Classroom Reform Research Articles

Be Masters in That You Teach and Continue to Learn: Medieval Muslim Thinkers on Educational Theory

Be Masters in That You Teach and Continue to Learn: Medieval Muslim Thinkers on Educational Theory

Curriculum Reform and New Practices in Classrooms and Teacher Courses

Curriculum Reform and New Practices in Classrooms and Teacher Courses

Powerful Learning Environments: The Critical Link Between School and Classroom Cultures

Schools serving large populations of students placed at risk have been the focus of reform for over a decade, with the assumption that school reform leads to classroom reform, resulting in improved student achievement. Student achievement data at the school level are typically used to judge the effectiveness of the reform. This practice assumes uniformity of implementation within the school. This study of classrooms within 4 Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) schools operationalizes the ASP principles, values, and concepts of powerful learning at the classroom level. Together, they form what is called a powerful learning environment (PLE). In addition, the study examines the extent to which PLE is implemented similarly in different classrooms and different schools, and analyzes the relation between degree of implementation and differences in student achievement. Data collection involved structured observations in 40 classrooms during English and language arts or mathematics instruction. Analysis of data indicates that more variation in implementation of PLE occurred within schools than between schools. The study also finds a correlation between degree of implementation and higher student achievement.

Culture and Classroom Reform: The case of the District Primary Education Project, India

Reform in teaching and learning forms one of the basic dimensions of educational reform. This study explores the impact of the reform process on teacher thinking and classroom practice in the multi-donor supported District Primary Education Project in Karnataka, India. Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, a variety of aspects dealing with teaching and learning are examined in order to understand the extent to which changes are taking place in the classroom. The study analyses the impact of four cultural constructs, which frame teaching and learning in India: holism as a shared worldview that encourages openness to regulation; the hierarchical structure as a regulative social framework; knowledge as discovered and attested collectively; and the 'sense of duty' that defines the role of the teacher (and student). The conclusion of the study is that while there are observable changes in the classroom in the use of instructional aids and activities during instruction, the essential characteristics of traditional practice, namely rote and repetition has not changed. Both teachers' openness and resistance to reform are portrayed as embedded in the cultural construction of teaching and learning.

Educational Reform, Personal Practical Theories, and Dissatisfaction: The Anatomy of Change in College Science Teaching

The Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model (TCSR) recognizes teaching context, teacher characteristics, teacher thinking, and their interactions as influential factors in attempts to implement classroom reform. Using the TCSR model, teachers’ personal practical theories, and conceptual change as a framework, the authors of this article studied three college science faculty members as they designed and implemented an integrated, inquiry-based science course. The documentation and analysis of context, instructors’ knowledge and beliefs, and teaching episodes allowed the authors to identify and study the interaction of factors, including grant support, that shape reform attempts. The results suggest that grant-supported mitigation of structural barriers is a necessary but insufficient precursor to change and that personal practical theories are the most powerful influence on instructional practice. The findings highlight the critical role of pedagogical and contextual dissatisfaction in creating a context for fundamental change.

