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This paper explores how educational interventions impact the districts they are implemented in above and beyond their intended outcomes. We argue that such unplanned "ripple effects", in which program elements are recontextualized into other settings, are an important aspect of bringing educational interventions to scale. We analyze these phenomena in one Israeli district in which a teacher leadership and professional learning community initiative has been implemented and rapidly scaled up over the past five years. Extensive longitudinal ethnographic data were collected, including participant-observation in schools, professional development workshops, district management meetings and initiative-related events; 75 interviews with teachers and school and district management; and multiple informal conversations. We identify "ripples" in four arenas, and discuss the importance of individuals as mechanisms for transferring ideas across contexts, the role of ripples in advancing the initiative's ethos, and the ripples' long-term sustainability. Our findings suggest more attention should be paid to the impact of educational reforms on meaningful change beyond their original aims and settings. Alongside possible affordances these ripple effects have in the scaling up process, careful consideration should be given to their latent disadvantages, such as obscuring the program's primary agenda.

Scholarly interest in dialogic pedagogy and classroom dialogue is multi-disciplinary and draws on a variety of theoretical frameworks. On the positive side, this has produced a rich and varied body of research and evidence. However, in spite of a common interest in educational dialogue and learning through dialogue, cross-disciplinary engagement with each other's work is rare. Scholarly discussions and publications tend to be clustered in separate communities, each characterized by a particular type of research questions, aspects of dialogue they focus on, type of evidence they bring to bear, and ways in which standards for rigor are constructed. In the present contribution, we asked four leading scholars from different research traditions to react to four provocative statements that were deliberately designed to reveal areas of consensus and disagreement. Topic-wise, the provocations related to theoretical foundations, methodological assumptions, the role of teachers, and issues of inclusion and social class, respectively. We hope that these contributions will stimulate cross- and trans-disciplinary discussions about dialogic pedagogy research and theory.

Dialogic pedagogy aims to promote deliberative democratic skills, virtues and practices within an equitable and empowering classroom environment. This article problematizes the practice of setting classroom ground rules in light of dialogic pedagogy's democratic aspirations. Specifically, we explore the space for dissenting voices within the process of constituting ground rules and the extent to which ground rules regulate teacher (and not only student) behavior. We investigate these issues in a case study of the process of negotiating ground rules in a fourth-grade Israeli classroom. During a discussion in which the class reflected on classroom discourse norms, students resisted the teacher's interpretation and even accused her of obstructing their participation, thereby highlighting questions regarding teacher's role and authority in the deliberative process of constituting ground rules. We use linguistic ethnographic microanalytic methods to investigate the unfolding of events in the classroom, and discuss the problems arising from an ostensibly democratic process of constituting ground rules in which the teacher is beyond criticism and above the law. We conclude with discussion of the possibilities of developing a more profoundly democratic and inclusive process of negotiating and maintaining classroom discourse norms.

This study examines teachers' justifications for their student sorting decisions in two Israeli secondary schools. Combining descriptive statistics and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis of 281 audio-recorded discussions, the study offers a new perspective on tracking's multiple social and organizational functions: providing students' needs, rewarding and punishing students, satisfying teachers' emotional needs, and efficiently using school resources. Most of the justifications were related to students' needs (43%) and reciprocity issues (37%), with productivity justifications (20%) appearing less frequently. The study points in particular to teacher emotions as a key factor in the tension between formal sorting requirements and teachers' sorting practices.

