Teacher Education and Administration

Questioning everything in the environment, from the bottom up, is an important task for teachers. We cannot necessarily change it all but we can certainly become aware of the messages, the hidden as well as the obvious, the commonplace as well as the gaudy. We can peel the cover back a bit, peek underground, disclose the undisclosed—at least for ourselves. And in telling what is untold, we can become stronger in shaping our own environments, until they become places that more fully reflect what we know and value.

Critics of the No Child Left Behind Act have tended to focus their attacks on such issues as the heavy-handed requirements for accountability and" high-stakes" testing, the intrusion of the federal government into states' rights and responsibilities in educational decision-making, and the absence of federal funding to help states in meeting the NCLB requirements of this legislation. In this chapter we focus attention on teacher education, a topic that has received far less attention in the public arena discourse but is no less critical ...

Innovation and change are at the heart of educational movements to reform and improve the education of all students. Students who struggle with literacy and mathematics face severe academic challenges early in life and possible economic inequity in adulthood. In this introduction, we situate the growing body of literature referred to as coaching—or sustained classroom-based support from a qualified and knowledgeable individual who models research-based strategies and explores with teachers how to incorporate these practices ...

Abstract Part of what is required of readings in an online environment is the ability to comprehend at very high levels. Reading in an online environment requires processing strategies from low level word recognition to higher level meaning constructions and critical literacy strategies. Strategic readers of electronic texts must also adapt to another change in comprehension processes-one that focuses on conducting research. These changes in text processing hold important implications for what it means to be a strategic reader of both ...

STUDENTS OF HISTORICAL research beware: While the Internet is an excellent source of information, personal information about someone you are researching often cannot be located there. Such was the case with my search for information on Arthur Irving Gates to find who he was and what he contributed to the field of reading. Being an avid user of the Internet, I began my search on Gates there to see what the larger community knew and thought

The texts used for beginning reading instruction have changed in remarkable ways over the last half of the 20th century Traditional “Look-Say” basal texts, challenged by literature-based advocates of the 1980s and early 1990s, gave way to literature-based anthologies. Challenged by phonics advocates in the mid-1990s, these “real literature” texts soon yielded to more “decodable” texts (see Hoffman, Sailors, & Patterson, 2002). Caught in the middle of these changes were (and are) the teachers and students who come daily to schools to ...