Student growth is one of two essential components of South Dakota's Teacher and Principal Effectiveness Systems. In the state systems, student growth is defined as a positive change in student achievement between two or more points in time. "The South Dakota SLO Handbook" provides support and guidance to public schools and school…

Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of the role of the school librarian in the twenty-first century, but, for many reasons, collaboration is challenging to implement. Some classroom teachers may not know how students benefit from the classroom-school library collaboration. Others may be unwilling to relinquish control of their…

Reading Improvement Through Art (RITA) program is an interdisciplinary approach to literacy that blends visual art with reading comprehension, evaluated in nine New York City urban high schools. 240 problem readers participating in the pilot program were pre- and post-tested in the Fall 1975 and Spring 1976 semesters. The testing showed the 9th…

Literature circles or book clubs are small, heterogeneous groups of students who have chosen to read and discuss the same book together. The research on literature circles suggests that they hold great promise for increasing students' enjoyment of reading and honing their literacy skills. When evidence-based strategies are embedded into a…

Wassell and LaVan (this issue) make strong arguments about the value of coteaching as a model for learning to teach. This response paper draws upon recent sociocultural conceptualizations of human nature and development as a process of contribution and shared contribution to extend Wassell and LaVan's findings about teacher learning and to further…

Between the pressure to meet standards and the overwhelming number of different learning needs that students have, planning lessons has become more complex. Judith Storeygard provides proven approaches to understanding the behaviors of children with special needs and effectively teaching all students. Using research-based and field-tested…

This paper presents a case study in which the principles of scholarship were applied to designing an approach to learning suitable for large classes. While this case study describes an Australian first year Business Law unit, the findings presented in this paper would be relevant to a wide range of teachers faced with large enrollments in first…

This article provides a reflection on a team-teaching experience in which performative dialogues between co-instructors and among students provided a pedagogical framework within which comparative analysis of textual traditions within the classical tradition could be optimized. Performative dialogues thus provided a model for and enactment of…

For those considering adopting team teaching, or interested in reviewing their own practice, this book offers an over-view of this pedagogy, its challenges and rewards, and a rich range of examples in which teachers present and reflect upon their approaches. The interaction of two teachers--both the intellectual interaction involved in the design…

Schools have embraced the need for true collaboration among general and special educators. Many believe that if educators with varying areas of expertise and frames of reference are able to come together and collaborate on a daily basis in the same classroom, all students will benefit more: socially, behaviorally, and perhaps most important,…

Undergraduate business law courses typically utilize traditional textbooks organized by topic. Individual chapters, address the usual topics including contracts, torts, the court system and ethics. An innovative approach to facilitating a business law course involves segregating sections of the course into common business disciplines. Rather than…

Collaboration and coteaching with classroom teachers and campus specialists are the cornerstones of a successful school library program. Whereas collaboration is the process of planning a lesson or unit of instruction, coteaching suggests a much deeper level of collaboration--one in which both the teacher and campus specialist (be it school…

Scholars who study teaching and learning have provided the academy with a range of progressive pedagogies that move beyond traditional ways of teaching. In the call for the use of diverse classroom practices in higher education, many have highlighted the benefits and challenges that come with collaborative teaching models. In this chapter, the…

When a special education teacher and a general education teacher share a classroom and teaching responsibilities, every student benefits from intensive instruction, increased learning opportunities, and a reduced student-to-teacher ratio. But what does coteaching look like? How does it work? How do you know when you're doing it right? Here's a…

In "Team Teaching Science," Ed Linz, Mary Jane Heater, and Lori A. Howard demonstrate the truth in the old adage "Two heads are better than one." This guide for developing successful team-teaching partnerships that maximize student learning will help preservice and inservice special education and science teachers in grades K-12, as well as methods…