In the summer of 2011, the Tennessee Department of Education contracted with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to provide a four-day training for all evaluators across the state. NIET trained more than 5,000 evaluators intensively in the state model (districts using alternative instruments delivered their own training).…

Analytical competency in classroom situations can be seen as a crucial aspect of teachers' professional competency. While case-based learning is considered to have great potential for teacher education, particularly with respect to the promotion of teachers' analytical skills, there have been very few attempts to investigate the effects of…

This study draws on ethnographic data from a year-long multimodal media production (MMP) course and the experience of an African American female adolescent who used the production of multimodal Hip Hop texts to express her creativity and growing socially conscious view of the world. The study demonstrates how students made meaning multimodally and…

For universities located in rural areas, field placement supervisors often find it difficult to locate placements for student teachers who are specialized in areas (e.g., special education, P.E.) with a limited number of cooperating teachers in each school. In those cases, placements for student teachers may require the cooperation of schools…

The authors investigate the nature of child play for young children with disabilities using two different research models--the traditional psychoeducational research paradigm and the more recent interdisciplinary approach of the childhood studies paradigm. They base their discussion on a research study of toddlers with disabilities, and they…

This paper discusses modalities of meaningful use of multimedia sources in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) theory and the design of CSCL software tools. A discussion about main similarities and differences between the concepts of networking, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration is presented at the beginning. These concepts…

Learning to teach well is a complex task. Teacher-educators have a significant role to play in enabling students to reflect critically and analyse their own practice. However, there is a danger, as a result of funding pressures and other contrary factors, that many institutions that provide teacher education will become separated from their…

The term "literacy" is often used synonymously with reading and writing. However, literacy entails more than reading and writing. Literacy involves communicating with others and includes listening, viewing, following, and reading directions and interacting with friends and colleagues. The literacy skills and abilities are essential for all…

The young child's exposure to disaster and trauma through the media or in the social milieu poses a challenge for the early childhood educator who is faced with responding and educating in a developmentally appropriate manner. In the case of public commemoration of a national disaster, the classroom implications are seemingly unavoidable. This…

In this paper, we describe our path for designing an online community of practice for teachers in Singapore, from identifying the current status of professional development to designing an online platform where teachers can share vivid images of their teaching practices with other teachers. To identify current practices in professional…

The literature on the use of problem-based learning in K-12 settings has traditionally focused on gifted and average students. However, mainstreaming is placing increasing numbers of students with special needs in general education classrooms. This case study examined how members of a small group in a mainstreamed seventh grade science class…

The effectiveness of a behavioral skills training (BST) package to teach the implementation of the first three phases of the picture exchange communication system (PECS) was evaluated with 3 adults who had no history teaching any functional communication system. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effectiveness…

This article reports research concerning the effective use of video editing to help cultivate novice teachers' reflective practice. The study reported here is part of a larger body of research on video-enhanced teacher reflection. For this study, we used a qualitative research design to examine two guided reflection activities for two groups of…

Training and investing teachers at all career levels in student-centered practices is widely recognized as a significant challenge. Various studies document the failure of student-centered teaching practices to take hold in K-12 mathematics classrooms in significant ways, including collaborative work; problems that are cognitively demanding or…

YouTube, the video sharing website that allows viewers to upload video content ranging from cute dog tricks to rare rock videos, also supports a lively community devoted to the performance of Shakespeare and Shakespearean adaptations. YouTube is also a popular site for student producers of Shakespeare performances, parodies, and other artistic…