Fire in the Classroom: Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and the Craft of Teaching explores important avenues for teachers to become better at the craft of teaching by improving their skills and understanding in areas such as utilizing experiential learning, becoming more adept at improvisation, addressing all learning styles of students, recognizing and acting upon the teachable moment, developing and delivering engaging lectures, and effectively incorporating outside speakers in their courses. This book emphasizes the necessity for teachers to create classrooms that ignite a desire to learn and a willingness to be taught amongst all their students. Fire in the Classroom ultimately shows teachers and their students how to think more creatively and act more entrepreneurially. It provides the know-how, techniques, and activities that enable teachers to enhance their teaching abilities and renew their joy in teaching. With insightful observations, compelling stories, and specific curriculum recommendations, this book serves as a guide to make the learning process for both teachers and their students more engaging, interactive, and exciting.

This book traces the origins and activities of the longest-standing collaborative teacher group in education, the Portfolio Group. Each chapter documents, historically and conceptually, the main intellectual moments in the evolution of the idea of knowledge communities. Authors illuminate the expansive work, research, and the leading/learning influence that the Portfolio Group has had in the local education community as well as on the international education landscape. In doing so, they illustrate the journey of a school-based, cross-institutional knowledge community and provide the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel for so many novice and newly formed groups seeking sustainability. The book demonstrates through the shared experiences of five teachers/teacher educators the ways in which varied collaborations aimed at professional development lead to teacher growth in practice, leadership, and career.

Digital Learning in High-Needs Schools examines the challenges and affordances that arise when high-needs school communities integrate educational technologies into their unique settings. Although remote, blended, and networked learning are ubiquitous today, a number of cultural, economic, and political realities-from the digital divide and digital literacy to poverty and language barriers-affect our most vulnerable and under-resourced teachers and students. This book uses critical theory to compassionately scrutinize and unpack the systemic issues that impact high-needs schools' implementation of digital learning tools. Incisive sociocultural analyses across fifteen original chapters explore the intersection of society, technology, people, politics, and education in high-needs school contexts. Informed by real-world cases pertaining to technology infrastructure, formative feedback, Universal Design for Learning, and more, these chapters illuminate how best practices emerge from culturally responsive and context-specific foundations.

This book supports teacher educators, teachers, coaches, administrators, math-ed faculty, and researchers in understanding and using the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) Framework to improve instruction. Detailed case studies take readers on deep dives into five essential dimensions of classroom practice: The Mathematics, Cognitive Demand, Equitable Access, Agency, Ownership, and Identity, and Formative Assessment. Three case studies form the core of the book. Each case uses the TRU framework to pose conversational questions to the reader on different aspects of the lessons, focusing on the ways that students are led to engage with mathematics and how they make sense of it. These include "What's important in this classroom episode?," "What might students be experiencing?," or "What might the impact of alternative teaching decisions have been in this situation?". The book concludes with guides for planning, observation, and reflection that readers can use in their own work, continuing the journey toward the ambitious and equitable instruction that each case study describes. This book will support all mathematics educators in developing deeper understandings of mathematics classrooms and in problematizing their own mathematics instruction. By exploring the challenges students face, the decisions teachers make, and the ways that students learn, readers will experience TRU as a powerful way of thinking about instruction - one that can shape lesson planning and reflection and make teaching more impactful and equitable.

This volume documents on-going research and theorising in the sub-field of mathematics education devoted to the teaching and learning of mathematical modelling and applications. Mathematical modelling provides a way of conceiving and resolving problems in people's everyday lives as well as sophisticated new problems for society at large. Mathematical modelling and real world applications are considered as having potential for cultivating sense making in classroom settings. This book focuses on the educational perspective, researching the complexities encountered in effective teaching and learning of real world modelling and applications for sense making is only beginning. All authors of this volume are members of the International Community of Teachers of Mathematical Modelling (ICTMA), the peak research body into researching the teaching and learning of mathematical modelling at all levels of education from the early years to tertiary education as well as in the workplace.

Teachers are now expected to use technology to enhance students' learning, but what does this mean in the classroom and how can you apply it effectively to subject teaching? This book, for pre-service and qualified teachers, offers you a guide for using technology in primary and secondary schools, including how to decide which technology resource to use, safeguarding and ethical considerations and computer coding in the classroom. Further guidance is provided on using technology across the learning areas of literacy, mathematics, STEM and the arts. Key features include: * Classroom scenarios which tackle common challenges faced by teachers and how to resolve them * Examples of best practice technology use in early childhood settings, primary and secondary classrooms * A future-proofed approach focusing on theory-informed best practice in an ever-changing world of devices and software Essential reading for pre-service teacher education students in both primary and secondary education courses on undergraduate and postgraduate routes into teaching and for qualified teachers looking to deepen their professional knowledge. Joanne Blannin is Senior Lecturer in Digital Transformations at Monash University.

