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Though schools do not track in Brazil, I find that racial classroom segregation in Brazil is on par with recent estimates from North Carolina high schools (Clotfelter et al., 2020). How does racial classroom segregation occur without tracking, and in a supposed "racial paradise," no less? Using national, student-level data spanning from 2011 to 2017, I describe racial classroom segregation among Brazilian 5th and 9th graders and assess potential mechanisms identified in the literature. The findings are consistent with segregation by chance in which: (1) schools initially segregate students by using effectively random classrooms assignment practices and (2) schools choose to move forward with these initial assignments, even when they are highly segregating, rather than make race-conscious adjustments. This is consistent with the myth of racial democracy, a prominent colorblind ideology in Brazil that promotes the legitimacy of de facto racial segregation and undermines the legitimacy of race-conscious desegregation.

The Texas Woman's University Future Classroom Laboratory (TWUFCL) is a unique learning space designed for use by university faculty, future teachers, and local PreK-12 teachers and students. Part of the European Schoolnet's Network of Future Classroom Labs, the TWUFCL offers users the chance to explore the science of teaching and learning in a technology-rich environment containing a multitude of individual approaches and applications that are available to teachers throughout the U.S. Centered around the Four C's of 21st Century Learning: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. This unique learning space allows future teachers to explore technology and applications available in schools prior to student teaching. The space allows faculty to incorporate practical, interactive teaching experiences into coursework. Local K-12 teachers and students can use the innovative environment to explore ideas and applications they can take back to their own classrooms and use with students across the curriculum. The collaborative design approach to this evolving educational laboratory for training teachers and students included stakeholders from throughout the university and community in its state-of-the-art design described within.

Ever since Thomas Jackson introduced philosophy for children (p4c) to Hawai'i in the mid-1980s, one of the defining characteristics of his p4c Hawai'i program has been its commitment to working with classroom teachers in Hawai'i's public schools. Part of the program's mission has been to find every way possible to support these teachers, both in their classrooms and as faculty in a school setting. This has aided the teachers to develop their own intellectually safe communities of philosophical inquiry and to grow as colleagues engaged in philosophically fruitful reflections on issues that matter to them. All this has helped to create a deep-seated commitment among the teachers to p4c as a basic approach to teaching, rather than just another passing programmatic fad. Until relatively recently, much of the focus had been on working with teachers in elementary school classrooms, where they had the freedom to set aside time for p4c each week. (Contains 8 endnotes.)

A teacher's role was dramatically changed from that of an educator to that of a facilitator with the adoption of semi-scripted curriculums. This case study explores teachers' perception and implementation of a state's English Language Arts curriculum in first-grade classrooms. Four first-grade teachers from a large urban school district were observed during the 90-minute literacy instruction block for four weeks each using Spradley's Developmental Research Sequence. In addition, data were collected from multiple teacher interviews. Qualitative analyses yielded the following themes: (a) teachers were minimally supported in professional development for using the curriculum; (b) they often ventured beyond the scope of the curriculum in resource usage; and (c) their planning was eased with the adoption of a semi-scripted curriculum. Furthermore, this sampling of first-grade teachers implemented English Language Arts curriculum through integrating both phonics and reading instruction. Findings are relevant to classroom teachers, curriculum coaches and administrators alike. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)

Are middle schoolers capable of discussing the war in Iraq in meaningful ways? Can seventh graders develop informed ideas about presidential candidates' positions on health care? Should young adolescents discuss controversial public issues, interpret primary sources, and analyze social problems? Thoughtful social studies educators disagree. While some educators advocate engaging all students in challenging intellectual work, some teachers believe this kind of teaching and learning is not possible or appropriate at the middle school level; they believe such instruction should be reserved until high school. As a result, many students in middle school classrooms experience social studies instruction that emphasizes factual recall and hands-on activities that require only lower order thinking. What explains this mismatch between what is possible and what is often put into practice in middle school social studies classrooms? In this article, the author examines several likely explanations for this disconnect, and then she explores the teaching and learning possibilities for social studies instruction in the middle school years. (Contains 22 notes.)

