Existing scholarship on teacher leadership fails to account for the perspectives of African American female teacher leaders. In this article, we profile 3 African American female teacher leaders located at different trajectories on historical and professional timelines. Our analysis is grounded in understandings from the intersection of social…

The purpose of my study was to examine how volunteer tutors without teaching experience who received minimal training perceived their ability to effectively tutor children with learning disabilities. I found that the tutors initially felt that they could improve their tutee's literacy skills; however, the data suggest that the tutors…

Increasingly, graduate programs in education are promoting the development of teacher leadership. Yet the discussion on how to prepare teachers for leadership roles and responsibilities is only beginning. In this article, we draw on the written reflections of early career teachers enrolled in a curriculum and instruction master's program so…

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…

The article describes the integration of inquiry, reflective practice, and child-centered teaching approaches in preservice teacher education at the early childhood level. The article reviews relevant literature on the forms and functions of inquiry and reflection as a form of professional development and teacher learning and also describes the…

Writing is central to academic development, permeates content area coursework and serves as both a vehicle for and a display of learning. For English learners (ELs), writing poses challenges, and teachers need preparation in how to understand and respond to these. This study reports 5 teacher inquiry processes that preservice teachers in one…

Many universities exist apart from their community's public schools. A New Orleans area public university took measures to facilitate collaborative partnerships with four public schools. Those schools were taken over and converted to charter schools by state officials for poor performance. The partnerships created simultaneous opportunities…

The purpose of this study was to document four novice secondary teachers' experiences as they progressed from the last year in their teacher education program through their first three years of teaching. Autobiographies, interviews, and focus groups were conducted to record their stories as novice teachers. In addition to the development of their…

This article addresses teacher retention in a successful, new, small urban school. As a longitudinal study, it focuses on the intersections between individual teachers' expectations about teaching, contextual factors, and experiences at the school site and teachers' future career plans. The experiences and perspectives of three representative case…

Effective teachers have been described as possessing a vision for their teaching. However, the current high-stakes accountability climate has provided challenges for teachers attempting to align their instruction with their vision for teaching. The goal of this study was to explore 3 in-service teachers' visions and perceived obstacles they faced…

Providing quality support for novice teachers as they enter the profession has been an ongoing concern of educator preparation programs. This article describes the efforts of one teacher preparation program in addressing this matter by utilizing Facebook[R] to provide sustained support and professional development for its beginning teachers. We…

This article uses Dewey's (1938) concept of "end in view" to frame one California State University's purposeful action in implementing the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). The authors provide a chronology of events that reveal the ways in which teacher education faculty were engaged in examining PACT outcomes and candidate…

Dilemmas abound in the design, implementation, analysis, and interpretation of the outcomes of a summative performance assessment of teaching when used for licensing, for individual and program evaluation, and for accountability purposes. In this article, we explore the impact of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) on the…

This article explores leadership practice and change as evidenced in multiple data sources gathered during a self-study implementation of a teaching performance assessment. It offers promising models of distributed leadership and organizational change that can inform future program implementers and the field in general. Our experiences suggest…