This edited volume explores how Chinese school-based educators learn from others and attain awareness in dialogue with the world in an era of increasing globalization and information exchange. Minzhu Primary School in Shanghai, China, and Bay Street School in Toronto, Canada, have been connected as sister schools of cross-cultural exchange since 2008. Together, they have explored ways to reciprocally learn in a cross-cultural partnership while remaining grounded in their home culture and language. In this book, chapter authors examine how Chinese school-based educators view themselves, understand others, and grow and develop as a consequence of a decade of cross-cultural reciprocal learning as sister schools. Further, the authors discuss prospects for future educational interactions between Canada and China.

The purpose of this book is to not only persuade leaders that action research is leadership, but that leadership can be more deliberate in promoting human dignity when leaders engage in a reflective process of continuous improvement. An action research frame of mind is the impetus for efforts toward continuous improvement -- dissatisfaction with what is the beginning of improvement! The caveat is that leadership is not a position, leadership is action. Those who want to make their work better, their service better, their clients, customers, stakeholders, children, or students better -- are leaders, with or without a bureaucratic or hierarchical position. Professional leadership, executive leadership, company leadership, and everyday leadership requires action and reflection on those actions to determine the effectiveness of the continuous improvement process. The rationale for this book is to provide leaders at all levels with a framework that progresses through six steps of action and research from considering the challenge faced by the leader within an organization to reflecting on the improvement and next steps to continue the improvement process - thus Leading Up: From Problem to Possibility.

This book is designed for all K-12 educators and teacher preparation faculty. Reading this book is like being in the room with 30 teacher mentors from different grade-levels and school settings who are sharing strategies for: (1) building and maintaining a positive classroom climate; (2) planning; (3) instruction; and (4) professional development. Discover step-by-step breakdowns of how to implement each strategy as well as professional reflections from contributors representing two different grade-levels and a range of suburban and urban settings from all over the globe. Education students and novice teachers will learn from the in-depth descriptions of how to implement each strategy. Veteran teachers will be inspired by contributing teachers' professional reflection regarding why and how they utilize each strategy. Readers in ALL school contexts will benefit from narrative descriptions of each strategy in action, which bring to life the ways that the strategies have made an impact on student learning and teacher development. The adaptations modeled throughout the book, based on students' and schools' assets and needs, help readers to think about how to make each strategy a good fit for their unique classroom. If you are looking for practical ideas from the field, look no further - this is a book designed to build your teaching toolbox with strategies that you will use for years to come.

This edited volume brings together diverse thinkers and practitioners from the field of teaching and teacher education as it pertains to educational development in South Asia. In this volume, authors draw from their research, practice, and field experiences, showcasing how teaching and teacher education are currently being carried out, understood, theorized, debated, and implemented for the education of children and teachers alike in South Asia. The volume also includes practitioner voices, which are often marginalized in academic discourse. This book acts as a key reference text for academics and practitioners interested in the intersection of education and development in the region, and in particular what it takes to pull off ambitious teaching and teacher education in South Asia.

This book explores emerging practices in distance education that have been facilitated by the development of educational technology. The volume examines core themes in distance education including online education at scale, embodiment in online environments, connectivity in online education and the personalisation of learning experiences within online education. The first section of the book examines online teaching tools, and explores how they are being used to enhance and promote student learning. The second looks at some of the broader challenges encountered by online teachers and those responsible for designing online learning material. While this volume will be of significant interest to distance learning universities and colleges, it will also be a valuable resource to traditional Higher Education Institutions, who are increasingly searching for innovative ways to reach and teach their students. This edited collection will be of value to scholars of online education as well as practitioners and policy makers looking to enrich their notions of online pedagogy.

This book details the findings of a small-scale research study on the use of real-time coaching in pre-service teacher education, founded upon the nexus of teacher education, mentoring, immediate feedback, teacher effectiveness, technology-enhanced learning and innovative approaches to developing better teaching practices. The book includes a robust literature review summarizing the scholarship on coaching models used in teacher education. The authors explore how real-time coaching, as a specific approach, has the potential to address persistent problems in teacher education and early career teacher performance in the areas of teachers' growth mindset, teacher resilience and disjuncture in applying theory to practice. The scholarship allows readers to gain a better understanding of the history of coaching in teacher training, and the capacity of real-time coaching, specifically, in pre-service teacher training told through the words of participants.

