A survey of member AACTE and/or NCATE approved institutions was conducted to determine the inclusion of information and skills relative to parent-teacher conferences in pre-service teacher preparation programs. The survey focused on identifying components of program models and the knowledge bases used for identifying components. Data did not provide significant information about program models …
Many teacher preparation programs now provide field experiences for preservice teachers as early as students' sophomore year. These field experience typically require students to visit a number of different classrooms. However, because (a) sophomore preservice teachers are inexperienced observers, (b) they are unfamiliar with the routines of the classes they visit, and (c) they rarely are able …
As relevant reform recommendations flowed from The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the Goodlad Consortium, the Holmes Group, the Carnegie Forum, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, an experimental teacher preparation program was being envisioned by a large urban school district, a local community college, and a state university. The Teacher Educa…
It is evident from literature that boys, especially African-American boys are viewed as "troublemakers" and this perception begins with teachers at the preschool level. In this paper, the author examines whether or not students in early childhood education from a community college receive adequate gender-sensitivity training. The students from a teacher education program established baseline by…
Senator William Proxmire, D-Wisconsin, famously made fun of government waste with his "Golden Fleece" awards, which were "given to the biggest, most ridiculous or most ironic example of government waste." In December 1978, he selected the United States office of Education: For spending $219,592 to develop a "curriculum package" to teach college students how to watch television. The product o…
This reflective article considers the impact of policy development and literacy practices in two remote schools in the Northern Territory. It discusses some of the programs that have been introduced and presents some celebratory snapshots of multi-strategy approaches. By highlighting what is working in some communities, the article shows how some approaches are talking back to NAPLAN by detract…
This article reviews two books on the work of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, with a special focus on issues of language, education, and literacy. The article sketches out Bourdieu's main theoretical ideas with respect to language and raises a number of issues on classroom language and academic discourse. Bourdieu's approach is considered with respect to a range of theoretical persp…
Increasing recognition of the cultural and linguistic diversity that is characteristic of the Australian school population, and the wide distribution of literacy achievement amongst students raises a number of equity issues for policy makers, school leaders, and teachers in all education jurisdictions. These issues are as relevant in the middle years of schools as at all other stages of schooling.
This article reports on research that investigated what teachers and children's caregivers said about literacy education in a school in Hawaii. Drawing from a study that explored understandings about literacy as explained by teachers and caregivers, this paper considers the importance for a school community to unpack and explore the similarities and differences of what literacy means, before th…