Teacher practices

Now in its second edition, Rethinking Disability introduces new and experienced teachers to ethical framings of disability and strategies for effectively teaching and including students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Grounded in a disability studies framework, this text’s unique narrative style encourages readers to examine their beliefs about disability and the influence of historical and cultural meanings of disability upon their work as teachers. The second edition offers clear and applicable suggestions for creating dynamic and inclusive classroom cultures, getting to know students, selecting appropriate instructional and assessment strategies, co-teaching, and promoting an inclusive school culture. This second edition is fully revised and updated to include a brief history of disability through the ages, the relevance of current educational policies to inclusion, technology in the inclusive classroom, intersectionality and its influence upon inclusive practices, working with families, and issues of transition from school to the post-school world. Each chapter now also includes a featured "voice from the field" written by persons with disabilities, parents, and teachers.

As the key agents of change in educational reforms, it is teachers who are seen as central to effecting change; this is no different in the curricular aim of developing critical thinkers found in numerous educational reforms across the world. One of the key assumptions behind such curricular reforms aimed at developing critical thinking in schools seems to be that teachers would somehow have the required knowledge and capacity to teach critical thinking successfully as envisaged in educational policies. However, research suggests that this is not necessarily the case and that teachers’ knowledge in critical thinking teaching has to be developed in an explicit and systematic manner. Stemming from a qualitative case study on teacher knowledge in the context of implementing a curriculum that explicitly aims to develop critical thinking, a revised framework of teacher knowledge is proposed. This framework, which was emergent in the analysis of the study data, offers possibilities as a more complete heuristic and analytical tool to help understand the complexity and dynamics of teacher knowledge in teaching critical thinking.  Moreover, it could help pave the way to better understand the various knowledge domains that need to be purposefully and systematically developed by schools and teacher education institutions to support teachers in their vital work of developing critical thinkers in the classroom successfully for life and work in the 21st century.

This article looks at teachers' knowledge and understanding of classrooms in terms of interpretation of nonverbal and situational cues. Two sets of videotapes of classroom episodes were prepared, one in Hebrew and one in Dutch, which were viewed by teachers in cross-cultural settings. Teachers responded in writing and in group discussions regarding the perceived nature of the viewed episodes and then commented on the interpretation cues. Analysis of written responses and protocols of discussions yielded insights into the two cultures.
On the basis of the data collected, it appeared that teachers use personal cues, part of their personal knowledge, to infer classroom meanings in cross-cultural settings. The different cues used by individual teachers represented their personal knowledge,

This manuscript dissertation explores the teacher practices that promoted improved educational outcomes for Indigenous, high school students. Three manuscripts present the findings of two case studies, that collectively represent a qualitative reporting of 14 teachers/administrators, that were mainly non-Indigenous, who affected positive educational improvements for over 700 students. One case study was at a school in Saskatchewan, Canada, and the other was in New Zealand. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews and observations. In the first chapter, I share a narrative that introduces the reader to my positionality in the research. Chapter 2 provides an academic introduction and an overview of the two case studies. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are the manuscripts that have been published in peer-reviewed journals or have been accepted and are currently in press. The first manuscript, Teacher strategies that improve education outcomes for Indigenous students, offers the f...

Teachers’ religious identities shape their classroom practices in varied ways. From the books they select, to the relationships they build with students, to the way they see their role as a teacher, teachers’ religious identities shape their sense of what is possible and impossible within classroom settings. Navigating Moments of Hesitation examines these complex navigations through portraits of three early-career evangelical Christian teachers as they explore the tension they feel between their teaching identities and their religious identities in the setting of the U.S. public education system.
What these portraits make clear is that the prevailing assumption that religious teachers have wholly separate teaching and religious identities is an impossibility, no matter how devoutly it might be wished for, legislated, and imagined. Who are these teachers? How does their evangelical religious identity influence the way they navigate classroom spaces? How are they making sense of their own experiences as a religious person in a public school classroom?

Notre recherche porte sur les pratiques d'évaluation formative informelle mises en oeuvre lors d'une séquence d'enseignement des sciences physiques au collège basé sur l'investigation. L'étude de l'évaluation formative informelle est réalisée à l'aide d'un cadre d'analyse des stratégies mises en oeuvre, soit les cycles ESRU (E : Expliciter, S : L'élève répond, R : Reconnaître, U : Utiliser). L'étude de l'investigation scientifique est réalisée à travers l'analyse des domaines d'investigation scientifique (soient, les cadres épistémiques et les structures conceptuelles). Nos résultats indiquent que les enseignants réussissent à mettre en oeuvre des stratégies d'évaluation formative (des cycles ESRU complets) et des dimensions d'investigation scientifique multiples, où les cadres épistémiques sont majoritaires. Finalement, nous discutons les résultats trouvés.

Abstract As the key agents of change in educational reforms, it is teachers who are seen as central to effecting change; this is no different in the curricular aim of developing critical thinkers found in numerous educational reforms across the world. One of the key assumptions behind such curricular reforms aimed at developing critical thinking in schools seems to be that teachers would somehow have the required knowledge and capacity to teach critical thinking successfully as envisaged in educational policies. However, research suggests that this is not necessarily the case and that teachers’ knowledge in critical thinking teaching has to be developed in an explicit and systematic manner. Stemming from a qualitative case study on teacher knowledge in the context of implementing a curriculum that explicitly aims to develop critical thinking, a revised framework of teacher knowledge is proposed. This framework, which was emergent in the analysis of the study data, offers possibilities as a more complete heuristic and analytical tool to help understand the complexity and dynamics of teacher knowledge in teaching critical thinking. Moreover, it could help pave the way to better understand the various knowledge domains that need to be purposefully and systematically developed by schools and teacher education institutions to support teachers in their vital work of developing critical thinkers in the classroom successfully for life and work in the 21 st century.