Collaborative intellectual engagement is held in high regard in contemporary educational thought as a pedagogical practice of broad value to K-12 students. To what extent is this enthusiasm warranted? Is the practice uniformly productive, or does variability exist in the contexts in which collaboration is effective, the mechanisms involved, and…

Building on the work of Ball and Cohen and that of Davis and Krajcik, as well as more recent research related to teacher learning from and about curriculum materials, we seek to answer the question, How can prospective teachers (PTs) learn to read and use educative curriculum materials in ways that support them in acquiring the knowledge needed…

This paper argues that the use of metaphoric language is common in non-literary fields of learning. Considering its potential for application as evidenced by reference in books, journal papers, e-zine discussions and blogs, and the historical time over which metaphors have been engaged in rhetoric, it is surprising that there is little allusion to…

The aim of this research was to understand and develop theory concerning how teachers in a pioneer "School of the Future" in Singapore deal with information and communication technology (ICT) integration, utilising grounded theory methods, within the interpretivist paradigm. Findings revealed that teachers tended not to make radical…

This article describes elements of an approach to research and development called "design-based implementation research." The approach represents an expansion of design research, which typically focuses on classrooms, to include development and testing of innovations that foster alignment and coordination of supports for improving teaching and…

The disproportionate focus on classroom teachers and their instruction--teacher effectiveness--in order to confront and address under-achievement and disadvantage appears as a contemporary education policy theme in Australia. Phrases such as "high performing schooling systems","the best teachers", "high performing…

This paper draws from a study that explored issues of student equity, marginality and diversity in two secondary schools in regional Queensland (Australia). The paper foregrounds interview data gathered from administration, teaching and ancillary staff at one of the schools, "Crimson" High School. The school has a high Indigenous student…

Teacher education is in a state of uncertainty around the world including the more wealthy and less wealthy countries. If it is generally accepted that teacher education can make a difference in the educational lives of all students regardless of cultural and educational background, then how exactly to arrange the detail of schooling is not. Under…

In the present study we present a didactic method to help children aged 11 and 12 learn science in such a way as to enable a dynamic interaction between domain general strategies and the development of conceptual knowledge, whilst each type of scientific process has been considered (forming of hypotheses, experimenting and evaluating). We have…

Multicultural early childhood education is necessary in a culturally diverse country like Malaysia. Preschool teachers play an important role in implementing multicultural education in the classroom. This paper reports the findings of a self-report questionnaire involving 854 preschool teachers in Malaysia. The preschool teachers disclosed their…

This paper reports preliminary survey findings of Western Australian and South Australian teacher perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy in their classroom and school. The paper examines how teachers perceive the effects of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy and whether these perceptions mediated by the teacher's…

Social psychologists are persuaded that researchers as well as laymen tend to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of situations on observed behavior. The author of this article suggests that education researchers and policy makers may be overestimating the role of personal qualities in their quest to…

This article summarizes "Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel," which was published in 2008.That report provides an extensive meta-analysis of approximately 300 studies showing which early literacy measures correlate with later literacy achievement. It also provides a series of meta-analyses of a comprehensive…

This article discusses the potential positive and problematic influences of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report on prekindergarten and kindergarten classroom instructional practice. The authors support the instructional importance of the majority of the foundational skills identified in the NELP report as having "clear and…

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in exploring how choices of methods and timing of instruction affect the rate and persistence of learning. The authors review three lines of experimentation--all conducted using educationally relevant materials and time intervals--that call into question important aspects of common instructional…