Education Commons^™

Tenure Wars: The Litigation Continues, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Teacher tenure is a controversial topic that continues to generate litigation. Parents and advocates of educational reform have filed claims alleging, in part, that school officials violate the rights of students who are not achieving academically largely because of the ineffective instruction the students receive from teachers.

Typically, these suits also claim that conditions in districts where students perform poorly on academic measures are exacerbated by the protection that state tenure laws—in conjunction with union efforts—afford ineffective teachers, thereby making it difficult to dismiss the teachers for incompetence.

In North Carolina Association of Educators v. State (2016), a North Carolina …

"Designerly" Ways Of Reading: Insights From Reader Response In Drama For Enriching The "A" In Language Arts, Treavor Bogard

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

In this interpretive case study of reader response in drama, a drama troupe is the context for illuminating how young actors read in "designerly" ways; that is, how their reading processes facilitated constructive, solution-focused thinking in their development of characterizations. By examining the nature of reader response in the drama troupe, I hope to help educators understand how design thinking occurred as an aesthetic reading practice and consider ways in which design thinking can be cultivated in the language arts classroom. I argue that design thinking inspires the young to engage the imagination, practice teamwork, and take risks as they …

Socialization To Academic Language In A Kindergarten Classroom, Colleen E. Gallagher

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Recognizing the importance of academic language for students’ success in schools, this article reports on an investigation of how narrative-focused literacy events in the classroom provide opportunities for academic language socialization. Data were collected from one public elementary school in a major metropolitan area in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Participants include an intact kindergarten class of 16 students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their teacher. The results of the investigation revealed that sharing time provides opportunities for socialization to academic register through: (1) requiring that students successfully navigate the academic language demands of the interaction, …

Consistency And Change: Becoming A Literacy Leader In An Urban School, Jackie Marshall Arnold, Mary-Kate Sableski

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

An effective urban literacy teacher is one who can weather the storm of change. Remaining committed to one’s students despite the challenges that an urban environment brings is a key element in facilitating student literacy improvement. In this article we present a case study of one teacher who participated in our three year professional development initiative to improve literacy practices in urban schools. We discuss the qualities that she possessed that helped her to persist through the pains of change to impact student learning, and how these qualities should be fostered in urban school teachers to improve achievement.