Inclusion Needs a Different School Culture

Teachers' beliefs and values are affecting the emerging organizational paradigm called inclusive education. A social constructivist perspective on teachers' beliefs acknowledges that teachers have their ideals and this knowledge influences their actions in the implementation of inclusive schooling. This happens within a social and cultural context of the school and the community. This paper addresses a critical aspect of the changes needed for the development of inclusive schooling and the associated professional development for teachers

Developing interactive discourse in the classroom: moving beyond teacher as expert.

In this article I describe the collaborative research undertaken by a group of high school teachers and an English adviser. The teachers were keen to find ways of breaking the teacher-dominated discourse pattern within their classrooms. They wanted to see whether, when offered a variety of teacher audiences beyond that of 'expert-examiner', students would engage in the kind of exploratory talk, described by the National Oracy Project (1992), as a feature of investigative learning. I examine the teachers' belief that discourse patterns are affected by students' understanding of contextual conditions. I illustrate the importance of students’ shared understanding of collaborative discourse and discuss how their conception of learning contexts is influenced by the kinds of audiences teachers project

A Proleptic Perspective of Music Education

By explaining the cultural mechanism of \u27prolepsis\u27 through examples of my own teaching, I posit that all too often educators\u27 and teacher educators\u27 (purely \u27ideal\u27) recall of our pasts and imagination of our students\u27 futures become fundamentally materialized constraints on our students\u27 life experiences in the present

How Educators Use Policy Documents: A Misunderstood Relationship

As an English educator and co-director of a National Writing Project site, I have had many conversations with colleagues and educators who are anxious about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) being adopted in so many states throughout the nation. The anxiety comes in many forms, ranging from What do the CCSS mean for what and how I have to teach? to What does the drafting and implementation processes of the CCSS suggest for how people view me as a professional? to Are the CCSS really any good? and so on. As I listen to all the people I work with - preservice teachers, experienced teachers, teacher educators, curriculum coordinators, writing project directors and fellows - I keep returning to one major issue that I think is behind a lot of the concern. More specifically, I continue to wonder how educators actually use and develop policy documents (e.g., standards) in their day-to-day work. The assumption seems to be that teachers read the policies and then implement them; however, any teacher who has worked with standards documents knows that this process isn\u27t quite as clear-cut as the above assumption. It is this gap between how assumptions about educators use policy documents and how teachers actually use those policy documents. I sense this is the source for a lot of the anxiety I hear in the voices of the many educators I respect and work with

Tackling Teaching: Understanding Commonalities among Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics Classroom Practices.

Abstract: Education research in chemistry, mathematics, and physics tends to focus on issues inherent to the discipline, most notably content. At this time, little literature evidence exists that documents fruitful collaborations between education specialists across the STEM disciplines. This work seeks to unite the disciplines by investigating a common task: teaching. This study explores how discipline-specific practices influence the common act of reformed teaching pedagogy with a focus on the use of inquiry. We seek to identify commonalities among classroom teaching practices in these disciplines and contribute to the development of analytical tools to study STEM teaching

Citizen Teacher: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don\u27t

The recent Supreme Court case of Garcetti v. Ceballos is becoming one of the most-used cases in its mere two-year history. It denies to public employees the protection of the First Amendment when speaking in their official duties. In reviewing the cases both leading up to and then relying oh Garcetti, one is struck by the inherent conflict that nowpermeates some school board-employee relationships. Whereas preceding cases attempted to reach a balance between the school board and its employees\u27 speech rights, bad management practices now seem to trump the First Amendment. Such practices have school boards discharging teachers and administrators for speaking out truthfullyon matters of fiscal mismanagement, student discipline, and similar school district problems. In the context of those cases, this Article posits that being seduced by the weapon of Garcetti \u27s absolute power will create unanticipated and legal consequences to both school boards and the educational institution itsel

Will the teacher's laptop transform learning?

This article explores how Year to 3 teachers have made use of laptops for teaching and learning in their classroom, examining how they fit with current recommendations for effective teaching, and whether teachers' use of a laptop has lead to a transformation in teaching and learning. Findings show that there was an increasing degree of laptop integration into all areas of the curriculum over the three-year evaluation period. It appears that teachers are providing their students with the opportunity to experience transformative learning