Although social justice is an overarching goal of most every department of teacher education, college of education, and US College or University, it is rarely an identified goal for K-12 schools. We contend that the field of social studies education also substantively focuses on social justice, and as such, this article clarifies the ways in which…

This article reports results from a study of teacher beliefs among a panel of English and language arts teachers at three universities as the pre-service teachers entered methodological coursework and internships. Using a new assessment tool, the Developmental Instruction Assessment Battery (DIAB), along with a discrete choice task and one-on-one…

Learn how to incorporate rigorous activities in your English language arts or social studies classroom and help students reach higher levels of learning. Expert educators and consultants Barbara R. Blackburn and Melissa Miles offer a practical framework for understanding rigor and provide specialized examples for middle and high school ELA and…

English Language Arts has historically been tied to the civic purposes of schools, and this qualitative study of a social design-based project (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010) examines the intersection of language and literacy learning and youth civic engagement, a problem space I call "Civics English." In this dissertation, I describe…

Conceptions of the "good citizen" have implications for defining the goals of civic education and formulating civic education programs. In Mainland China, the concept of "good citizen" is clearly defined by the authorities in the official curriculum guidelines. Teachers' perceptions of a "good citizen", however, may…

This article presents findings from action research conducted in a graduate level course with practicing K-12 educators. In this article, I consider the usefulness of critical media literacy in the graduate classroom as I engaged students in discussions about multicultural issues including race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Through an…

In the first part of the paper, we present the legislation from Romania and the methodologies related to the continuous training of teachers. In order to know the teachers' opinions about their professional development, about the programmes, courses and other training activities in which they were involved and about their needs for continuous…

Student-teacher relationships have been largely explored in literature from the perspective of successful relationships, i.e., what constitutes a successful relationship and how teachers build them. However, in moments of student defiance, resistance or pushback, how do teachers react? When teachers recount such moments, is the narrative one…

A networked improvement community can be a tremendous resource for people who share a common interest and desire to learn from each other, and, thanks to technology, this can occur even when participants are separated by a large distance. This article discusses Virginia Advanced Study Strategies' Rural Math Innovation Network, a four-year project…

Students' knowledge about the criteria for an upcoming test is a crucial component of assessment quality. Grounded in self-determination theory, we investigated whether knowledge about the criteria for an upcoming test related to students' situational motivation and experienced anxiety during physical education (PE). We also examined whether these…

Black teachers have long been aware that Black students face racism in multiple forms throughout their lives. As racism has consistently been present throughout the history of the United States, Black teachers have used education as a platform to work against that racism, adapting their strategies through different periods in American history.…

The effective schools literature has shown that school-contextual aspects matter for students' academic and social outcomes. A potential link here may be the quality of the relationships between teachers and students, but few studies have investigated whether features of school effectiveness are in fact associated with students' perceptions of…

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationships between perceptions of teacher's transformational leadership, organizational support, organizational justice and quality of work life. A model suggesting that teacher perceptions of the transformational leadership behavior of school administrators directly affected their perceptions…

In an effort to increase collaboration and support teachers in a formalized way, schools and districts have put structures in place for teachers and afforded them the time to participate in professional learning communities. This opportunity for teacher collaboration can impact the professional growth that is essential in moving a teacher's…

The 2004 tsunami in Aceh resulted in significant post-disaster problems which extended far beyond the loss of possessions and infrastructure destruction. In addition to having to deal with their own problems as a consequence of the tsunami, teachers were faced with the additional problems arising from working with children who had been exposed to…