Previous efforts to strengthen the teaching profession have aimed to copy the ways in which law, medicine, and architecture achieved that status -- for example, by carving out decision-making autonomy, controlling who enters the field, and building a specialized knowledge base. What has been missing, however, have been efforts to clarify precisely…

What do we know about Socrates and the teaching method that, having taken his name, has become widely used from kindergarten through postgraduate seminars? The practitioners employing so-called Socratic methods include vastly different styles, the author says, noting that "we may be mistaking common phrasing for common practice." The differences…

The author has written about his journey to Inner Mongolia, where he helped university students mount a production of a Shakespeare play, which led him to reflect on an earlier, perhaps even more improbable journey. He then describes his growth from a student with dyslexia into a teacher, and principal as the result of guidance and encouragement…

Like sugaring, teaching requires immense patience. Superintendents can force textbooks on teachers but cannot make them use them. Not every high schooler needs an elitist, college-bound education, but no one needs to be bribed or threatened into learning or reading. Alternative texts and approaches can be used to help students discover a…

Most readers of the Kappan will know that lesson study is a Japanese approach to teacher professional development that has recently become popular in the U.S. Indeed, lesson study activity has been spreading rapidly for several years and continues to proliferate today. However, to date, most of the discussion and research about U.S.-based lesson…

Teachers take pride in their autonomy, but there is a downside to the tradition of working independently. If the teaching profession is to advance, Burney suggests, practitioners will need to share their individual craft knowledge with one another, and districts will need to create the conditions that make this possible. In the ongoing effort to…

At the same time that NCLB has given states a mandate to staff their classrooms with "highly qualified teachers," the federal government is pushing a dangerously narrow definition of the knowledge and skills that today's teachers need. Over the last decade, policy makers and business leaders have come to realize what parents have always…