Curriculum Development and Instructional Design in the Effective Schools Process

Ms. March and Ms. Peters describe a three-year, six-district demonstration project that is proving to be one of the most exciting examples of curricular development in the long history of the Effective Schools movement. A SIGNIFICANT number of school districts that adopted the Effective Schools Process for school improvement successfully managed to reinvent their infrastructures, only to realize that they had changed little or nothing in their classroom instruction or assessment. Many districts assumed that if they purchased a highly touted curriculum process or a cutting-edge instructional delivery system, these areas would automatically improve. But, following the initial fanfare, the reforms were never actually implemented in every classroom. Rarely was a building administrator held accountable for involving every teacher in the reform initiative. Even worse, most districts made few provisions to conduct formative monitoring of the impact of their reform efforts on student performance. Instead, they passively allowed the results of the state test to indicate their level of success. As experienced Effective Schools researchers who have led the Center for Educational Leadership Services at Kent State University for more than a decade, we realized that this was the situation we were finding when we looked at the state of Effective Schools reform in Ohio. In response, we developed the Instructional Design process to help school districts actually restructure the delivery and assessment of classroom instruction and to monitor the impact of these changes on student performance. The three-year, six-district demonstration project that has grown from this work is proving to be one of the most exciting examples of curricular development in the long history of the Effective Schools movement. Based on the findings of the first- and second-wave school reform efforts and on best practices research, Instructional Design and its data management system (dubbed ADAM - Academic Data Analysis and Management) were specifically designed to be used in conjunction with the Effective Schools Process. In 1999, Instructional Design was published in book form by Phi Delta Kappa International as Developing High-Performance Schools: Instructional Redesign for Learner-Centered Classroom Reform. Between 1997 and 2000, Instructional Design was piloted in two urban, two suburban, and two rural Ohio school districts whose boards of education had passed resolutions adopting the Effective Schools Process. During this three-year demonstration project, teams of teachers and administrators in each of the six districts have taken a number of actions. * These teams have translated the national and state content standards into academic performance indicators, developmentally articulated from prekindergarten to grade 12, and these indicators were adopted by each local board of education as the official achievement targets for the district. Because they drive the entire instructional program, these indicators affect all decisions, from the purchase of materials and equipment to course scheduling to professional development. * They have developed yearlong curriculum maps for each subject and each grade level that sequence the topics, process, skills, and materials needed to help every student master the performance indicators by the end of each school year. Students who fail to master indicators in one year have an opportunity to do so in the following years. * They have devised unit plans to guide the delivery and assessment of classroom instruction, and these plans specify teaching and assessment techniques that are congruent with unit objectives (some of which are performance indicators). The plans also incorporate such best practices as constructivism, active student involvement, the use of multiple modalities, authentic instruction, and performance assessments. * In two of the districts, the teams have piloted ADAM, an electronic system for data management that enables teachers to monitor student mastery. …

Chapter X: Hedging Bets: Standards-based Reform in Classrooms1

Chapter X: Hedging Bets: Standards-based Reform in Classrooms¹

Mathematics textbooks and their use in English, French and German classrooms:

After a through review of the relevant literature in terms of textbook analysis and mathematics teachers' user of textbooks in school contexts, this paper reports on selected and early findings from a study of mathematics textbooks and their use in English, French and German mathematics classrooms at lower secondary level. The research reviewed in the literature section raises important questions about textbooks as representations of the curriculum and about their role as a link between curriculum and pedagogy. Teachers, in tunr, appear to exercise control over the curriculum as it is enacted by using texts in the service of their own perceptions of teaching and learning. The second and main part of the paper analyses the ways in which textbooks vary and are used by teachers in classroom contexts and how this influences the culture of the mathematics classroom. The findings of the research demonstrate that classroom cultures are shaped by at least two factors: teachers' pedagogic principles in their immediate school and classroom context; and a system's educational and cultural traditions as they develop over time. It is argued that mathematics classroom cultures need to be understood in terms of a wider cultural and systemic context, in order for shared understandings, principles and meanings to be established, whether for promotion of classroom reform or simply for developing a better understanding of this vital component of the mathematics education process.

Studying Schools, Studying Ourselves: Ethnographic Perspectives on Educational Reform:Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools.;How It Works: Inside a School-College Collaboration.;Studying Your Own School: An Educator's Guide to Qualitative Practitioner Research.

Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. 319 pp. How It Works: Inside. School-College Collaboration. Sidney Trubowitz and Paul Longo. New York: Teachers College Press, 1997. 172 pp. Studying Your Own School: An Educator's Guide to Qualitative Practitioner Research. Gary L. Anderson. Kathryn Herr. and Ann Sigrid Nihlen. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1994. 203 pp.

The InstitutionS of Education: Compare, Compare, Compare!

L'auteur se livre ici a une reflexion personnelle sur les institutions de l'education et sur ce que peut et devrait etre le champ qui mene a l'etude de l'education contemporaine, mais revient aussi sur son experience et ses rencontres personnelles avant de se lancer dans un historique comparatif.

A SCHOOL-WIDE COMPONENT TO ADDRESS BARRIERS TO LEARNING

In the first article, we focused on classroom reforms. Here, we move to a school wide perspective to explore the mulitfaceted interventions schools must evolve if they are to make significant headway in addressing barriers to learning. Specifically, we review how schools currently address barriers to learning, discuss deficiencies in current approaches, and outline work designed to provide a new conceptual and programmatic framework for policy and practice, emphasizing school-wide approaches and weaving together school-community resources.

