This article presents 10 research-based principles of instruction, along with suggestions for classroom practice. These principles come from three sources: (a) research in cognitive science, (b) research on master teachers, and (c) research on cognitive supports. Each is briefly explained in this article. Even though these are three very different…

For at least a half century, education reformers have quipped that 120th Street in New York City, the street that separates Teachers College from the rest of Columbia University, "is the widest street in the world." Underlying this quip is the belief that Columbia's liberal arts faculty members regularly dismiss the child-centered educational…

The authors are conducting studies to determine what knowledge world history teachers need and how they can use it to plan instruction. In this article, they report on a small but in-depth study designed to examine how four pre-service and six in-service world history teachers think about, organize, and make meaning of separate world historical…

Focusing directly on the development of instructional practice and its effects is not easy. One major shortcoming in the educational infrastructure has been the lack of a common curriculum. A second has been an impoverished approach to supporting teaching practice. These two are related, for any effort to develop and improve teaching is weakened…

Self-regulation refers to the ability to inhibit the automatic response and to do something else; more generally, it refers to the ability to control one's emotions, to control attention and other cognitive processes, and to plan and control behavior. This capacity turns out to have enormous consequences for academic and social success. And, as…

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used to be both the best-known poet in the English-speaking world and the most beloved, adored by the learned and the lowly alike, read by everyone from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Abraham Lincoln to John Ruskin and Queen Victoria--and, just as avidly, by the queen's servants. "Paul Revere's Ride" is Longfellow's best-known…

So often teachers see education as a series of units leading to an examination, which will in turn prepare students for the SATs or APs they need to pass to enter university where, if they pass other examinations, they will graduate and earn large incomes. Teachers hold those future earnings before their students like a carrot while beating them…

Since Finland emerged in 2000 as the top-scoring Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), researchers have been pouring into the country to study the so-called "Finnish miracle." How did a country with an undistinguished education system in the 1980s surge to…

While the worst of the Great Recession has passed, it has become clear that persistently high unemployment, coupled with budget woes that stretch from federal to local government, will be a reality for the foreseeable future. Knowing this, Congress, the Obama administration, and constituents across the country are having a serious discussion about…

There are now many studies of income inequality and health that compare countries, American states, or other large regions, and the majority of these studies show that more egalitarian societies tend to be healthier. Inequality is associated with lower life expectancy, higher rates of infant mortality, shorter height, poor self-reported health,…

Through the second half of the 1990s and into the early years of the 21st century, public attention to the plight of poor black Americans seemed to wane. There was scant media attention to the problem of concentrated urban poverty (neighborhoods in which a high percentage of the residents fall beneath the federally designated poverty line), little…

People have entered an era of education reform with an extensive focus on how well students are being prepared to succeed in postsecondary education and careers in a rapidly changing global economy, as well as to become thriving, contributing members in the democracy. Although these aims have recast national conversation in some important ways,…

The language of today's twelfth-grade English texts is simpler than that of seventh-grade texts published prior to 1963. No wonder students' reading comprehension has declined sharply. The author claims that literacy level of secondary students is languishing because the kids are not reading what they need to be reading. In this article, the…

Despite being known as the land of opportunity, the United States is far from equitable when it comes to the mathematics that students have the opportunity to learn. In this article, the authors explore the extent to which students in different schools and districts have an equal opportunity to learn mathematics. Specifically, they discuss…

Now more than ever, high-quality education for all is a public good that is essential for the good of the public. As the fate of individuals and nations is increasingly interdependent, the quest for access to an equitable, empowering education for all people has become a critical issue for the American nation as a whole. No society can thrive in a…