What School Principals Need to Know About Curriculum and Instruction

Looks at what school leaders need to know about instructional practices, organizing a school for greater student learning, supporting teacher development, and balancing school improvement with non-instructional issues and emergencies

A student's perspective on literacy teaching and learning: starting a conversation through six suggestions

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt “struggling reader” and “struggling writer” labels.Accepted manuscrip

Why the "Struggling Reader" label Is harmful (and what educators can do about it)

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt “struggling reader” and “struggling writer” labels.Accepted manuscrip

Effective Organizational Practices for Middle and High School Grades

At the request of the Accountability Review Council, Research for Action identified effective organizational practices used by better performing schools serving substantial numbers of low income middle and high school students in the School District of Philadelphia. These practices are organized into three spheres: Conditions for Teaching, Student-Centered School Community, and Instructional Program. For each sphere, the report offers broad strategies and specific practices to enact the strategies. Nuanced school case studies show how the practices can work synergistically and coherently in schools to help students succeed

Impact of Georgia's Pre-K Program on Kindergarten through Third Grade Teachers

The Georgia Prekindergarten Program (Pre-K), established in 1993, provides Georgia's fouryear-old children with high quality preschool experiences in order to prepare them for kindergarten. Immediate gains resulting from Pre-K can be lost if teachers in later grades are not prepared to capitalize on the increasing capabilities of students. To sustain the positive effects of the Pre-K program, teachers in later grades need both to recognize that students are better prepared for school and to adapt their instructional practices to take advantage of their students' increasing capabilities. Research implies that teachers adopt practices in their classrooms relative to how their beliefs match assumptions inherent in new programs. Thus, this study investigates teacher awareness of the impact of Pre-K on students, teacher beliefs about instructional practices, current instructional practices, and the relationship between beliefs and practices.The Council for School Performance launched this study to examine the implications of the Pre-K program for teachers of children in kindergarten through third grade. Through a survey of teachers in Georgia, the Council has found that teachers believe that the Pre-K program has positively affected students in elementary school, despite observations that students are, overall, changing for the worse. The majority of teachers believe in child-centered instructional practices, but this belief has not been adopted into their own instructional practices. Overall, teachers are as likely to use child-centered practices as they are to use teacher-directed activities

Modeling Instructional Best Practices: Pedagogy of College of Education Professors

In light of increased accountability for K-12 student achievement, critics have questioned the quality of teachers and school principals as well as the university programs that prepare them for these roles (Lambert, 1996; Levine, 2005; Murphy, 1992). Regarding the preparation of teachers, critics have stated that education courses are vapid, impractical, segmented, and directionless (Glenn, 2000). Two national reports that have made recommendations for teacher redesign are noteworthy. The report of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, What matters most: Teaching for America’s future (Lambert, 1996), found that teacher preparation education is thin and fragmented and recommended that universities reinvent teacher preparation. The Glenn Commission\u27s report, Before It\u27s Too Late (2000), called for the identification of exemplary teacher preparation programs to be held up as models for other programs to emulate

Developing teachers as researchers: A teacher preparation endeavor

Instructional process is aimed at accomplishing the desired learning outcomes. But some times teachers may fail to achieve the instructional objectives. In such instances teachers attempt to find out reasons that come in way of achieving the instructional goals. The reasons may pertain to student behavior, curriculum or teacher behavior. In order to improve their classroom practices for initiating desired learning outcomes, teachers often encountered with such question as why expected outcomes are not achieved, what are the impediments that caused non accomplishment of learning outcomes, how to improve instruction for better learning and so on. One of the major reasons for such situation may be due to gap between what teacher planned to do and what has been done in the actual classroom instruction. Teachers are expected to identify these gaps between their thought and action. Consequently, they should attempt to mitigate this gap to improve quality of instruction. In order to undertake this task, teachers need to play the role of a researcher. Teacher preparation programs should equip teachers with necessary skills of conducting classroom research. This helps teachers in improving their classroom practices. Teacher educators working in District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET) have to play an important role in equipping the teachers with the skills of conducting classroom research. Hence there is a need to improve the capabilities of DIET faculty to train primary teachers in conducting classroom research

Oral reading: practices and purposes in secondary classrooms

PURPOSE This paper aims to investigate teacher-initiated whole-group oral reading practices in two ninth-grade reading intervention classrooms and how teachers understood the purposes of those practices. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH In this qualitative cross-case analysis, a literacy-as-social-practice perspective is used to collaboratively analyze ethnographic data (fieldnotes, audio recordings, interviews, artifacts) across two classrooms. FINDINGS Oral reading was a routine instructional reading event in both classrooms. However, the literacy practices that characterized oral reading and teachers’ purposes for using oral reading varied depending on teachers’ pedagogical philosophies, instructional goals and contextual constraints. During oral reading, students’ opportunities to engage in independent meaning making with texts were either absent or secondary to other purposes or goals. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Findings emphasize the significance of understanding both how and why oral reading happens in secondary classrooms. Specifically, they point to the importance of collaborating with teachers to (a) examine their own ideas about the power of oral reading and the institutional factors that shape their existing oral reading practices; (b) investigate the intended and actual outcomes of oral reading for their students and (c) develop other instructional approaches to support students to individually and collaboratively make meaning from texts. ORIGINALITY/VALUE This study falls at the intersection of three under-researched areas of study: the nature of everyday instruction in secondary literacy intervention settings, the persistence of oral reading in secondary school and teachers’ purposes for using oral reading in their instruction. Consequently, it contributes new knowledge that can support educators in creating more equitable instructional environments.Accepted manuscrip

Instructional Practices Inventory: Using a Student Learning Assessment to Foster Organizational Learning

Further information may be found on the Middle Level Leadership Center web site at http://education.missouri.edu/orgs/mllc/4A_ipi_overview.phpA list of Middle Level Leadership Center's items within MOspace about Instructional Practices Inventory may be found at https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/3480/browse?value=Instructional+Practices+Inventory&type=subjectThis manuscript describes the IPI data collection categories, the use of those categories to support school-wide instructional change, and data findings from schools of various types that have used the IPI