Classroom reform five years down the track: The experiences of two teachers

This case study research investigated changing teacher roles associated with two teachers’ use of innovative mathematics materials at Grade Six level, in a setting which contained all the ideal ingredients for professional growth. Participant observation and interviews with the teachers over a seven-month period early in the use of the innovative materials and for a brief time five years later provided a picture of changing teacher roles, but also a sense of issues that had emerged. or persisted in the longer term. The greatest changes in these teachers’ roles (in the short and long term) related to increasing comfort with posing non-routine problems to students and allowing them to struggle together, and the provision of structured opportunities for student reflection upon activities and learning. However, little change was evident over the five year period in the teachers’ use of assessment practices or in their articulation of the “big ideas” of mathematics in the middle school years.

Bridging the gap: Teachers, science, and technology

This article reports an effort to implement reform in elementary science classrooms. A biology professor and a science education professor created and co-taught a course entitled SCI 501: Teaching Environmental Science and Technology in Elementary School to Preservice and Inservice Teachers. The course emphasized science content, science education methods, and technology under the umbrella of environmental science. At the conclusion, students felt more prepared to teach a hands-on science approach. In addition, the biology professor is implementing science education methods in her classes. The science education professor stated that her science content skills were enhanced by this joint venture.

All done with the best of intentions: one Kentucky high school after six years of state portfolio tests

This article examines the response of one high school to three of the explicit aims of the Kentucky writing portfolio assessment as these aims are described in the Kentucky Writing Portfolio Teacher's Handbook. In revealing some of the intended and unintended consequences of the state's attempt to use the assessment to shape school writing programs, to encourage classroom portfolio pedagogies, and to improve student writing, this case study suggests limitations to the presumed validity of the assessment. It also raises questions about the wisdom of using portfolios as accountability tests to drive classroom reform.

Book review of Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools

(1998). Book review of Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR): Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 191-195.

Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools

Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. 320 pp.

The Coalition Goes to SchoolReform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Donna E. Muncey , Patrick J. McQuillan

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview EssayThe Coalition Goes to School Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Donna E. Muncey , Patrick J. McQuillan Philip A. CusickPhilip A. Cusick Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Education Volume 105, Number 2Feb., 1997 Sponsored by the Penn State College of Education Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/444153 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1997 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jennifer K. Fanson “Virtual” Education Outreach: The creation of a “virtual history” website and interactive CD-ROM boldly takes students where they may have never gone before., Teaching Anthropology: Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges Notes 9, no.11 (Sep 2002): 23–36.https://doi.org/10.1525/tea.2002.9.1.23Gad Yair Reforming Motivation: How the structure of instruction affects students learning experiences, British Educational Research Journal 26, no.22 (Apr 2000): 191–210.https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920050000944

Implementing Problem‐Based Learning in Science Classrooms

Many new curricular and instructional models must be developed or adapted as the nation moves towards educational reform in science classrooms. This article describes how problem‐based learning, an innovative curricular and instructional model developed in medical graduate school programs, has been adapted for use in elementary and high school settings. Included in the integration of problem‐based learning and science are components of all problem‐based episodes including initiating learning with an ill‐structured problem, using the problem to structure the learning agenda, and teacher as metacognitive coach, with important goals of a reformed science curriculum such as learning based on concepts of significance, student‐designed experiments, and development of scientific reasoning skills.

Aging Students: Implications for Intergenerational Development in the Classroom

Demographic shifts and changing socioeconomic and cultural expectations predict a significant 21st century increase in older adults seeking postsecondary education. How will college faculty prepare for this influx of over-24-ycar-olds, effectual peers and parents? What will these inter-generational students, half of them women, require for full participation in an increasingly pluralistic society? After presenting a sketch of what we currently know about integrating older students, a case study of an established natural learning environment is discussed as to its implications for classroom reform. The following anthology of sensible models of education and development is incorporated by way of extending the discussion of their interaction: Bassnches' (1984) postdialectical metaformal schemata: Fay's (1987) elaboration of a critical social science; Bruner's (1990) comparative procedure for understanding human development; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule's (1986) learning style typology; Gardner's (1991) comments on contextual changes which precipitate regression to prescholastic means; and Donald Davidson's (1994) tripartite conceptualization of possible knowledge. A system involving the transposition of dialectical and discourse methods (that seeks to avoid the habits of mind which typically compromise our theories and our efforts to ope rationalize them) is proposed for moving faculty and students beyond the current “culture wars.”