Clarifies themes common among articles in this volume, including the importance of collaboration between local and outside educators; the changing organization of language, literacy, and math instruction as local knowledge becomes the basis for curriculum; and enabling and disabling conditions for such change to occur (such as bilingual bicultural…

Describes the experience of one English teacher who utilized teacher research to restructure and revitalize her teaching. Describes the dissatisfaction and disillusionment of her students, attitudes that prompted the changes. Narrates the particular events and techniques used by the teacher, especially with regard to her concept of cooperative…

A study of 17 bright underachievers aged 8 to 15 attributed low achievement to emotional issues, peer group pressure, lack of an appropriate curriculum, undiagnosed learning disabilities, and poor self-regulation. Teacher researchers discovered that involving these students in creative productivity reversed the cycle of underachievement. (12…

Introduces a theme issue on the publish or perish issue in teacher education institutions. The collection of articles includes teacher educators' autobiographical accounts and personal narratives about the complexities, difficulties, challenges, prospects, and promises of researching within the academy as well as more distanced analyses of these…

Addresses the publish or perish issue within teacher education institutions, introducing a collection of articles that provides insights into how a set of alternative assumptions might be adopted and implemented by university administrators and teacher educators to create more manageable, balanced, effective, and satisfying institutional and…

Explores the evolution of a photomontage assignment in a college-level course for academically unprepared students by summarizing the original assignment and then describing the latest version after a three-year period. Believes that the current assignment promotes aesthetically rich and meaningful artwork from students and a positive shift in…

Describes a teacher research project, designed to motivate 8th-grade Spanish students, that involved creating a unit based on a Zapotec story. Only Spanish was spoken in the classroom. The researcher investigated students' reactions to having Spanish-only lessons focusing on the story. Interviews indicated that students found the class more…

Finds that K-12 literacy professionals: (1) read journal articles and books more often than research journals or electronic sources; (2) believe in collaborative experiences among teachers; (3) are interested in becoming teacher researchers; (4) feel book clubs are valuable; (5) do not want portfolio assessment to replace other forms; and (6) feel…

Maintains that Montessori educators should become "scientific pedagogues" who look upon their classrooms as ongoing educational experiments, and that their task is to match strategies, content, and emotional understanding to the children's developmental needs, interests, and culture. Describes components of successful research within the…

Documents a five-year study of two instructors who collaborated on formally studying their teaching of a master's level instructional design course. Outlines their views on learning, teaching, and instructional design (ID), describes the ID course, and explains the reflexive instructional model used, in which the teachers examined their teaching…

This paper examines how curriculum and scholarship might be structured to promote connectedness within the university, extrapolating the nature of the interdependence of kinesiology and society through an analysis of the professional challenges awaiting graduates beyond the walls of the academy. (SM)

Offers examples of collaboration between teachers and university professors. Provides an overview of the past twenty-five years of social studies research and reform. Argues for the importance of reconceptualizing the traditional school/university relationship to overcome barriers between teachers and researchers. (CMK)

Discusses the benefits of having students do research with other students and having teachers do research with other teachers. Recommends connecting topics for the investigative process with issues from students' real life experiences. (DDR)

Discusses the contextualized needs of rural language arts teachers, highlighting how one such teacher responded to challenges she faced and noting how graduate teacher education programs can be tailored to provide teachers access to the theory, pedagogical approaches, professional networks, and opportunities for empowerment that can help them…

Describes the experiences of an elementary teacher who collaborated on a science action research project with an action research group involving four teachers and a university researcher. The project allowed her to critically examine and change her instructional and assessment practices. She attributed her personal and professional growth to the…