Results from an earlier study (Hart, 2002) suggested that a group of 14 teachers participating in an alternative preparation program for elementary teachers had developed beliefs that were consistent with current thinking in mathematics education. The current study follows 8 of those teachers into their first year of teaching in an urban…

In this article, the authors selected two urban teachers to study, one from 3rd grade and one from 5th (hereafter referred to as Ms. Third and Ms. Fifth), whose students, in spite of the school's failing grade, did well on the exam. Both were nominated as exemplary teachers by their principal and other teachers and had been selected as teacher of…

This paper is a narrative drawn from a 6-year study of two female elementary school teachers as they are learning to teach literacy. The teachers were part of a larger longitudinal investigation on learning to teach which began with their preservice teacher programs at a research university on the west coast. This report summarizes data collected…

Data used for this study were provided by classroom teachers concerning second grade students in an urban school system composed primarily of minority and economically disadvantaged children. Measures of children's internal and external feedback propensities were developed. The propensities' relationship to other variables of interest was…

Aspects of the school environment and interactions in the larger school-community context that affect children's literacy were examined in a school located in a predominantly lower income urban community in the northeast where 97 percent of the students are African American, Jamaican, or Hispanic. Four dimensions of the literacy program were…

This report focuses on the relationships of student social support and school academic press to gains in student academic achievement in the Chicago public schools. Social support refers to personal relationships students have with people in and out of school who may help them do well, and academic press refers to the extent to which school…

Describes collaborative involvement in a professional development school from the perspective of five people (one university educator and four school teachers) who took on new roles and responsibilities. Discusses tensions and balances, participants' differing states of readiness, and changes that collaboration initiated and supported. (SM)

This article presents a professional development initiative developed by a university-school partnership based on the Japanese lesson-study model described by Stigler and Hiebert (1999) in "The Teaching Gap." Lesson study ("jugyoukenkyu"), an inquiry model of teacher professional development, is used extensively throughout…

Classroom discourse has participation structures that can be interpreted as the verbal equivalents of being sent to the corner, and when these structures operate repeatedly enough, educational authority and resistance become locked into ongoing opposition. The discursive details of classroom life, from a poststructuralist perspective, are what…

The New Jersey Department of Education asked Research for Better Schools, Inc., to design and conduct a study of the Cognitive Pilot Program of the Broad Based Component of the state's Urban Initiative. The purpose was to provide descriptive information about the implementation of the program in all 21 pilot program sites and of promising…

Sixty-five Year 2 children with ages ranging from six to seven years participated in a teaching experiment to introduce functional thinking. The results show that young children are capable of generalising, can provide examples of relations and functions, can describe the inverse of such relationships and give valid reasons for how they found the…

This document provides an overview of a cooperative venture (inner-city university/inner-city school district) in the training of reading teachers and other district-credentialed personnel to become inservice leaders in a district-wide inservice program. The program is designed to augment and enhance reading skills and to provide the…

A comparison of major city school systems in 10 Southern States shows clearly that Louisville has the worst record in both student and faculty segregation. And the very high ratio of black students to black teachers shows that Louisville trails all the other 11 systems in this study in the vital area of hiring black teachers. Four comparisons show…

This paper argues that the essential social function of schools is to teach people their place, which can become material for ruling elites. Focusing on urban students, the paper emphasizes that teachers must learn to become political in order to help build a just social order. (SM)

Describes one elementary teacher's experiences participating in the Talking Mathematics Project, which provided a forum for teachers to teach, reflect on their mathematics knowledge, and think about their practice. Teachers were videotaped in their classrooms. They examined the videotapes alone and in seminars. Reflecting with others enriched the…