The instructional rationale behind critical pedagogy is to provide students the opportunity to voice their personal stories and opinions, and to reflect and act upon social concerns relevant to their daily lives. Students can then practice being agents of transformation in their own lives, starting in the classroom. This paper is based on the…

Much of the attention given to literacy, of late, has focused on ensuring that students can read, without consideration to what they are given to read. Kristin Conradi Smith & Elfrieda H. Hiebert discuss four general aspects of the texts used in elementary classrooms -- text complexity, text type (narrative versus informational), text format…

Social studies in general, and Black history in particular, are marginalized at the elementary level. The ways Black history has been taught are problematic, focusing on either celebrating civil rights heroes or lamenting the oppressive treatment of Black people, thus flattening the rich and varied histories of Black people. An almost singular…

Appraisal Centers provide authentic experienced-based communities of practice for preservice teachers (PSTs) to show application of theory into practice at critical gateways throughout their elementary education program while fulfilling School of Education dispositions, course objectives, and state standards. A goal is to provide formative…

Authors discuss the relationship between social studies education and patriotism. The authors share two lesson plans (one elementary and one secondary) that examine the racialized and politicized experiences of three professional athletes, Gabby Douglas, Colin Kaepernick, and Megan Rapinoe. Drawing on tenets of critical race media literacy and…

This article provides the transcript of Dr. Rupert Higham (University College London, Institute of Education) in conversation with Dr. James Biddulph (Headteacher of the University of Cambridge Primary School). Among the topics discussed are: What the University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS) motto, "Releasing the Imagination: Celebrating…

This paper reports on what two teacher candidates and their instructor learned from an action research project into the use of inquiry to teach mathematics. We use a model of the relation between theory and practice in teacher education to interpret what we learned about inquiry. This model describes three modes for teacher candidates to learn…

This article presents a principal's story of social justice practice in a Hong Kong primary school. The narration accounts for the notion of social justice through his practice in various ways. Studying in a "rooftop" primary school located in a public housing area in Hong Kong was the principal's salient memory of his first year of…

This paper demonstrates the importance and implications of Hannah Arendt's theory of action for action research. Using examples from my teaching experience I demonstrate the relevance of her ideas in understanding the purpose and aims of action research in the classroom.

In recent years, teacher education has been charged with reforming programs to better align curriculum, clinical practice, and accountability. The sense of urgency for reform has been heightened by competition from alternative routes to teaching that jump straight to practice, often criticized for foregoing essential knowledge and theory. This…

The question as to how action research (AR) is related to cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is not answerable in categorical terms. Both CHAT and AR have been variously interpreted and much depends on the individual biographies of those who pronounce on their relationship. The aim of this paper is to show how action research, conducted…

In the context of an arts-integration course in an elementary education program, preservice teachers used tableaux (i.e. frozen scenes) to portray field experience moments in two ways: (1) as remembered events, and (2) as projected possibilities. Using video and photographs of the tableaux, we traced the students' enactment of activist stances and…

This paper develops a dialogic theory of thinking and of learning to think that has implications for education. The theory is offered as a contrast to theories that are based on both Piaget and Vygotsky. The paper proceeds by unpacking and interweaving three key concepts: dialogue, thinking and learning in order to argue that learning to think can…

The growing trend of employing sports coaches in primary schools to deliver both curricular physical education and extracurricular activities is a relatively recent phenomenon in the UK. Though a small number of research papers have sought to document this occurrence, they appear to have fallen some way short of capturing the complexity of the…

Bruner's constructs of learning, specifically the structure of learning, spiral curriculum, and discovery learning, in conjunction with the Cognitive Load Theory, are used to evaluate the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), an inquiry-oriented inductive language arts strategy designed to teach K-6 children phonics and spelling. The PWIM reflects…