This article provides a reflective commentary on the modification of the lead author's professional practice in a secondary academy in England. The modification of practice has been as a result of work conducted on a postgraduate Masters module, which has focused on practitioner development of an exemplar grammar lesson devised for Year Nine…

Thomas Farrell is widely known for his views and publications on the topic of Reflective Practice, which is key to the professional development of teachers in 21st century classrooms. He is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University, Canada. Farrell has been a language teacher and teacher educator since 1978 and has worked in Korea,…

Rational and operationalized views of science and what it means for teachers and students to know and enact legitimate science practices have dominated science education research for many decades (Fusco and Barton in "J Res Sci Teach" 38(3):337-354, 2001. doi: 10.1002/1098-2736(200103)38:3<337::AID-TEA1009>3.0.CO;2-0). Michalinos…

In this article, the author, a professor, muses over his educational life and the troublesome times he faced. He remarks that he was glad to have had wise voices who could call him to other possibilities, visions, and stories. Roger Simon was one of the most important wise voices he heard, and this sustained the spirit of his work. While many…

Practitioner research, as Ravitch (2014) writes in the previous issue of "Perspectives on Urban Education," holds the unique possibility of "generating local, practice-based knowledge that is deeply contextualized and meaningfully embedded in a specific milieu" while spurring a "counter-hegemonic way of thinking about and…

This commentary explores how teachers can create a culture of tolerance by promoting reflectivity and reflexivity, and considers classroom processes and activities for doing so. "Reflectivity" is considered to be the use of personal values, experiences, and habits to make meaning and is a central tenet of inquiry approaches: to build…

In his article, "Reflections on 50 years of teaching psychology", James Hartley concludes that the teaching of psychology has changed relatively little over the past several decades. As someone whose teaching career covered a very similar time period, I agree in general terms with that assessment. In this article, however, I focus on some of the…

In this Thinkpiece, the author, who is a Fulbright Teaching Assistant, examines what it really means to have mutual cultural exchange. She reflects on her experience as an American working in a university in Bucharest. In this paper she describes how some of her assumptions about academic life were challenged, and how being open to these…

Is distance learning transformational? The author heard this question posed to a panel of faculty members during Distance Education Week activities. After reflecting upon her own students' reaction to her syllabus, her answer to the question changed from an initial, enthusiastic "yes" to a reflective "maybe," given the most favorable environment.…

There have been great changes in the numbers of students studying psychology at degree level in the UK since 1961--the year the author graduated. And, similarly there have been great changes in what is taught--with an ever-widening set of theoretical developments and practical applications. Nonetheless, despite these developments, the author…

In responding to Jim Hartley, with whom I very largely agree, I first reflect on my own experience of teaching Psychology in an institution which was successively college of technology, polytechnic and university. In the second a new and fruitful method of assessing higher education essentially by peer review was developed, only to be destroyed in…

In this article, the author asserts that whether we write creatively or academically (or both) it takes time to understand the reasons why we "want" to write, and the more we write, the more we fully begin to appreciate why we have to write in the ?rst place. From an early age, nearly every day, Rachel Hains-Wesson actively participated in…

As a volatile educative space, musical education must be interwoven with other concerns and other more encompassing constructs if it is to build robust, meaningful, and complex learning outcomes. This paper attempts to do this by placing music education and a complex understanding of policy side by side, and outlining what people can learn from…

As teachers, we are always reflecting on and refining our craft. In this article, the author shares how her understanding and implementation of comprehension strategy instruction has evolved over the past ten years. These shifts include her current thinking about the gradual release of responsibility instructional model, how content and big ideas…

Because higher education brings members of academic communities in direct contact with students, the reflective higher education student is in an excellent position for developing two important intellectual virtues: confidence and humility. However, academic communities differ as to whether their members reach consensus, and their teaching…