Critical thinking is an essential skill for learners and teachers alike. Therefore, it is essential that educators be given practical strategies for improving their critical thinking skills as well as methods to effectively provide critical thinking skills to their students. The "Handbook of Research on Critical Thinking and Teacher Education…

This book offers easy-to-use classroom strategies for middle and high school English and Social Studies classrooms. They demonstrate how teaching, learning, and assessment are inseparable and seamless. Each strategy will engage your students in activity and reflection, consuming little class time, costing nothing, and uniting the three dimensions…

Fraction division is generally introduced in sixth or seventh grade with this rule: "Invert and multiply." The authors examined current commercial curricula and found that few textbooks use context as a way to build meaning for the division of fractions. When context is used, the connection between the invert-and-multiply rule and the context is…

The article shows the experience of professional development over the course of a decade of one teacher's career nested against the backdrop of one reforming middle-school context in the USA. Through the use of four fine-grained narrative exemplars, the campus professional development trajectory is examined from the vantage point of Daryl Wilson,…

In this article, the authors discuss some of the dispositions that comprise students' (and teachers') relationships with mathematics--what they call a "mathematical identity." They define "mathematical identity" as an individual's "relationship" with mathematics. They present three reflective tasks that can be used with math students at all levels…

"Becoming a Teacher" revisits the concept of Teacher Lore (Schubert and Ayers, 1992), by providing a cross-disciplinary approach linking elements of narrative theory to all aspects of pre- and in-service teaching. In essence, it embraces the notion that what teachers say matters. The rationale behind this text is the idea that narrative can not…

This easy-to-use, introductory guide to teaching in contemporary middle and high schools provides teachers with the tools to become reflective practitioners. It shows pre- and inservice teachers how to use standards to choose instructional materials and methods that are appropriate with particular students, at a particular time, in a particular…

This book offers easy-to-use classroom strategies for middle and high school Mathematics and Science classrooms. They demonstrate how teaching, learning, and assessment are inseparable and seamless. Each strategy will engage your students in activity and reflection, consuming little class time, costing nothing, and uniting the three dimensions of…

This study examined the impact on 16 middle-school teachers' conceptions of mathematics learning and teaching of reflections on their learning experiences within mathematics professional development. The research questions were: In their reflections, what do teachers express about how they best learned mathematics through these learning…

This paper uses Foucault's notion of parrhesia to analyse the story of another and to interrogate teacher education in terms of the particular moral order or the forms of socialization that it uses. I examine the context of my own teaching in terms of truth-telling and the normative expectations that were found to exist. Through reflection and…

This article provides some strategies that might help a teacher in dealing with a new course or new content, or just get the year off to a good start. The following strategies are described: (1) Review the new content; (2) Seek help from every resource; (3) Capitalize on what you know; (4) Be organized; (5) Remember the basic science processes;…

This descriptive narrative presents a university/school partnership that led to an inquiry-based approach to language arts instruction, resulting in increased opportunities for reflective teaching and learning, students' environmental awareness projects, the integration of science, and the individualization of instruction at the middle school…

September 11, 2001, was a critical teachable moment that provided the author of this article and his team with an avenue to middle level curriculum that was relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory. Hurricane Katrina opened a similar window of opportunity for middle level educators to focus the minds of young adolescents on important…

This article reports on the results of a mixed method case study investigating the relationship between professional learning community (PLC) activities and teacher improvement in a first-year middle school. Data were collected from core academic sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers using a professional development survey, teacher interviews,…

In an effort to learn more about pedagogy in the action present moments of teaching and in response to Schon's (1987) call for a "phenomenology of practice," this phenomenological study explored the pedagogy of 18 middle school teachers. The researcher selected participants with a purposive sampling procedure. Participants taught for at least…