What types of talk promote teachers' professional growth? In the following vignettes, 4th-grade teachers and instructional leaders examine student work and observe classroom instruction. These learning designs encourage teachers to talk in ways that develop a shared understanding of teaching, which is instrumental to their professional growth…

This article explores the development of a professional learning community through a case study of three teachers--an ESOL specialist, a literacy specialist, and a fifth-grade teacher--who engaged in co-teaching and collaboration. The emerging community of practice offered these teachers a space to learn and problem-solve by utilizing their…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) constitute worthwhile spaces in which to study teacher participation in the reflective practices that have potential to shift their teaching. This qualitative case study details the interactions between dual-language and ELL teachers in a grade-level PLC as they met together to confer over video-clips of…

Informed by current notions of dynamic bilingualism and the community of practice (C of P) framework, this study was designed as an ethnographic case study to explore peer collaboration in an English/Chinese bilingual program in a city in Western Canada. The main participants in the study were three Grade 5 English/Chinese bilingual students. The…

This report examines the impact of content-intensive Professional Development (PD) on teachers' math content knowledge, their instructional practice, and their students' achievement. The study's PD had three components, totaling 93 hours. The core of the PD was "Intel Math," an intensive 80-hour workshop delivered in summer 2013 that…

Improving math achievement among U.S. students remains a high priority as results from recent math assessments continue to show room for improvement. For example, 60 percent of fourth-graders scored below the proficient level on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress. On the most recent Program for International Student Assessment's…

Recent results from national and international assessments continue to show a need for improvement in math achievement among U.S. students. For example, 60 per-cent of grade 4 students scored below the proficient level on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress. In an era of increasingly rigorous state standards, teachers at all grade…

Background. High overweight and obesity prevalence has instigated many programs to improve children's health. Farm to School (F2S) is a grassroots-organized program that seeks to improve children's dietary habits, especially fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption, through various educational activities. Long-term goals include reducing obesity…

This article reports comprehensive findings from a national study of the teaching and assessment of writing in classrooms across ten Canadian provinces and two of three territories. Through interviews with 216 grade 4-8 teachers and observations and interviews in 22 classrooms (1 to 3 classrooms in each province), we gathered information about…

Environmental Field Days (EFD) are held throughout the country and provide a unique opportunity to involve students in real world science. A study to assess the validity of an observation tool for EFD programs was conducted at the Metro Water Festival with fifth grade students. Items from the observation tool were mapped to students' evaluation…

J.C. Nalle is a Community School located in the Marshall Heights neighborhood of Ward 7 in Washington, D.C. The community in which J.C. Nalle is located, historically one of the more economically disadvantaged areas of the city, has experienced a number of changes in recent years. This report of evaluation findings begins with an introduction to…

This study addressed the problem of chronic low student achievement in language arts at a Program Improvement 5+ school by implementing two cycles of facilitated lesson study. Using action research to facilitate and monitor change in instructional practices at a school that is currently undergoing a teacher-initiated turnaround reform effort, this…

Schools have gone through educational reforms having various focuses on curriculum changes, consolidation, open classrooms, mastery learning, decentralization, shared decisionmaking, legislative mandates and controls, high expectations, integrated thematic instruction, professional development, technology integration, and standards with…

The James Irvine Foundation launched the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative in 1999 with the goal of improving the academic achievement of children in the lowest-performing schools in five California cities. In 2004, CORAL adopted a more targeted approach toward reaching this goal by integrating a regular…

This study addresses the pressing need to recognize and include disenfranchised students within mathematics education in a way that incorporates the voices of their communities. We use the concept of boundary practices to point to the multiple ways in which the mathematics learning practices in a classroom connect or disconnect, include or…