Throughout the United States, teacher educators are developing new strategies to improve the preparation of mainstream teachers for linguistic diversity. In this article, we explore teacher candidates' responses to the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), a preservice assessment required for credentialing that requires…

This article explores how an experienced teacher navigates the demands of curriculum to implement her inquiry-centered teaching and learning philosophy, and how administrators along the way supported her during this change. Interviews with this classroom teacher surface suggestions for twenty-first-century professional development and support,…

This qualitative case study describes how one beginning primary grade teacher benefited from collaborative lesson-planning meetings with her grade-level colleagues. The teacher accumulated knowledge of curriculum, pedagogy, and professional contexts as she participated in planning meetings each week during her first year of teaching. Furthermore,…

In this era of globalization, students need to know how to write well. Faculty development needs to focus on assisting primary teachers as they prepare students for a twenty-first-century world. Strategic curriculum reform and professional development can be achieved by partnerships between district administrators and professional consultants. Two…

Inquiry-based and interdisciplinary teaching practices exemplify constructivist approaches to education capable of facilitating authentic student learning; however, their implementation has proven particularly challenging within certain contexts in the United States. This qualitative study considers one such context via an investigation of…

This study examines the enactment of literacy coaching--one kind of formal teacher leader role--in two districts using data collected from daily activity logs and weekly interviews with 6 coaches over 7 weeks. To provide an in-depth examination, we highlight the case of Diane, a full-time literacy coach working at two elementary schools in one…

In this article the author describes a mixed-methods study of first-year urban teachers' social support networks. Social Network Analysis (SNA) data on the support networks of 24 first-year teachers provided a background context and framework for the case study analysis of 4 of the teachers. Findings of the analysis identified 2 important networks…

This article explores how the preparation of educators committed to improving education can capitalize on entrepreneurship when broadly defined as "transforming ideas into enterprises that generate economic, intellectual and/or social value." The article reports on the case-studies of six educators who have been successful change-agents in a…

In this paper, we discuss our approach to teacher-researcher collaboration and how it is similar and different from other models of teacher collaboration. Our approach to collaboration employed design experimentation (Brown, 1992; Design Based Research Collective, 2003) as a central method since it yields important findings for teachers'…

This year-long qualitative case study explores the ways in which one teacher intern reflected upon her knowledge and experiences within two sometimes dichotomous domains: the elementary school classrooms in which she taught and her university coursework. Data collection took place over a period of eight months and consisted of twenty-two weekly…

This is a case of one novice White teacher whose strong commitment to becoming a culturally relevant teacher was hindered by her struggle to develop meaningful connections to the home community of her mostly African American students. Using a hybrid methodology of action research, discourse analysis, and critical interpretive analysis of…

Induction support for new teachers is widespread, particularly in the form of mentoring, but research evidence of effectiveness is limited. The majority of existing research has focused on the impact of induction on teacher retention. Of greater interest is the potential impact on student achievement, and on which forms of support are the most…

This article discusses what it means to be a beginning teacher from the perspective of four mid-career entrants to the profession. Findings from this ethnographic study suggest that regardless of preservice teacher preparation or school districts' formal induction practices, newcomers experience a dramatic threshold or liminal phase among…

In this study we asked beginning elementary teachers about their needs as first-year teachers and the adequacy of their preservice program in helping to meet them. The new teachers varied in satisfaction with their preparation but showed considerable consensus on their needs. They felt the study of both theory and practice should be conducted in…

By looking at teacher collaborative structures in an urban public elementary school, this article demonstrates how, in the face of top-down school decisions under the pressures of high-stakes testing and assessment-driven curriculum, teachers can find the power and freedom for creative and effective pedagogy to flourish. We describe how teachers…