This paper situates dialogue with students about their learning (descriptive feedback) within the larger frame of reflection, examining how teachers involved in inservice teacher education have used descriptive feedback and noting its impact on their teaching and on students' learning. It presents case studies of teachers and describes the role of…

Presents the idea that learning through active resistance makes the information that students discover more valuable to them. Provides examples from classroom experiences. (EV)

Suggests that the notion of empowering students allows some teachers to resolve their uneasiness about power. Asserts that teachers' denial or renunciation of their power can lead them to deny or ignore students' dependency on them. Argues that confronting the power in empowering students must include confronting teachers' power and how they use…

Argues that, although Peter Elbow's and David Bartholomae's pedagogies attempt in different ways to authorize students to write, both rely on the experience and resistance to language as the primary means of empowerment. Suggests that Elbow and Bartholomae must continually defer authority, keeping it suspended between experience and its…

Empowering teaching strategies encourage leadership, critical thinking, problem solving, and collegiality and discourage passivity, isolation, and subordination. Empowerment prepares nurses for professional practice in hospitals. (SK)

Describes how the author used "democratic" directing methods in her after-school play rehearsals of Shakespeare to help high school students navigate the shifting space between their own creative freedom and the conventional confines of a public high school. Details her use of unorthodox rehearsal strategies involving student…

Offers and explains three pieces of advice for using the Internet in language arts classes: become a student (have students train teachers to use the Internet and have student interns in computer rooms to assist teachers); "morph into a cybrarian" (create an on-line library of World Wide Web links related to class projects); and empower students.…

Describes the author's life experiences in journalism. Offers many stories to describe how high school journalism empowers students, teaching them to ask questions on their own and to think on their own, providing an atmosphere where students not only learn for themselves, but share their learning with others, and a place where students find their…

Consistency Management and Cooperative Discipline (CMCD) is a research-based K-12 discipline management program that builds on shared responsibility for learning and classroom organization through the cultivation of democratic and participatory practices that are fair, inclusive, and caring. CMCD seeks to provide a stable and orderly learning…

How do youth at risk conceptualize respect? This study with youth in an alternative basic education learning center suggests that there are four forms of respect--Challenge, Attention, Responsiveness, and Expectation (C.A.R.E). Students believe they are respected when adults challenge them to succeed academically, give attention to their…

In this article we suggest that the current popularity of student voice can lead to surface compliance--to a quick response that focuses on "how to do it" rather than a reflective review of "why we might want to do it". We look at the links between student consultation and participation and the legacy of the progressive democratic tradition in our…

This article outlines a motivational/empowerment model for students on academic probation implemented at The University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG). The model draws from several theoretical orientations, and includes individual and group interaction as well as discussion in four key topic areas: personal responsibility, positive…

The integration of early reading, writing, and critical thinking skills are crucial to the development of healthy attitudes about writing and literacy in general. A child needs to feel that what he or she says is valuable. For that to happen, children need to begin at a very young age expressing themselves. Writing is an excellent outlet. As soon…

Noting the discrepancy between what is advocated and what is practiced in language arts classroom, this Digest synthesizes the existing problems, reviews the research supporting language arts integration, and proposes a rationale for integrating the language arts. The Digest points out that these new initiatives in language arts focus on the…

This article discusses the negative effects of criticizing a child's teacher in front of the child and the positive effects of modeling a healthy respect of the educational system. Study findings are discussed which indicate high-achieving children saw themselves as active partners with their teachers or coaches, not empty vessels. (Contains 6…