Five Strategies to Support all Teachers: Suggestions to Get Off the Slippery Slope of Cookbook Science Teaching

Many teachers shudder at the thought of implementing an inquiry curriculum. Perhaps they envision a rowdy classroom with little learning. Maybe they wonder, How will this connect to all the standards? Fortunately, these legitimate concerns can be addressed, and all students can engage in thoughtfully constructed inquiry science experiences. In this article, we outline five strategies that we have used with elementary school teachers as they moved from a cookbook approach in science to an approach that is inquiry-based. Having presented these five strategies in a linear format, we know that on the surface this may seem close to the slippery slope of cookbook science teaching, but we also know that thoughtful practitioners working in classrooms across the country will see these strategies as interactive, overlapping, and nonsequential

Book Review: Transforming Teacher Education: Reflections from the Field

Book review of: Transforming teacher education: Reflections from the field D. Carroll, H. Featherstone, J. Featherstone, S. Feiman‐Nemser and D. Roosevelt (Eds), 2007 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 266 pp. ISBN 978‐1‐8917‐9233‐

Addressing the Research/Practice Divide in Teacher Education

Educational scholars often describe a research/practice divide. Similarly, students in teacher education programs often struggle to navigate the differences between university coursework and expectations they face in field-based placements. This self-study analyzes one researcher\u27s attempt to address the research/practice divide from the position of a teacher educator. Teaching in a university-based mathematics methods course during the academic year and an elementary classroom during the summer recess provided opportunities to make connections between research and practice. This article examines the effects this study had on the researcher\u27s instruction at the university level. Specifically, the article suggests ways for teacher educators to reconnect with classroom practice in an effort to remain relevant in the quickly changing world of P–12 education. In addition, the study suggests ways for teacher education programs to connect methods courses to authentic field-based experiences to help future teachers make connections between research and practice

Homemakers, Communists, and Refugees: Smuggling Anti-Apartheid Refugees in Rural Lesotho in the 1960s and 1970s

This article tells the story of Maleseko Kena, a woman born in South Africa but who lived most of her adult life in rural Lesotho. It narrates how her story of helping apartheid refugees cross the border and move onward complicates understandings of what the international border, belonging, and citizenship meant for individuals living near it. By interweaving her story with larger narratives about the changing political, social, and economic climate of the southern African region, it also highlights the spaces that women had for making an impact politically despite facing structural obstacles both in the regional economy and in the villages where they were living. This article relies heavily on the oral testimony of Maleseko herself as told to the author, but also makes use of press sources from Lesotho, and archival material from the United States and the United Kingdom

Politics and action research: An examination of one school’s mandated action research program

Action research has been shown to empower educators, create lasting changes in schools, and have an impact on student learning outcomes. Given these positive results, many school leaders are beginning to mandate the use of action research within their schools. While some in the field have warned against mandating action research, there is little research examining the effects of doing so. This study examines the mandated school-wide action research program at Fieldstone Elementary. While some results align with the action research literature (importance of collaboration, necessity of time to conduct action research, etc.), this article also examines the political tensions surrounding these ideas. Implications for those interested in mandating action research programs are provided

Making the Work Interesting: Classroom Management Through Ownership in Elementary Literature Circles

Ryan Flessner\u27s contribution to Breaking the Mold of Classroom Management: What Educators Should Know and Do to Enable Student Success

Working Toward a Third Space in the Teaching of Elementary Mathematics

Building on work in the area of third space theory, this study documents one teacher’s efforts to create third spaces in an elementary mathematics classroom. In an attempt to link the worlds of theory and practice, I examine how the work of other theorists and researchers – inside and outside the field of education – can create new lenses for classroom practitioners. In addition, the article provides evidence that third spaces may be more difficult to realize than others have described. Rather than forcing a third space to emerge, what this study finds more important is creating an environment that will allow third spaces to surface more organically as students and teachers engage in the everyday life of the classroom

Self-Help Development Projects and Conceptions of Independence in Lesotho, 1950s-1970s

In the 1960s, the concept of development became increasingly intertwined with conceptions of independence amongst Basotho. Politicians and administrators before and after independence wanted to use development to legitimize their rule and consolidate power for a fairly weak central government. Their inability to procure funding for large projects meant that they were forced to rely on smaller, self-help projects. These small-scale projects became the primary way that people in Lesotho interacted with their first independent government, which indelibly shaped how people conceived of independence. These projects became intensely politicized, however, as government leaders relied on them to build political support. Basotho in youth and community organizations both worked with government-run projects and created their own small projects to bring about some of the changes they hoped to see from independence. The coup of 1970 closed down many of the spaces that had opened in the late colonial and early independence periods, leaving the period 1966-1970 as a moment where the prospect of an independent Lesotho bringing about development seemed most possible

Tying It All Together: Implications for Classrooms, Schools, and Districts

Ryan Flessner, Kenneth Zeichner, and Kalani Eggington\u27s contribution to Creating Equitable Classrooms through Action Researc

Book review: Talking diversity with Teachers and Teacher educators

Book review of Cruz, B., Ellerbrock, C. R., Vásquez, A., & Howes, E. V. (2014). Talking diversity with teachers and teacher educators: Exercises and critical conversations across the curriculum. by Ryan Flessner and Susan C. Adamson