ACT conducts the only nationwide curriculum survey that empirically identifies current instructional practices and postsecondary expectations in order to develop tests that measure critical skills and knowledge. Every three years, it surveys thousands of middle school/junior high school, secondary, and postsecondary teachers in English/writing,…

An English language arts methods course developed through a professional teacher network offers many advantages of a professional development school (PDS) but is easier for individual teachers and university instructors to initiate than a PDS. This report describes a writing methods course that an expert National Writing Project (NWP) teacher…

This teacher-researcher case study examines the use of digital storytelling in a teacher assisting seminar. During the field placement, students composed a digital story of a teaching hour. Combining reflection with classroom footage, students exhibited their work for their colleagues. Digital stories added to the written narratives from the…

The article examines, through comparative case study method, how secondary-language-arts preservice student teachers' identities were constructed by spacetime configurations and what those identities meant to the individuals in the study. It reflects on the findings from two of the preservice secondary arts teachers for the study in two…

For a number of years there has been a growing interest in the specialized field of teaching English as a second language in the United States and abroad. Many colleges and universities in this country have offered special courses for foreign students. Several institutions have offered programs for the preparation of teachers in this field for…

The National Collegiate Athletic Association through its member institutions has implemented academic standards governing initial athletic eligibility and has led reform initiatives tying the ability to compete athletically to student-athlete retention and graduation. Louisiana State University (LSU), like many Division I institutions, admitted…

In this essay, the author explains not only how she came to write her classic text "Literature as Exploration," but she also describes the path of her own professional journey. A conviction about the difference between "literary" and other reading led to her writing "Literature as Exploration" in the first place. In this book, she argued that…

Drawing on work in general education, second/foreign language teacher education has begun to recognize that within its knowledge base, teachers, apart from the methods and materials they may use, are central to improving English language teaching. To understand the professional development of teachers in the English as a foreign language context,…

This essay examines the pedagogical practices of the poet, civil rights activist, and teacher Melvin B. Tolson who taught at Wiley College from 1923 to 1947. Tolson's complex classroom style, which mixed elements of classical, African American, and current-traditional rhetoric, produced a pedagogy that was at once conservative, progressive, and…

Since the publication of "A Nation at Risk", ACT has recommended that students take a core curriculum in high school in order to be prepared for college-level work. ACT's recommended core curriculum consists of four years of English and three years each of mathematics, science, and social studies. The benefits to students of taking the right…

As national teacher education and government organizations continue to endorse technology integration in K-12 settings, university doctoral programs in English education face a complex task. They are being called upon to prepare scholars who will contribute meaningfully to the latest corpus of research and also to prepare teacher educators who…

This paper analyzes the process and impact of a pre-service teacher education course assignment that engaged teacher candidates in developing and delivering an ESL professional development night for faculty colleagues and teachers from the field. The night involved a reader's theatre performance and follow-up discussion of Tara Goldstein's (2003)…

A school district in the southwestern United States has over the past several years built its infrastructure to support high-quality technology integration by its teachers. The district partnered with a nearby university's educational technology graduate program to develop a digital high school project. Teachers and advanced instructional-design…

Although more and more students have the test scores and transcripts to get into college, far too many are struggling once they get there. These students are surprised to find that college coursework demands so much more of them than high school. For the first time, they are asked to think deeply, write extensively, document assertions, solve…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 11th Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES), held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 14-17 May 2013, and papers submitted to the 1st International Distance Partner Conference, organized by the International Research Centre "Scientific Cooperation,"…