This paired-format article describes how one of the authors (Rodriguez) undertook a teacher research study of homework in the urban first-grade classroom in which she was a paraprofessional. Her findings influenced her to broaden her perspective on homework. Her graduate professor (Blumenreich) discusses the challenge of supporting a student to…

A teacher study group explores issues of home and community literacies with a goal of utilizing out-of-school literacies to support in-school literacy learning. The result was the beginning of a new mindfulness that allowed them to begin to recognize the existence and legitimacy of home and community literacies. They explored how their own biases…

This research study examines the impact of teacher research on participants in a large-scale educational reform initiative in the United States, No Child Left Behind, and its strand for reading teachers, Reading First. Reading First supported professional development for teachers in order to increase student scores on standardized tests. The…

Though research has shown that students do not have adequate understandings of nature of science (NOS) by the time they exit high school, there is also evidence that they have not received NOS instruction that would enable them to develop such understandings. How early is "too early" to teach and learn NOS? Are students, particularly young…

This commentary highlights convergent themes from four articles in the March 2009 issue of "Educational Researcher" on measuring classroom instruction. Classroom instruction is a complex enterprise that occurs at the intersection of teachers, students, and texts within the surrounding classroom, school, and community environments. Progress in…

Despite the long history of the study of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), two facts remain obvious. First, there are almost as many conceptions regarding the definition of PCK as there are researchers interested in it. Second, it is largely unclear which methods enable teacher educators to best prepare teacher candidates to use PCK. Recently,…

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools--which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools)--to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises…

The history of strategies research during the past quarter century has been a story of significant conceptualizations and reconceptualizations regarding the nature, development, and teaching of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Theoretical models, empirical research, and discussions contributed by Michael Pressley have been central to…

The use of manipulatives in the classroom has been advocated for decades. However, the theoretical and empirical support for this practice is mixed. Some researchers suggest that manipulatives facilitate learning by (a) providing an additional channel for conveying information, (b) activating real-world knowledge, and/or (c) improving memory…

Much has been written about the value of teacher research for inservice teachers. Despite the existence of several studies affirming these words, studies that richly describe how student teachers learn to do teacher research and then investigate the impact of inquiry on student teachers and teacher educators, particularly in culturally and…