Improving Teaching and Learning In the Core Curriculum


Book Description

How can teachers respond creatively to the demands of the literacy and numeracy hours? Can children be taught to behave like scientists? How can teachers remain reflective and independent during this period of government direction?




Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education


Book Description

In Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education, Pam Grossman and her colleagues advocate an approach to practice-based teacher education that identifies “core practices” of teaching and supports novice teachers in learning how to enact them competently. Examples of core practices include facilitating whole-class discussion, eliciting student thinking, and maintaining classroom norms. The contributors argue that teacher education needs to do more to help teachers master these professional skills, rather than simply emphasizing content knowledge. Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education outlines a series of pedagogies that teacher educators can use to help preservice students develop these teaching skills. Pedagogies include representations of practice (ways to show what this skill looks like and break it down into its component parts) and approximations of practice (the ways preservice teachers can try these skills out as they learn). Vignettes throughout the book illustrate how core practices can be incorporated into the teacher education curriculum. The book draws on the work of a consortium of teacher educators from thirteen universities devoted to describing and enacting pedagogies to help novice teachers develop these core practices in support of ambitious and equitable instruction. Their aim is to support teacher educator learning across institutions, content domains, and grade levels. The book also addresses efforts to support teacher learning outside formal teacher education programs. Contributors Chandra L. Alston Andrea Bien Janet Carlson Ashley Cartun Katie A. Danielson Elizabeth A. Davis Christopher G. Pupik Dean Brad Fogo Megan Franke Hala Ghousseini Lightning Peter Jay Sarah Schneider Kavanagh Elham Kazemi Megan Kelley-Petersen Matthew Kloser Sarah McGrew Chauncey Monte-Sano Abby Reisman Melissa A. Scheve Kristine M. Schutz Meghan Shaughnessy Andrea Wells




Learning to Improve


Book Description

As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than “implementing fast and learning slow,” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to “learn fast to implement well.” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation’s schools and colleges.




ECC Essentials


Book Description

ECC Essentials: Teaching the Expanded Core Curriculum to Students with Visual Impairments is the first comprehensive book for teachers of students with visual impairments to focus on the nine areas of the ECC that encompass the unique skills children and adolescents with visual impairments need to learn in order to access the core educational curriculum and become independent individuals, by providing the rationale, suggestions, and strategies necessary to implement instruction. The nine areas include compensatory access, sensory efficiency, assistive technology, orientation and mobility, independent living, social interaction, recreation and leisure, career education, and self-determination. ECC Essentials helps teachers manage time efficiently and effectively; work with students of different ages and ability levels; collaborate with parents and other members of the educational team; conduct assessments; align instruction with state standards and the general education core curriculum; and maximize planning effectiveness. The book includes learning activities that combine several areas of the ECC; information about additional resources; specific guidelines and strategies for teaching each of the nine areas of the ECC. ECC Essentials provides teachers with a road map for helping their students achieve success in school and in life.




Core Practices for Project-Based Learning


Book Description

Core Practices for Project-Based Learning offers a framework and essential set of strategies for successfully implementing project-based learning (PBL) in the classroom. Centering on teaching practice, this work moves beyond project planning to focus on the complex instructional demands of the student-centered PBL approach. Pam Grossman and her colleagues draw on their research with teachers, educational leaders, and curriculum designers to identify the instructional goals, practices, and mindsets that enable educators to effectively facilitate deep learning in PBL environments. The authors first define the four primary teaching goals of the PBL model: supporting subject-area learning, engaging students in authentic work, encouraging student collaboration and agency, and building an iterative culture where students are always prototyping, reflecting, and trying again. They then equip educators with ten key practices that serve these goals. These practices include methods to elicit higher-order thinking, engage students in disciplinary and interdisciplinary practice, and mentor student decision making. The authors guide educators from a clear starting place through a series of concrete, manageable steps that apply whether they are initiating PBL or working to improve the quality of existing PBL implementation. Extended case studies illustrate the use of the core practices in real-world situations. Core Practices for Project-Based Learning is an invaluable resource to help educators realize their instructional vision and create meaningful student experiences.




Instructional Rounds in Education


Book Description

Instructional Rounds in Education is intended to help education leaders and practitioners develop a shared understanding of what high-quality instruction looks like and what schools and districts need to do to support it. Walk into any school in America and you will see adults who care deeply about their students and are doing the best they can every day to help students learn. But you will also see a high degree of variability among classrooms--much higher than in most other industrialized countries. Today we are asking schools to do something they have never done before--educate all students to high levels--yet we don't know how to do that in every classroom for every child. Inspired by the medical-rounds model used by physicians, the authors have pioneered a new form of professional learning known as instructional rounds networks. Through this process, educators develop a shared practice of observing, discussing, and analyzing learning and teaching.




InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards


Book Description

These new model core teaching standards outline what all teachers across all content and grade levels should know and be able to do to be effective in today's learning contexts. They are a revision of the 1992 model standards, in response to the need for a new vision of teaching to meet the needs of next generation learners. This document incorporates changes from a public feedback period in July 2010.




Improving Teaching, Learning, Equity, and Success in Gateway Courses


Book Description

As long as there have been U. S. colleges and universities, there have been entry courses that pose difficulties for students – courses that have served more as weeding-out rather than gearing-up experiences for undergraduates. This volume makes the case that the weed-out dynamic is no longer acceptable – if it ever was. Contemporary postsecondary education is characterized by vastly expanded access for historically underserved populations of students, and this new level of access is coupled withincreased scrutiny of retention and graduation outcomes. Chapters in this volume define and explore issues in gateway courses and provide various examples of how to improve teaching, learning and outcomes in these foundational components of the undergraduateexperience. This is the 180th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Higher Education. Addressed to presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, it provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.




Driven by Data


Book Description

Offers a practical guide for improving schools dramatically that will enable all students from all backgrounds to achieve at high levels. Includes assessment forms, an index, and a DVD.




Primary Subject Knowledge and the Core Curriculum


Book Description

This bespoke ebook compilation is focused on primary subject knowledge and in particular the core curriculum areas of English and mathematics. It has been produced in order to address workload concerns and to offer additional but focused support by presenting a collection of helpful chapters from a wide range of texts to support your learning effectively and ensure that you continue to grow your knowledge base, develop your learning, and enjoy exploring and researching a wide range of topics in a supportive and accessible way. It takes key chapters from a range of popular educational texts. Each chapter has deliberately been kept in its original format so that you become familiar with a variety of styles and approaches as you progress your studies.