Metacom's War, also known as King Phillip's War, sets a pattern of national expansion through displacement of native people that echoes throughout American history. Helping students further understand this war through the examination of Mary Rowlandson's primary document provides educators and students with an opportunity to delve deeper into the complexities surrounding the convergence of cultures in colonial America. In this article, I provide an overview of the context that led to the conflict between the native populations and the European settlers. Additionally, I highlight passages from Rowlandson's narrative that are relevant to upper-elementary students. The passages are accompanied by questions to assist students as they examine the primary source for a deeper understanding of the people who strove to survive in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Examining primary sources is one piece of the multifaceted process of historical understanding. In this article, educators learn the historical content of the period and a structured process for their students to examine the primary source.

The current academic focus of the Race to the Top education initiative, as well as that of its predecessor, No Child Left Behind, is in keeping with democratic ideals about success for all. However, the push-down approach to academics has transformed pre-school classrooms into environments that more closely resemble first or second grade. Many room arrangements and schedules are so focused on promoting academic learning that they do not attend to the developmental capacities and needs of young children, particularly young boys. While it is not appropriate to suggest that early childhood teachers should ignore academic directives from their school administrators, it is critical to find ways to help educators address the needs of the "whole child," a tenet central to sound early childhood practice, thus coming to the aid of boys. This article reviews the social-emotional development of boys, suggests ways to help teachers rethink the daily schedule, and encourages teachers to observe and record classroom behaviors as a way of identifying and better meeting boys' needs.

Understanding students' multiple goals in real learning contexts is an emerging area of importance for educators and researchers investigating student motivation in classrooms. This qualitative study conducted over an academic year investigates the multiple goals articulated by seven 11-year-old students and explores relationships between goals and changes in goals during the year. Findings show students pursue a range of related academic and social goals over time and that goals can be complementary and dynamic. The significance of multiple goals is emphasised as goals are shown to be complex, dynamic, and pursued simultaneously in real learning contexts.

The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing teachers' decisions about using technology in the classroom setting and examine the degree to which teaching experience affects these decisions. Specifically, the items employed in this study were derived from the teachers' perceptions of technology use. We discovered six factors which influenced teachers use technology in their classroom: adapting to external requests and others' expectations, deriving attention, using the basic functions of technology, relieving physical fatigue, class preparation and management, and using the enhanced functions of technology. Interestingly, these factors do not correspond to the common sense theory of instructional technology. Additionally, we analyzed the patterns of factors' scores by teachers' level of teaching experience. From this study we deduced that although the majority of teachers intend to use technology to support teaching and leaning, experienced teachers generally decide to use technology involuntarily in response to external forces while teachers with little experience are more likely to use it on their own will.

In this study, a Reggio Emilia style of pedagogical documentation was introduced in five kindergarten classrooms in the New Westminster school district over a six month period from January to June 2005 to investigate its potential as a means of formative assessment in literacy instruction, and to communicate learning to children and their families. Interviews with parents, and classroom teachers followed; transcripts were analyzed using grounded theory methodology to determine common responses, and patterns in the perspectives articulated. A year later in June 2006, teachers were re-interviewed to determine if they had continued to use any of the techniques introduced and to ascertain barriers and challenges to its implementation. Based on these findings, two analytic stories were developed about the use of pedagogical documentation in traditional early elementary classrooms. The implications of these findings are then considered along with recommendations for further investigations.