Taking a dialogic approach, this edited book engages in analysis and description of dialogic discourse in a number of different educational contexts, from early childhood to tertiary, with an international team of contributors from Australia, Finland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The chapters focus mostly on dialogic face-to-face discourse, with some examples of online interactions, and feature insights from educational linguistics, particularly the work of Michael Halliday. While the contributors come from a range of theoretical backgrounds, they all share an interest in language in use, and engage in close analysis of transcripts of naturally-occurring interaction. Taking inspiration from Alexander and other theorists, they employ a fine-grained and analytic approach to the exploration of their data. The authors make use of the linguistic tools and models of language in society, in order to examine the turn-by-turn unfolding of the interaction. The authors relate their insights from disparate forms of linguistic analysis to elements of Alexander's (2020) dialogic framework, situating the discourse in its contexts and discussing the pedagogical implications of the linguistic choices at play. In presenting this work from a range of situations and perspectives the authors strive to demonstrate how dialogic discourse plays out in educational contexts across the world. The book aims to foster further research in this direction and to inspire educators to explore dialogic discourse for themselves. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including literacy researchers, linguists, teachers and teacher educators, as well as graduate students.

Educational leaders, researchers, and community members have found collaborating on research supports improvement in their schools, districts, and the wider community - but how do we go about developing these partnerships? With essential tools, frameworks, and tips for brokering in research-practice partnerships (RPPs), this practical book provides guidance on cultivating and sustaining impactful relationships and supportive infrastructure with partners. Through the careful brokering of these partnerships, RPP brokers can bridge the gap between education research and practice, bringing people together to build a more equitable educational system. Written by RPP leaders, researchers, and professionals, this handbook explores how brokering can: Support the production and use of partnership research Develop and nurture meaningful relationships, even in the face of challenging circumstances Build individual competencies to manage an RPP and strengthen the partnership Develop partnership governance Implement effective administrative structures Design processes and communications routines Assess and continuously improve the partnership This is an essential read for any educational leader, higher education faculty, researcher, or other community member who wants to understand the types of activities and responsibilities required of an RPP broker and the strategies to become an effective broker of RPPs aimed at educational improvement and equitable transformation.

This book examines continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers in Finland. As one of the best-performing countries in terms of education, the Finnish education system is often revered and held up as an example to follow. However, the authors argue that CPD actually constitutes the Achilles' heel of this 'miraculous' system, demonstrating that in fact it is a victim of contradictory discourses and actions among decision-makers, teacher educators and practitioners. Including extensive interviews from CPD providers, teachers and other educational actors, the authors critically discuss the 'wonders' of Finnish education, in the process debunking various myths created both inside and outside Finland. The authors also call for a new approach to comparative and international education. Based on over 20 years of experience in Finnish education, this pioneering book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of Finnish education, continuing professional development and international education branding more generally.

Coteaching is two or more teachers teaching together, sharing responsibility for meeting the learning needs of students and, at the same time, learning from each other. Working as collaborators on every aspect of instruction, coteachers plan, teach and evaluate lessons together. Over the past decade, because coteaching can be highly beneficial to both students and teachers it has become an increasingly important element of science teacher education and is expanding into other content areas and educational settings. This edited book brings together ten years' work on the research and the practice of coteaching and its impact on teaching and learning, predominantly in the sciences. It includes contributions from Europe, United States and Australia and presents an doverview of theory and practice common to most studies.

This book addresses the current issues of inclusive education during the time of the global pandemic of COVID-19. It offers inclusive pedagogical strategies and approaches for teachers and instructors to cater for the diverse learning needs of children in the midst of the pandemic. The work explores different ways in which students in different contexts across the globe are being accommodated and shows how inclusion is being implemented. It draws on a range of theoretical frameworks and research projects to provide multiple perspectives on inclusive pedagogical practices.

This book provides a practical and theoretical look at how media education can make learning and teaching more meaningful and transformative. This second edition includes more resources, photographs, and updated information as well as two new chapters: one exploring the pedagogical potential for using photography in the classroom and the other documenting a successful university course on critical media literacy for new teachers. The book explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and analyzes a case study involving an elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. Combining cultural studies with critical pedagogy, critical media literacy aims to expand the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication, information communication technologies, and popular culture, as well as deepen the potential of education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information, and power. This book is a valuable addition to any education course or teacher preparation program that wants to promote twenty-first century literacy skills, social justice, civic participation, media education, or critical uses of technology. Communications classes will also find it useful as it explores and applies key concepts of cultural studies and media education.

In 2007, the Monash-Kings College London International Centre for the Study of Science and Mathematics Curriculum edited a book called The Re-emergence of Values in Science Education. This book reflects on how values have been considered since this original publication, particularly in terms of socio-cultural, economic and political factors that have impacted broadly on science, technology and society, and more specifically on informal and formal science curricula. Hence, the title of this book has been framed as Values in Science Education: The shifting sands. As in the first book, this collection focuses on values that are centrally associated with science and its teaching, and not the more general notion of values such as cooperation or teamwork that are also important values in current curricula. Such values have indeed become more of a focus in science education. This may be a response to the changing global context, where technological changes have been rapid and accelerating. In such complex and risky environments, it is our guiding principles that become the important mainstays of our decisions and practices. In terms of science education, what is becoming clearer is that traditional content and traditional science and scientific methods are not enough for science and hence science education to meet such challenges. While shifts in values in science education continue, tensions remain in curriculum development and implementation, as evidenced by the continued diversity of views about what and whose values matter most.

