Education Commons^™

Flying Sandwiches And Broken Glasses. A Response To "New Forms Of Teacher Education: Connections To Charter Schools And Their Approaches", Sigal R. Ben-Porath

Democracy and Education

The authors of the feature article provide a sound analysis of the shortcomings of the new teacher training model in preparing professional teachers rather than technicians, in getting them ready to teach in varied environments, and in helping teachers and students develop their skills of participation in a democratic society. In this response I outline an additional key issue related to apprenticeship-based teacher training models of the type that Match and Relay represent, namely, the matter of accountability.

Teacher, Researcher, And Accountability Discourses: Creating Space For Democratic Science Teaching Practices In Middle Schools, Cory A. Buxton, Shakhnoza Kayumova, Martha Allexsaht-Snider

Democracy and Education

This study explores the role of competing discourses that shape current practices in U.S. schools and how professional development efforts can support teachers and researchers in finding ways to reinsert more democratic processes into their collaborative work. We examine the case of one research and professional development project with the goal of supporting middle school science and ESOL teachers in fostering more meaningful science learning for all their students but especially their English language learners. Using Gee’s notion of big-D discourses and Fairclough’s notion of interdiscursivity, we trace how the Discourse of accountability, the Discourse of science teaching, and the …

Resisting The Neoliberal Ambush Of Public Education. A Book Review Of Educational Courage: Resisting The Ambush Of Public Education, Brandy S. Wilson

Democracy and Education

This is a review of the book Educational Courage: Resisting the Ambush of Public Education.

Principled Approaches In Online Teacher Education: Migrating Sit’S Masters In Teaching Program, Katrina N. Baran

MA TESOL Collection

Delivery methods for teacher education at the post-graduate level are changing to accommodate in-service professionals and take advantage of technology. To shift the SIT Graduate Institute’s Masters in Teaching program to a low-residency format, an evaluation of underlying principles in teacher education, online education and the MAT program itself is necessary in order to preserve the integrity of the program and ensure success in this new format. Within the context of these principles and an analysis of a sampling of program areas, recommendations are provided.

Crossing The Bridge: Transitioning From A Teacher To A Professor, Steven Page, Charles Jenks

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This is a qualitative study that was conducted to gain a better understanding of the experiences of professors in Colleges of Education who were former K-12 teachers. The study presents the responses of eighty nine professors from across the United States. By coding the responses based on the university setting (National, Large Regional, Small Regional) in which the respondents worked the authors found that professors have different experiences in their transition from K-12. The authors found that the size of the university was a factor in how the new faculty felt welcomed and how they were treated by colleagues. Also, …

Structured Reflective Communication As A Meta-Genre In Teacher Education: Creative Uses Of Critique In A Teacher Education Program, Donna Starks, Howard Nicholas, Shem Macdonald

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Critical reflection is central to teacher education for unpacking privileged positions and empowering participants to adopt valued professional stances (e.g. Krull, Oras & Sisask, 2007; Harford & MacRuairc, 2008; Fernandez, 2010), yet critical reflection is not a well-developed conceptual structure within teacher education. Lesson planning is, likewise, central to teacher education, yet not well-developed as a theoretical tool. Our model proposes a way of engaging beginning teachers in critical reflection by drawing together the informal spoken discourse meanings of critical reflection in education, its more formalised structure as critique in rhetoric and genre analysis, and lesson planning. When critical reflection …

Moving Beyond Seeing With Our Eyes Wide Shut. A Response To “There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here”, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Vanessa Dodo Seriki

Democracy and Education

A struggle exists to engage in culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) that authentically represents the voices and interests of all across the K–20 spectrum, from higher education institutions, to teacher preparation programs, and into U.S. classrooms. This article responds to Hayes and Juárez's piece “There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here” by extending the conversation with the suggestion that one of the major problems in speaking CRP has to do with a disconnect between articulated commitments and actual practices. This response article takes a critical look at the landscape in which educators work to reveal the nature of overrepresentation of …

Cognitive Load And Its Major Pedagogical Implications, Focus On Education In Jordan, Bassam Kutkut

MA TESOL Collection

Through my teaching experience in Jordan, I noticed the amount of work students had to do. I noticed the tremendous amount information they received from their teachers on a daily basis. I also noticed that students forgot most of the information they learned in class right after their exams. I was wondering if that’s the right way of teaching. Then, after my study at SIT, I learned that this is a cognitive overload that can impair the learning process.

Cognitive load refers to the information processing abilities in the human memory system which has limitations. When these limitations are exceeded, …

Grounding Theory In Practice: A Reflection On Designing And Delivering A Workshop On Intercultural Sensitivity For Korean Public School English Teachers, Kevin Giddens

MA TESOL Collection

In this paper I will use a process of rigorous reflection to explore the design and implementation of a cross-cultural simulation workshop as a means of developing intercultural sensitivity among Korean public school English teachers in Daegu, South Korea. After introducing the workshop design I will describe in detail my experience of delivering the workshop. I will overlay Milton J. Bennett’s model for developing intercultural sensitivity (1993) with participant reflections as a means of grounding theory to practice and exploring whether or not participants were able to demonstrate observable movement within Bennett’s model. I will then highlight some possible modifications …

Missing In Action: Research On The Accountability Of Multicultural, Inclusive Teacher Education, Sheryl V. Taylor, Donna M. Sobel

Essays in Education

While a substantial amount of research has been conducted on the effects of various teacher education programs to prepare teachers for multicultural, multilingual, inclusive classrooms, very little of it examines the impact of multicultural, inclusive teacher education on how pre- and inservice teachers actually teach children in the classroom. Few researchers have followed teachers into the classroom to find out if or what “carry over” exists from multicultural teacher education (Sleeter, 2001). Even if teachers show growth through their course work and learning experiences in multicultural education, what evidence is there that they are or are becoming strong teachers in …