If there is one thing all educators know and many studies have confirmed for decades, it is that there is no single answer to educational improvement. There are no grounds for the claim made in the past decade that accountability all by itself is a silver bullet, nor for the oft-asserted argument that choice by itself is a panacea. This article…

This paper focus on the reflection of my teaching practices using students' Math Moments. I began to invest time in the past mathematical experiences of my students to better help me understand my own teaching practices. Throughout this paper I will reflect on my own teaching practice, delve into relevant literature and will use poignant math…

This article presents the authors' reply to Rod Ellis's comments on their study on motivated classroom behavior. As Ellis correctly summarizes, the three student variables selected for investigation in the authors' study were attention, participation, and volunteering for teacher-fronted activity. These three components were then summed up in a…

In this article, the author argues that a "cult of rigor" has turned the notion of making kids happy into a negative. Rather than schools being "places of joy," today the classrooms seem to alternate betwen anxiety and boredom. Students tend to be regarded not as subjects but as objects, not as learners but as workers. By repeating words like…

The authors argue that the failure of 60 years of total reliance on assessment via standardized tests to help reduce achievement score gaps must compel us to rethink the role of assessment in this endeavor. They advocate rebalancing assessment priorities to bring classroom assessment into the equation. Evidence gathered over decades from around…

Investigates the effects of two types of motivation--integrative and instrumental--on the English proficiency of English-as-a-foreign-language senior students at Islamic Azad University of Kerman. Results showed a significant difference between the means of the English proficiency scores of the integratively motivated students and the…

To improve students' standardized test performance, schools must organize their priorities to reinforce the message that student learning comes first--everything else is secondary. (Author/MLF)