Book Description

Dynamics of Effective Secondary Teaching integrates theory and research with current classroom practice to help future and in-service secondary teachers make instructional and management decisions for the purpose of improving instruction. Realistic scenarios, numerous examples and illustrations from all subject areas, classroom observation forms, and valuable websites are what makes this text so practical, providing preservice teachers a direct link to classroom practice. As with previous editions, the major feature of this book is the authors' emphasis on decision-making as the thread that links all the topics together. Decision-making is introduced in Chapter 1 as a process fundamental to educators and is revisited to enforce the application in each chapter. The authors' view of decision-making considers it from a constructivist view of teaching and learning based on reflection and "meaning making." Unique to this book is the inclusion in each chapter of a scenario in which a middle or secondary school teacher, representing a wide range of subject areas and grade levels, applies key ideas to the classroom. These scenarios, which appear near the beginning of each chapter, are referred to and analyzed throughout the chapter to provide a running commentary on the theoretical content being presented.