In this article, the author reflects on Bert Cohler's essay "Desire, Teaching and Learning" and relates it to his teacher, Miss Anna Freud's story. The author asks whether it is possible that what one sees and hears, and encounters as teacher is only partially what is really out there in one's classroom and in the heads of one's students and primarily what one's own interior makes of these classroom and young people? So there comes a time when what one might call his/her perceptions of reality don't jibe all that well with the ways one has been trained to make sense of reality. After all, psychoanalysis teaches everyone the importance of autonomy, but have not teachers come to realize that a certain amount of dependence is not pathological, but in fact required if people and nations are to live in peace? For the author, the great danger is that theory and ideology may just work as deeply rooted censors distorting the thoughts and feelings behind the stories of others.

Educational planning and change should involve parental interest in policies and practices. On the classroom level both parents and teachers can contribute to the decision making process. (JMF)

In most second-language classrooms, students are expected and encouraged to spend a significant amount of classroom time speaking. However, students’ passivity in learning is not only a root of silence, but teachers’ classroom styles are also viewed as a major cause of learner silence. This leads to the necessary need for teachers to have a good understanding of silence as a pedagogy that can motivate silent or reticent students to be active and to speak more. This implies that teacher plays an important role in motivating the silent students’ learning by keeping silent students from feelings of being shy, ignorant or rebellious. For these reasons, this paper is going to review some viewpoints on silence and propose a task of using silence in reading class which the teachers of English can apply in their reading class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coaches develop and use a complex system of strategies to gain access to teachers' classrooms for coaching. In the process, coaches confront micropolitical forces within the school organization that shape access, either enhancing or impeding coaches' chances of being viewed as a trusted and valued partner in teacher learning. In this qualitative interview study with 28 content-focused coaches in one school district, we used a micropolitical lens to better understand how coaches coordinate micropolitical forces and strategies to gain access to teachers' classrooms, finding that force-strategy coupling was a prevalent coaching practice. We found that coaches most frequently reported using strategies to respond to 2 micropolitical forces: (1) teacher openness to coaching and (2) structures of time and workload. Coaches responded to these forces differently depending on whether the force functioned to support or inhibit access. This research expands on the micropolitical work of coaching and coach agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under 'post-truth' conditions the generation, circulation and status of knowledge are being transformed, with significant implications for institutional trust, social cohesion and public safety. These conditions raise complex challenges and opportunities within education, which plays a potentially pivotal role in supporting communities to respond in an assertive and critical manner. However, little is currently understood about the way key stakeholders within education position themselves epistemically in relation to post-truth conditions. The purpose of this research was to analyse epistemic aspects of educators' responses to post-truth conditions using a 'social lab' methodology, which is a qualitative, action-oriented approach to studying complex social problems. Analysis of data from the social lab, which involved a variety of education stakeholders, identified four epistemic aims (with associated ideals, processes and actions) to orient an educational response to post-truth conditions. However, overall, epistemic aims lacked precision and contextual specificity. Furthermore, aims were associated with divergent underpinning epistemological commitments, mirroring divergences in literature on the educational implications of post-truth conditions. Teachers may require additional training to enhance epistemic reflexivity and drive more productive and inclusive conversations about post-truth in classrooms, staffrooms and ITE programs. The findings are suggestive of the complex epistemological and institutional dynamics that need to be negotiated in educational responses to post-truth conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we describe how we use classroom phenomena to help fifth grade students develop testable questions and productive investigations. Engaging students in observing and seeking to explain a classroom decomposition chamber has helped them to engage more successfully in the science and engineering practices (SEPs) of asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, and constructing explanations. We highlight the following important components that teachers can incorporate in their practice: (1) the use of a classroom phenomenon that represents a more complex outdoor process and provides students extended, shared experience; (2) question development as a collaborative and iterative process that teachers and students engage in together; (3) considering how questions will support progress on disciplinary core ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractTeacher-Student Relationships (TSRs) contribute to a wide range of positive outcomes for K-12 students. However, many practitioners struggle to build positive relationships with students with challenging behaviors. In this article, we describe how TSR interventions can be structured using an established