This study introduces students' perspectives into the knowledge base on community college teacher education and transfer to the four-year college. There is currently widespread agreement that community colleges are an essential resource for diversifying the teaching force and improving teacher retention. While data on enrollment, alignment, and…

The issue of professional development is receiving increased attention, as educators and policy makers are realizing the centrality of teachers to school reform and improvement. This paper describes research on book clubs as a mechanism for professional development and discusses how different study group configurations (i.e., preservice teacher…

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'…

The urban school context is rife with descriptors that frame children's lives in deficit ways: "under-prepared," "below grade level," "limited English proficient." In this study, I reframe my perception of the life of one child in my second-grade class to better understand the funds of knowledge he brings to school each day. The data include…

This paper stems from a classroom discussion in which one author, a sixth-grade student in that classroom, contended that boys only read books about boys and proposed that the teacher change the situation by assigning books with both male and female main characters. The boys who responded emphatically denied the girl's claim, and the teacher later…

High-achieving women are significantly less likely to enter the teaching profession than they were just 40 years ago. Why? While the social and economic reasons for this decline have been well documented in the literature, what is lacking is a discussion with high-achieving women, as they make their first career decisions, about their perceptions…

The hybrid educator is an essential contributor to the development of new public school teachers. A hybrid educator is a college adjunct professor employed full time by a public school system. The role of the hybrid educator involves the navigation of two separate systems in developing new teachers: the university and the public school. This…

The purpose of this essay is to describe quality teacher induction that has evolved from "fourth-wave" (1997-2006) teacher induction program development and research. A definition of quality induction is proposed, and a set of induction goals and components are outlined. Understandings gained from fourth-wave programs are described, including ways…

Given the increasing challenges faced by high-poverty urban schools, mentoring has become the panacea for policy makers interested in a quick-fix solution to the teacher quality dilemma. As a result, mentoring programs have experienced exponential growth with little empirical attention during the last decade. This 16-month qualitative…

The purpose of this paper is to present the major motives leading senior teachers to be involved in a mentoring process of newly appointed teachers and its benefits for the mentor teacher. Based on semi-structured interviews with 12 experienced teachers who participated in a university-based mentoring program in Israel, the current study found a…

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…

In this qualitative study, pairs of preservice teachers were placed with single cooperating teachers in a 100-hour urban field placement. The question guiding this research was would preservice teachers collaborate in ways that contributed to their professional development and if so why, how, and to what end? Results from field notes, multiple…

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…

Understanding the interplay among experience, beliefs, and contexts of teaching in preservice and inservice teachers' learning to teach is crucial to improving teacher quality for diverse populations. This study examined the impact of a summer camp English teaching experience in China on the ideas and practice of two White, middle-class female…

This article offers three case studies of teachers who have been specially prepared to serve diverse students and examines their interpretations and instantiations of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)-driven language arts reform in "underperforming" schools, largely composed of Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs). Drawing on literature that focuses…