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Making School Count reports on four years of classroom research in which alternative teaching strategies, designed to motivate under-achieving inner-city, African-American middle school students were used and evaluated. The book offers insights into the discrepancy between students' academic dreams (their high performance aspirations) and the realities of their classroom performance. Issues include: *the authors' convictions that the disproportionate under-achievement of African-American students is the result of inappropriate teaching strategies *the prevalent use of a Eurocentric curriculum *results of the authors' research *a guide for teachers wishing to carry out their own research *a study of the collaboration between a university and a schools in an attempt to bring about change from the ground up.
This groundbreaking volume encourages today’s educational leaders to reposition the way they think about leadership and its challenges. Experienced school and district leaders reveal how they conceptualize their roles, how they learn by posing and solving problems of practice, and how they cope with increasing expectations and complexity in their work. This compilation of compelling narratives demonstrates the power and efficacy of what can happen when school, district, and other educational leaders position themselves as inquirers, bringing forth broader social justice and equity implications. Readers see how leadership can illuminate and improve many aspects of institutional life and cre...
Drawing on frameworks of teacher research and critical literacy, this volume documents the experiences of educators in New Mexico who participate in Teaching Out Loud--an intergenerational, professional development program that focuses on the creation and implementation of imaginative, critical curriculum with historically marginalized students. This text offers a set of conceptual tools and pedagogical practices for teacher educators and researchers seeking to advance teacher learning and leadership through the use of critical study groups, rather than the more scripted professional development approaches that dominate mainstream educational settings. Specifically, this book uses the voices...
This fascinating account details the story of two teacher-researchers—Jennifer, who is African American, and Karen, who is White—as they set out on a collaborative three year study to explore the impact of racial and cultural differences in Karen’s urban middle school classroom. Not anticipating that their own differences would become a threat to their project, the two women describe how they learn to confront and deal with the challenges they face so that they can work together. Their study presents the difficulties and importance of collaborations between teachers from different racial and cultural backgrounds, as well as keen insights into how race and culture evolve in teacher-stud...
Chronicles the ups-and-downs of two young, first-grade teachers in an urban public school. Through rich, detailed portraits, excerpts from teacher journals, student work, and lived memories and recollections, Daniel Meier shows that the heart of teaching and learning in our culturally diverse urban schools is tied to the overall quality of human interaction in the classroom. “I know that every classroom teacher will read this with bated breath, perhaps even with a small knot in the pit of their stomach at times. What will the kids do next? Will it have a happy ending? . . . I think parents, too–regardless of race or class–will recognize their teachers, their children, and their schools in this account.” —From the Foreword by Deborah Meier “I tell the story of our year together because teachers, educators, parents, and others are always in need of personal, direct accounts from the classroom. . . . I hope readers will see and hear and feel the voices in this story according to their own experiences and hopes and dreams for our children and schools.” —From the Introduction
How does practitioner inquiry impact education? Examining the experiences of practitioners who have participated in inquiry projects, the authors present ways in which this work has enabled educators to be positive change agents. They reveal the difference that practitioner inquiry has made in their professional practice, their understanding of student learning, their content area knowledge, and their career trajectories. Attesting to long-lasting changes in ways that these educators approach professional challenges, the authors identify the “ripple effect” of these changes through school communities and beyond. Impactful Practitioner Inquiry includes in-depth case studies as well as cha...
This honest, clearly written, and accessible book shows how to use Family Dialogue Journals (FDJs) to increase and deepen learning across grade levels. Written by K–12 teachers who have been implementing and studying the use of weekly journals for several years, it shares what they have learned and why they have found FDJs to be an invaluable tool for forming effective partnerships with families. Learn from first-hand accounts how students write weekly about one big idea they have studied, ask a family member a related question, and then solicit their writing in the journal. Through these journal entries, they share their family knowledge with classmates while actively engaging with the cu...
This book offers an engaging and effective approach to improving teacher and student learning. Based on the experiences of three leading educational organizations, the authors provide invaluable, research-based guidelines for incorporating inquiry into teacher's instructional practices and student work as part of the ongoing work of schools. In addition to discussing the lessons learned and questions raised by inquiry work, this volume includes specific considerations for determining who should be involved, what work should be under review, how it should be reviewed, and how such inquiry should be supported by the school.
This book is about a group of experienced K-12 teachers who took teacher research to another level. Their story is not only about teacher working together to improve their own teaching, but also about how their research reverberated throughout their school system and inflluenced how their schools were run.
For first-year teachers entering the nation's urban schools, the task of establishing a strong and successful practice is often extremely challenging. In this compelling look at first-year teachers' practice in urban schools, editors Jabari Mahiri and Sarah Warshauer Freedman demonstrate how a program of systematic classroom research by teachers themselves enables them to effectively target instruction and improve their own practice. The book organizes the teachers' research into three broad areas, corresponding to issues the new teachers identified as the most challenging. The First Year of Teaching offers an array of classroom scenarios that will spark in-depth discussions in teacher preparation classes and professional devleopment workshops, particulalry in the context of problem-based, problem-posing pedagogies.