The United States of the twenty-first century is possibly the most culturally/racially diverse country of any nation in history, and families that are culturally/racially different from mainstream society do not always see that schools are meeting the needs of their children. This diversity in culture and language means that each person is…

Cultural immersion experiences have been used in multicultural counselor training courses to address racism. Cultural immersion experiences include activities designed to provide concentrated, direct, substantial, and meaningful interactions with multiple elements of a target culture for the purpose of promoting crosscultural competency. In this…

While programs have been established to support secondary level English Learners (ELs) in their transition to institutions of higher education (IHEs), limited attention has been given to how to support adult ELs who struggle with the academic language demands of their college or university content-area courses. Research indicates that many EL…

Elementary school children in the United States are not developing acceptable levels of mathematical proficiency (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999), and a major concern of teacher educators is that teachers lack the depth and flexibility of mathematical understanding and the corresponding beliefs they need to teach for proficiency…

It is not unusual for an instructional model or approach to be misinterpreted in practice. Madeline Hunter bemoaned the way her Mastery Teaching approach was reduced to a seven step lesson plan. Although the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model of sheltered instruction for English language learners (ELLs) was developed fairly…

Second language learners continue to languish in California public schools in spite of six years of promises following passage of the controversial ballot initiative "English for the Children" (Proposition 227) to fix the education of English Language Learners (ELLs) through English-only instruction. In addition, with the development of new…

In the last decade, the education and policy communities in California have undertaken a major effort to reform the preparation of public school teachers. At the heart of this work is quality education for all children and high-quality teacher education. With the passage of Senate Bill (SB) 2042 in 1998, the state has set in motion the building of…

In highlighting the importance of problem-based learning in the development of 21st century skills, (Yun Jo) An (2013) identified the challenges faced by novice teachers in its implementation and suggested strategies to support them. This commentary explores two aspects mentioned in the article, assessment and the role of collaboration, and argues…

Jeremey Stoddard's article in this issue, "Toward a Virtual Field Trip Model for the Social Studies," describes his analysis of the Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trip and a conceptual model for developing meaningful and successful electronic or virtual field trips. In an effort to contextualize the Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field…