Despite empirical evidence in support of the effectiveness of using tasks in young learners' classrooms, task implementation has been repeatedly reported as a thorny problem. An essential but under-researched issue is how in-service teacher education programme can be conducted to facilitate teachers' implementing tasks in their classrooms. This…

Designing field embedded experiences for teacher candidates poses a unique challenge for large teacher education programs. Field experiences must include working with students, enhanced pedagogical coaching, and interaction within a professional community. Coursework coupled with field work should engage teacher candidates in a process of…

The American legislation of No Child Left Behind resulted in a boom in scripted, prepackaged curricula for improving student outcomes. At the same time, greater attention to the needs of diverse populations also took prominence, resulting in a new area of study, culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy. The current view is that scripted curriculum…

Teachers' observations of student performance in reading are abundant and insightful but often remain internal and unarticulated. As a result, such observations are an underutilized and undervalued source of data. Given the gaps in knowledge about students' reading comprehension that exist in formal assessments, the frequent calls for teachers'…

This collaborative research was carried out among 197 elementary school students, in the context of a rural Canadian school of the Quebec province. Several students of the school presented learning difficulties, mostly in writing. The teachers and the learning specialist decided to differentiate the groups in special subgroups of needs that met…

This qualitative study guided by portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) explores the affective side of mathematics teaching which has often been ignored as mathematics research has focused more on cognition. Grounded in social constructivism (Ernest, 1988) and reflective practice (Dewey, 1933; Schon, 1983), this research examines three…

FirstSchool is a school reform approach to early schooling for children 3 to 8 years old. It was developed over the past five years through a collaborative partnership among families, schools, communities, and institutions of higher education. The approach responds to the needs of all young children--especially in African American or Latino…

The socioemotional factors, which influence students' trajectories on their pathways to reading success, are often overlooked in literacy screenings and reading instruction. This article outlines the connections between personality factors, in particular resilient personalities, and early literacy success. It also offers teachers a series of six…

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,…

A national literacy professional development project reduced the achievement gap for students experiencing difficulties in reading or writing in 91 of New Zealand's schools. It was based on two premises: coherence within and between the multiple levels of the schooling and educational administration systems, and a focus on evidence-informed…

For new educators, the obstacles of high-stakes testing, curricular mandates, and their own inexperience and self-doubt can render teaching for justice and equity overwhelming, seemingly impossible ideals. However, as students are increasingly tied to prescriptive curricula and academic performance standards, the goals of social justice and…

The focus of this article is on the learning and teaching processes of six teacher candidates, made possible by the study of a work of art in their internship placement. The interns observed and worked closely with two Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) music Teaching Artists (TAs) and six classroom teachers to provide students in kindergarten through…

Lucie, a Grade Two classroom teacher, and Kate, a university professor, engaged in an action research study that linked a trait-based writing instruction approach with a genre-focused instruction approach. To capture the experience, fieldnote observations, interviews and samples of students' work were collected. Lucie recognized the need to…

In this article, I--a White, French-immersion teacher-researcher--engage in a reflective examination of my research and teaching practices involving African American students. My critical reflection of my research examines the instruments used in my comparative study of African American students' experiences in the French-immersion context and the…