Increasingly, the innovative teaching approach of the preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, are being adapted to U.S. early childhood settings. This book describes the growth and evolution of the work in the St. Louis Reggio Collaborative over the past 10 years, addressing the fundamental principles of the Reggio approach as they are experienced in…

This book provides a perspective on what standards for learning mean for daily practice in public education, offering teachers and administrators a four-part structure for organizing classrooms for teaching to the standards and giving teachers specific strategies for helping students reach the higher requirements. The four practices combine all of…

This book represents the results of a 15-year study based on case studies of the development of four teachers' pedagogical thinking. It illustrates how teachers' thinking (about children's behavior, development, learning, and teaching) develops over time based on their personal and professional life experiences. Data come from regular, periodic…

Offering 16 essays by presenters at the first Middle School Mosaic (held in Detroit, Michigan, in 1997), this book connects the themes of literacy, reflective practice, and the special characteristics of middle level teaching. In the first section, Literature and Literacy at the Middle Level, the authors examine questions of literacy by looking at…

In addition to student assessment, many educators are now using portfolios to document and evaluate their own growth and development and to showcase the learning taking place in their classroom. This guide, in workbook format, explains why portfolios are essential to educators' professional development, outlines a professional development plan,…

Designed for adult educators in various settings who are seeking to improve as teachers, this book describes a process adult educators can use to examine their beliefs about teaching and current teaching behavior in depth. It is intended to guide them through an exploration of who they really are as teachers, and then, through experiential…

This volume represents a variety of current efforts to incorporate thought-provoking methods into teaching. There are three sections. "Curriculum Developments" defines key curricular terms and offers a framework and general examples of teaching tactics. In this section, Barbara Presseisen distinguishes thinking from other cognitive…

Accountability. The very mention of the word strikes fear in the hearts of many teachers and school leaders, leading to confusion and panic rather than improved student achievement. Author Douglas B. Reeves explains how to transform accountability from destructive and demoralizing accounting drills into a constructive decision-making process that…

This book offers an array of useful strategies for implementing shared reading techniques in pre-K through grade 2 classrooms. Starting with an overview of shared reading theory, the book draws largely from the models of Don Holdaway and illustrates the correlation between classroom reading and the bedtime story. While traditional aspects of…

Based on more than three years of in-depth research, this book tells the stories of a small group of Latino and Latina students attending a predominantly White high school in a rural area of southeast Michigan. The book takes readers inside the hallways and classrooms of Addison High and into the homes and neighborhoods of Spanish-speaking…

This book describes how one New York City middle school social studies teacher challenged the traditional, textbook-driven curriculum, kindled the students' interest, and ultimately transformed both teaching methods and learning experiences through process drama. Drawing from a blend of narrative reflections and classroom-based research, the book…

This book introduces the concept of leadership as the facilitation of constructivist reciprocal processes among participants in an educational community. Chapter 1, "Learning and Leading Theory: A Century in the Making," (Deborah Walker and Linda Lambert) traces the dynamic history of learning and leading during this century, concluding…

This volume is designed to accomplish three primary purposes: (1) illustrate a variety of qualitative methods that researchers have used to study teaching and teacher education; (2) assess the affordances and constraints of these methods and the ways that they focus and shape explorations of teaching; and (3) illuminate representative questions…

Focusing on personal knowledge and how it influences teacher development, this book follows one teacher, Kay, from her years of teacher preparation through her time as a seasoned veteran. Nine chapters focus on: (1) "Promise and Possibility" (e.g., teacher development as socialization and reflective teacher preparation); (2) "The…

In this book, seven teachers analyze their own efforts to integrate social, moral, and political issues into the public school classroom. The volume weighs the possibilities for making classrooms more responsive to the need for social justice, critical consciousness, and democratic values. Through their personal narratives, these teachers reveal…