and common framework: Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). This framework will help practitioners consider which TSR interventions may be most appropriate for all students, including their most behaviorally challenging. For each MTSS tier, we detail a specific classroom intervention that teachers can use immediately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is Part 2 of the ANSI/ASA S12.60 series. This part is applicable to relocatable classrooms and other relocatable modular core learning spaces of small to moderate size. This standard includes siting requirements, acoustical performance criteria, and design requirements for relocatable classrooms. Annex A (informative) provides commentary information on this standard, and Annex B (normative) provides procedures for determining compliance with the background sound requirements. This standard seeks to provide design flexibility without compromising the goal of obtaining adequate speech intelligibility for all students and teachers in classrooms and learning spaces within the scope of this standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we engage in a discussion about how we came to Torres’ Rights of the Learner (RotL) and how these ideas can transform the way we teach mathematics and the ways our students learn mathematics. This article serves to introduce teachers and teacher educators to the RotL and to remind ourselves that before one can rehumanize our classrooms through the RotL, we must first take time to embrace and value our fluid identities as teachers, learners, and citizens in a complex world. Our article is conversational in nature so readers can understand the humanizing aspect of our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines a child's personal experiences with peer relationship building in the classroom and is guided by Vygotsky's cultural historical concepts of the social situation of development and cultural tools and Hedegaard's (2012) model for learning and development. Hedegaard's (2012) dialectical—interactive approach was adopted to analyse the data for this study which was gathered using digital video observations of a grade one classroom within the western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia over a five week period. This paper explores the strategies used by children that enables them to balance their desire for peer relationships while remaining within what is considered acceptable behaviours by their teachers within the classroom. It is argued that it is important for schools to continue to strive to find the balance between institutional demands while creating social situations that foster peer relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving beyond both a neoliberal as well as a 'heroic' conception of how the International Baccalaureate (IB) might 'make a better world', this paper focuses on the transformative potentiality of IBDP classroom pedagogy from the perspective of an experienced and critically minded educator, whose praxis has evolved across more than three decades of teaching IBDP courses in elite, well-established international schools around the world. In the IBDP teacher's account, particular attention is placed on the relational qualities of the (ideal) classroom culture and on the tensions between learner autonomy, teacher and learner authenticity and the critical imperative to interrogate privilege. We seek to provide a generative case for researchers and educators to reflect and find greater precision on the desired ends, possibilities and limits of critical and progressive pedagogies in school classrooms under contemporary conditions constituting our 'world in trouble'. More specifically for stakeholders of the IBDP, we offer up a promising orientation to IBDP classroom pedagogy in pursuit of the IB mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts with the explanation of production -- oriented approach, flipped classroom and blended teaching theory, analyzes the construction ideas of mixed teaching mode, constructs the teaching implementation path around three stages: output -- driven, input -- promoting and assessment and evaluation, and focuses on optimizing teaching design, promoting teacher -- student transformation and extending the practical platform to explore the specific suggestions on the reform of higher vocational English teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the experiences of two Spanish-English bilingual content-area teachers of newcomer youth at a comprehensive high school in South Los Angeles. Both teachers criticized school demands to develop language while teaching content for several reasons. This qualitative study examines their critiques and their use of Spanish in their English-medium classroom as a transformational resistance strategy. One-on-one interviews reveal the challenges content-area teachers face when teaching newcomer youth as well as the benefits of leveraging their home languages. This study calls for greater attention to develop and support in-service teachers’ understanding and use of translanguaging practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a randomized vignette experiment to explore the impact of classroom composition on students’ teacher-perceived school performance. It hypothesizes that in classrooms with a high share of disadvantaged students, teachers rate the school performance of both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students lower than in classrooms with a low share of disadvantaged students. The experimental design disentangles two mechanisms behind compositional effects: ethnicity and social-status. Findings indicate the more disadvantaged perceptions of Roma and non-Roma students in classrooms with a high (rather than a low) share of Roma students. No similar findings were found concerning the share of poor students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]