the fruits of one's teaching efforts; (3) begin before feeling…

In the context of a professional-development reform movement in Quebec, the Ministry of Education asked universities to participate in the training of school principals so that they could implement a culture of continuous learning in their own schools. The university researchers used a bottom-up approach to initiate collaborative inquiry with 37…

Training teachers as reflective practitioners is an important element in many teacher education programs. Teacher education literature indicates that journal writing is an approach that fosters reflection, and is an effective source of dialogue between student and teacher. This document reports on an action research study on the use of journals in…

This document chronicles the study of an intensive writing instruction workshop held in a diverse, low income neighborhood in Chicago. The study focused particularly on how individual teacher knowledge and beliefs, school contexts, and the structure and content of the workshop interacted both to support and to inhibit teacher learning. The…

Faculty members employed at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) should give priority to teaching and learning. The work of faculty members at such institutions is a way to reclaim individuals who have been discarded by society. Mission statements should be reviewed to be sure that college printed materials do indeed reflect these…

Teacher self-evaluation encourages teachers to examine their personal teaching activities in order to understand and improve their practices. This publication explains what teacher-self evaluation is, why it is important, self-evaluation methods and procedures, the role of the principal's evaluation, influential factors, self-evaluation standards…

This study investigated the practice teaching experiences of Bachelor of Education (Design and Technology) students at the University of Newcastle (Australia) to determine what they saw as successful and unsuccessful events. Eleven second-year students at the University of Newcastle were asked to write about one successful and one unsuccessful…

Outlining an integrated language perspective on teaching and learning in the elementary school, this book provides both the theory on which the perspective is based and many examples of how it may be translated into practice. The book illustrates and explains eight thematic units (called "prototypes"), and includes webs, examples,…

This paper highlights some emerging trends in rethinking the teacher education practicum in North America. The paper discusses several major obstacles to student teacher learning that persist even in many of the new inquiry-oriented practicums that focus on the development of reflective teaching practice. While teachers praise the value of the…

Reflective teaching has been one of the three main goals of the preservice teacher education programs in the National Institute of Education, Singapore, since the late 1980s. A three-phase study, of which the first two phases are described, is examining how Singapore student teachers think about teaching in the preservice programs, how they…

From 1988 through 1995 a group of researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education collaborated with teachers from nearby schools on research to address questions about teaching for understanding and linking research with practice. They describe the theoretical foundations underlying the Teaching for Understanding framework, the process and…

This report presents stories, written by teachers in the northwestern United States, about their experiences with curriculum over the years. The stories come from several groups, including four teachers who wrote as individuals, one pair of close colleagues, and one interview with a team of educators. The teachers responded to questions about how…

This article focuses on classroom-based narratives that reflect how a convenience sample of 25 graduate students, who were also practicing teachers, wrote about and utilized the real-life events and experiences of their students to help them become instructional explorers and effective problem solvers. The narratives had to be a depiction of…

This paper describes the way two university instructors encouraged students to perceive and understand the influence of their personal environment. The classes, an undergraduate course and a graduate course in education, focused on the integration of art and science disciplines as students reflected on their experience of their environment. A…

This study investigated ways in which regular group discussion might promote reflective teaching. Subjects were three experienced teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Korea who came together in weekly meetings to reflect on their work. Two were college teachers, and one taught in a private company. The study examined what the…