Background: Despite increasing popularity and mounting evidence for teacher collaboration as a lever for school improvement, reported changes in teaching associated with collaboration are often subtle and incremental, rarely involving substantial shifts in instructional practice called for by advocates of deeper learning and next-generation…

Background: The field of higher education abounds with qualitative research aimed at highlighting the needs, struggles, strengths, and motivations of academically struggling students. However, because of the small-scale nature of these studies, they rarely enter the public debate or impact institutional policy concerning access, remediation,…

Background: For decades, scholars have argued that teaching and learning depend fundamentally on the quality of relationships between teachers and students, yet there is little research about how teachers develop relationships with students or how teacher education prepares teachers to do this work. Arguably, articulating the relational practices…

Background/Context: In 1994, the Spencer Foundation embarked on an ambitious experimental initiative to support the preparation of education researchers. Over the 13-year span of the Research Training Grant (RTG) program, the foundation made multiyear awards to more than a dozen leading institutions in the United States and South Africa. This…

Background/Context: This article describes how we refined an innovative methodology for equitable collaboration between university researchers and classroom practitioners building and refining theory together. The work builds on other coinquiry models in which complementary professional expertise is respected and deliberately exploited in order to…

Background: This article serves as a conclusion to a TCR special issue devoted to understanding the impact of the Spencer Foundation's Research Training Grant (RTG) initiative. We examine four case reports prepared by scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Los Angeles…

Background/Context: Metacognition has been a subject of study for cognitive theorists, behaviorists, educators, and others. The term metacognition has traditionally and simply been defined as "thinking about thinking," yet it describes a complex process that can result in a nuanced understanding of oneself as a thinker and a learner. Metacognition…

Background/Context: Literacy education has always been hotly contested, and in England the debate has recently intensified in controversies over synthetic phonics teaching and the National Literacy Strategy. This article brings together four theoretical and policy contexts in studying this debate: (1) the long-standing and on-going "reading…

Background/Context: Despite recent gains from a number of students in U.S. schools, African American males continue to underachieve on most academic indices. Despite various interventions that have attempted to transform the perennial disenfranchisement, their school failure has persisted. Conversely, their failure in schools frequently results in…