This book examines the relationship between teacher theorizing and teacher action as illustrated by the curricular and instructional practices of teachers. The authors show that all teaching is guided by theory developed by the teachers. Teachers could not begin to practice without some knowledge of the context of their practice and without ideas about what can and should be done in those circumstances. In this sense, teachers are guided by personal, practical theories that structure their activities and guide them in making decisions. This literature is very significant in explaining and interpreting many phenomena of schooling such as why teachers alter curriculum documents and other policies, how inservice education can be improved, how supervisors can help teachers to improve their practices, and how administrators can become leaders to improve education. This perspective has broad and specific implications for every facet of education. Those interested in teacher education and development, in supervision, in curriculum, and in administration will find it especially relevant.

An introduction to the techniques, contemporary theories and methods of teaching from facilitating problem-based learning to the role of the lecture, this book explores the issues that underpin interpersonal methods of teaching, and offers genuine insights. It will help teachers at all levels to understand the techniques that they can use in different situations, and willenable them to develop more effective teaching practice. This fully updated second edition contains new material on e-moderating (teaching online) and its implications for teaching theory, issues surrounding discipline and teaching and the ethical dimensions of teaching. Additional topics include: the nature of teaching the ethics of the teaching and learning relationship the relationship between learning theory and the theory of teaching teaching methods, including didactic, Socratic and experiential and monitoring the issues of assessment of learning. The Theory and Practice of Teaching will be of interest to anyone wanting to develop a deep understanding of the key themes and latest developments in teaching and is an ideal companion volume to The Theory and Practice of Learning.

This text will introduce teachers to the approaches, techniques, theories and methods of teaching. It looks in detail at the teaching techniques that can be called upon at different times and in different situations, and how they can be used.

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.

This volume examines the agency of second/foreign language teachers in diverse geographical contexts and in both K-12 and adult education. It offers new understandings and conceptualizations of second/foreign language teacher agency through a variety of types of empirical data. It also demonstrates the use of different methodologies or analytic tools to study the multidimensional, dynamic and complex nature of second/foreign language teacher agency. The chapters draw on a range of theories and approaches to language teacher agency (including ecological theory, positioning theory, complexity theory and actor-network theory) that expand our understanding of the concept, while at the same time presenting various analytic approaches such as discourse studies and narrative inquiry. The chapters also analyze the connection of agency to other relevant topics, such as teacher identity, emotions, positioning and autonomy.

If teacher education, as a field of study, is to contribute to the revitalization, re-moralization and re-politicization of Education, this book argues that it needs to be alert to questions of teachers’ intellectual and political freedom and to concerns about the legitimacy of what we do in teacher education, in the name of Education. Anne Phelan demonstrates how curriculum theorizing can serve such an educational project by engaging concerns about subjectivity (human agency and action), society, and historical moment, thereby widening the field of insight in teacher education and informing debates about new trajectories for policy and practice. Exploring teacher education through ethical, political, aesthetic vocabularies, drawn from the Humanities, is vital at a time when the dehumanizing influences of performativity, standardization and accountability are evident in education systems across the world, and when we are in danger of losing the things that we most value and are the least measurable - relationships, independent thought, and ethical judgment. Curriculum Theorizing and Teacher Education will be of interest to teacher educators who are practicing, researching, or (re)designing teacher education, as well as policy makers who are curious about new possibilities for framing the "problem" of teacher education at provincial, state and federal levels.

Teaching that Works: Effective Practice Combined with Theory and Research is a practical, teacher friendly examination of the ways that a comprehensive approach to all of the aspects of teaching, working together, can achieve results greater than the sum of the individual parts. Traditional teacher professional development focuses on only one of the components of teaching, while teachers are expected to manage all of the components such as curriculum, instruction, assessment and data analysis simultaneously. This resource is written from the point of view of a classroom teacher. It is designed to make current educational research and best practices accessible to working teachers in classrooms who have neither the time nor the expertise to translate the best work in educational improvement into real changes in the classroom.