How can you shift from a focus on content to the creation of active learning experiences? In this practical resource, author Jason Kennedy provides a blueprint to help you stop "teaching" and start designing learning, so you can improve students' critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and collaboration with others, preparing them for their futures beyond school doors. The framework for learning design covers components of planning (learning targets), of instruction (the opening, learning task, skills, tools, and success criteria), and of the work session (choices, pathways, feedback, and assessment). Appropriate for teachers of any subject area, the book also offers wide variety of tools to help you implement the ideas in your own setting.

Written in a clear and accessible style, this book presents a wealth of practical information to guide the next generation of educational and developmental psychologists in Australia and New Zealand in pursuing a career in the field. There are over 800 educational and developmental psychologists in Australia, and over 200 educational psychologists in New Zealand, who represent a diverse workforce. Pathways to becoming an educational and developmental psychologist have seen rapid shifts with updated key competencies that prospective educational and developmental psychologists need to be aware of. This book gives the reader a comprehensive understanding of what makes an educational and developmental psychologist and outlines seven steps required to become an endorsed educational and developmental psychologist. Specifically, it offers guidance on understanding the role and its history, tertiary study requirements, registration requirements, professional competencies, skills and attributes needed, work experience, professional associations and member groups, endorsement and supervision requirements, finding work, and starting work. With a primary focus on Australia, each chapter also features a section on the career in New Zealand, with a variety of psychologists sharing their expertise and reflections from their experiences in New Zealand. This resource is essential reading for students, provisional psychologists, and practising psychologists. At the same time, it provides insights for other educational and health professionals who may work multi-, inter-, or transdisciplinary with educational and developmental psychologists.

This book analyzes stories of university early childhood faculty members, community activists in southern California, and children and the early childhood teacher education students working with them. The grounding of this research is reconceptualization of postmodern narrative theoretical influences. Through narrative inquiry, the book connects ongoing research to ongoing pedagogy. It explores the following research questions: (1) How do learners across generations create, build upon, and reinvent each other's stories to make new meanings through consideration of family history, multigenerational knowledge, and experiences?; (2) How do learners' stories offer new possibilities through leadership that connects Global South knowledge with Global North contexts?; (3) In what ways is it possible to use this framework and methodology in Higher Education to promote systemic consistency in promoting social justice that is generatively inclusive? More than half of the research participants have truly lived bi-culturally, many of the children in the early care and education programs in the USA are from Mexico and Central America. These collaborators truly carry their roots with them as they strive for justice and authenticity in early childhood teacher education and community activists working with families and children.

This edited volume presents the current state of the art of genetics education and the challenges it holds for teaching as well as for learning. It addresses topics such as how genetics should be taught in order to provide students with a wide and connected view of the field. It gives in-depth aspects that should be considered for teaching genetics and the effect on the student's understanding. This book provides novel ideas for biology teachers, curriculum developers and researchers on how to confront the presented challenges in a way that may enable them to advance genetics education in the 21st century. It reviews the complexity of teaching and learning genetics, largely overlooked by biology textbooks and classroom instruction. It composes a crucial component of scientific literacy.

As educational standards continue to transform, it has become essential for educators and pre-service teachers to receive the support and training necessary to effectively instruct their students and meet societal expectations. However, there is not a clear consensus on what constitutes teacher effectiveness and quality within the education realm. The Handbook of Research on Professional Development for Quality Teaching and Learning provides theoretical perspectives and empirical research on educator preparation and methods for enhancing the teaching process. Focusing on teacher effectiveness and support provided to current and pre-service educators, this publication is a comprehensive reference source for practitioners, researchers, policy makers, graduate students, and university faculty.

Society today is fragmented. There are frequent examples of harsh and abrasive discourse in social, employment, personal, and political settings. Name-calling, conceit, and vulgarity are frequently used in social media, and other forms of social interaction and discussion. Communication is a critical issue in today's society. We live in a technological time with the means to easily contact people. However, the quality and effectiveness of communication is problematic: real connections with others require understanding and insight into them and their thinking. That is the purpose of true communication. Individuals must understand the content and intent of communication. The missing link in quality and effective communication is listening. Everyone wants to be heard, but they fail to realize that all parties must listen. Listening is an essential skill and is more than simply hearing. Communication is essential in all facets of life because it concerns not only the physical process of talking and listening, but also emotional and psychological concerns and ethics. The nature of the conversation brings expectations and either opens or closes doors to further communication.