With the increased emphasis on college and career readiness resulting from the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the need for students to be able to read and write proficiently has become well established. Social studies teachers are now expected to teach nonfiction reading and writing skills in their content-area courses. Many…

For more than 30 years, Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith has developed and directed research and contributed to publications about education and "practitioner research," especially about teachers' research and learning in inquiry communities. Her primary topics are inquiry communities, teacher research, teacher education for social…

Too often, students reach college without the learning, critical thinking, and literacy skills they need to succeed in higher education. Recent educational trends that promote teaching to the test, short reading and writing assignments, group work, and technological resources contribute to students' difficulties transitioning to college-level…

"Educational Leadership" is a term used to describe the work of principals and administrators. The high-stakes testing environment that has been feeding the culture of accountability in our schools has led principals to increasingly turn to a more distributed leadership model that includes their teachers, thereby expanding the concept of…

Throughout history humans have dreamed of a better life. This concept of utopia can be used as a central focus for thematic and interdisciplinary instruction. This approach has three key advantages. First, students recognize that certain themes are consistent across time and place and that realization can lead students to explore their own dreams…

Students tend to comprehend little and lose focus of classroom instruction when their teachers fail to use instructional strategies that match students' learning styles. Differentiated instruction can alleviate or eliminate this disengagement. This article describes a case involving a child having difficulty learning and shows how…

In the spirit of the Steven Stahl 600 Book Kid Challenge, 90 preservice teachers engaged children in 36 read-aloud sessions for a vocabulary improvement service learning project. This article describes how the preservice teachers used narrative and informational books as a vehicle for rare-word vocabulary exposure for children ages 8-12.

Grounded in the context of the gap in civic participation, action-based civics curricula, and how classroom interactions may affect student development, we present the CIVVICS (Civic Interactions motiVating diVerse Individuals in Classroom Settings) observation tool. CIVVICS's four domains--Lesson Planning and Implementation, Classroom…

For high school and middle school principals, the ability to create and maintain positive recognition and identity both personally and for the school is crucial for support from all stakeholders. Finding proactive ways to do this is not much different than the way a large corporation develops a campaign for a major product. Nine principles for…

Leadership is learnable--it begins with leading oneself. Leadership is inspirational--it inspires in others the sustainable values that guide their pursuit of success and significance in life. Inspiration, transparency, trust, reputation, purpose, and commitment have become the operating currency of leadership in a morally interdependent world.…

This article highlights the use of Shaun Tan's "The Arrival" to teach literacy to English Language Learners in social studies classrooms. The featured text is a book that displays the complexity of migration within a text that does not feature a single written word. The author describes a variety of mini-lessons geared towards…

To one degree or another, inclusion is the word of the day in public schools across the country, and as a result many general education teachers find themselves face-to-face in their classrooms with students who have been diagnosed with behavior disorders (BD). While the behavior of these students is frequently (and euphemistically) referred to as…

Remixing traditional and new teaching techniques via literacy centers can restructure middle grades language arts classrooms to promote student movement, autonomy, and creativity. Literacy centers provide a set of individual, developmentally appropriate learning activities that can be updated daily to match current objectives, but do not need to…

Individuals who change careers to assume teaching roles in secondary schools are more likely to struggle in the classroom than those without such backgrounds. In this investigation, we identified three such career-changing teachers who were beginning their education careers in rural schools, and observed and interviewed them throughout their first…

Social media are at the heart of the daily communications of adolescents. In many cases, however, adolescents are unaware of the consequences of the long-term availability of their online personal information. Given the rising prevalence of online background checks on potential partners, college applicants, and job candidates, online search…