This article is a descriptive account of a professional learning community established among university professors, university teacher candidates, a school district instructional supervisor, the high school principal, a high school literacy coordinator, and teachers of a Mid-Atlantic high school in the United States. This learning community…

In today's school systems, students of color, particularly in urban settings, represent the majority student populations (Lewis, Hancock, James, & Larke, in press). Interestingly, the educators--teachers and administrators--that comprise these settings are predominately White, and, in turn, the students of color commonly face pressures that…

The purpose of the study reported on in this paper was to explore how teachers and students manifest social presence in the web-based synchronous secondary classroom (WBSSC). Data were collected using structured and unstructured observations of twelve online recordings of web-based synchronous classes in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador,…

In this study, I argue that American history textbooks present discrete, heroic, one-dimensional, and neatly packaged master narratives that deny students a complex, realistic, and rich understanding of people and events in American history. In making this argument, I examine the master narratives of Martin Luther King, Jr., in high school history…

Over the last 15 years, interest in student performance and teacher qualifications has intensified among educational policymakers and researchers. During this time period, research has accumulated that links student achievement to the qualifications of teachers. Two central measures of elementary and secondary teacher qualifications are teachers'…

What are the characteristics of successful student attendance programs for the high school? It is commonly believed and well supported by research that students who attend school regularly are more successful than those who do not. The challenge for high schools is to design and implement attendance policies and programs that monitor, encourage,…

As a teen in British boarding schools, Paul Watkins time traveled by writing stories set in the past. Now, the acclaimed novelist, toting duffel bags filled with wartime relics, encourages prep school kids to travel along. The author of eight novels and two memoirs, Watkins began his literary career at 23, with "Night Over Day Over Night," a novel…

The evolution-related attitudes and actions of Minnesota high school biology teachers were studied to estimate the prevalence of creationism among biology teachers. Minnesota's high school biology teachers were questioned about the evolution education in public schools regarding the percentage of biology teachers who teach evolution, class-time…

A high school teacher tries to eliminate the obstacles to subversive teaching in public schools by asking them to design schools that embodied the principles of learning suggested by the romantic and transcendental writers like Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. It helps the students…

The students, who debate develop the skills of critical learning, argumentation and presentation quickly. A high school teacher illustrates the way she combined essay writing and debate to address a range of language arts standards and also help students become better-informed participants in a democracy.

High school teachers of sociology have long been neglected by academic sociologists and the ASA. Recent developments are encouraging, however. In 2001, the ASA appointed a Task Force on the Advanced Placement Course for Sociology in High School, and "Teaching Sociology" has published three articles on high school sociology since that…

Scholars of decades past, current researchers, and various reform documents all deal, directly or indirectly, with the question of what constitutes good mathematics teaching. Often good teaching is situated in the context of broader educational goals, such as preparing literate citizenry. Researchers generally define good teaching implicitly with…

This article presents a story of how a principal devised a way for an experienced teacher to spend time as a teaching resource for her colleagues. Doug McEnery, a principal of Aviano High School, encouraged Pam Hillestad, an experienced teacher at Aviano, to become a leader and resource for her colleagues. They have created a model for…

Too many freshmen students remain mired in the ninth grade, presenting a growing problem for America's secondary schools as they struggle to improve high school completion rates. In an effort to stem the tide of high school dropouts, a southeast Texas suburban school district with five comprehensive high schools engaged in a systemic reform effort…

For decades, educators have wrestled with how to handle the increasingly diverse religions of an increasingly diverse student body. Sometimes, the line between church and state--what schools can and cannot do under the Constitution--can feel confusing and slippery. Today, religion has become a subject one high school teachers describes as even…