Dialogic pedagogy, in which students and teachers voice thoughts, co-construct meanings, and generate multiple interpretations of texts, can promote literacy skills and reasoning. Yet, such teaching is challenging and requires, among other changes, adopting dialogic stances. In the language arts, expressive and critical reading stances have been shown to encourage and support dialogic discussions. How can teachers develop such dialogic reading stances? In this study, we investigated the processes through which teachers negotiated reading stances in a professional development program. Specifically, we studied teachers' participation in rereading discussions designed to open texts to multiple interpretations as preparation for leading productive dialogue in language arts lessons. We used systematic observation and microethnographic methods to analyze nine rereading discussions among 17 teachers, coaches, and researchers. Five reading stances emerged in the discussions: expressive, critical, instrumental, moralistic, and historical. Focusing on three case studies, we investigated the interactional conditions under which dialogic stances did and did not emerge and the opportunities and limitations of different reading stances for opening texts to dialogue. Our analysis shows that dialogic stances gained legitimacy during discussions in which leadership and facilitation supported gradual elaborations of the text. In contrast to our initial assumptions, we found that expressive and critical stances sometimes narrow interpretive possibilities, whereas instrumental and moralistic stances can be generative of dialogue during rereading discussions. We show the potential of cultivating dialogic stances for the promotion of dialogic pedagogy in the language arts and discuss the advantages and limitations of rereading discussions as professional development.

This paper uses a case study of an Israeli teacher leadership initiative to explore a mode of educational governance that employs 'bottom-up' logic and discourse. The authors analyse the origins of this initiative, and -- through a policy-making ethnography of the initiative's enactment at the district level -- show how it is sustained and governed through 'top-down' structures and strategies. The authors use the term 'bottom-up governance' to describe a hybrid mixture of discourse that valorises grass-roots leadership, of governance through actors' autonomy and reflexivity, of enactment by a complex array of external and internal educational actors, and of initiation and control by central government, which provides insufficient, temporary and unstable resources. Their analysis highlights the conflicted and complex role of mid-level policy-makers in this mode of governance, as well as the simultaneous pursuit by the Israeli education system of centralisation and decentralisation, and 'weak state' and 'strong state' strategies.

While once forbidden in classrooms, laughter is increasingly encouraged as contributing to a positive learning environment. However, analyses of laughter in conversation show that laughter performs multiple social functions, some of which are not necessarily positive. Applying this lens, this study investigates the interactional functions of laughter in Israeli upper-primary classrooms. Using micro--ethnographic, multimodal methods, we analyzed 27 laughter events drawn from 35 lessons taught by five teachers in four classrooms. We found that student laughter was for the most part treated as undesirable and occurred rarely. When it did occur, laughter primarily played a role in marking, maintaining, or negotiating symbolic and social classroom boundaries. Along with nonverbal cues, such as eye contact and body language, students' and teachers' laughter served multiple functions in relation to these boundaries, including emphasizing social boundaries, subverting teacher authority, bypassing norms, and responding to transgressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One influential way of thinking about teaching is to conceive of it as a clinical profession, similar in important ways to medicine. However, fundamental differences between doctors' and teachers' practice limit the usefulness of the medical model. How can we adapt our understandings of clinical practice in light of the unique aspects of teaching and the context of teachers' work? In this article, we explore the requirements of the central clinical activities of diagnosis, treatment, and inference in teaching; how teachers tend to perform them; and how their performance is shaped by the context of teachers' work. We elaborate each clinical activity's characteristics and explore the unique features and limitations of teaching in relation to it. To account for teaching's unique qualities, we propose adapting the clinical acts of diagnosis, treatment, and inference to include, respectively, prioritization and noticing, disciplined improvisation, and room to maneuver.

Encouraging and developing voice in the classroom is a key aim of dialogic pedagogy, but teachers' elicitation of student voices is not always experienced as empowering. This case study investigates a sixth grade literacy lesson discussion about responding to peer group social ostracism. The teacher pressed students to adopt and articulate a stance on this socially and morally charged issue, resulting in a series of student public confessions. Using linguistic ethnographic micro-analytic methods, we examine the realization of voice in these events. Though some confessions were student-initiated, their contents were firmly directed by the teacher and dominated by her voice. Students were compelled to take a stand, and to express improper thoughts or actions, in an appropriate voice, or be challenged and/or judged inadequate. This case study shows how attempts to empower voice can back-fire; we argue that dialogic pedagogy should include a right to remain silent.

Most research and practice in teacher in-service learning focuses on formal professional development activities. This article calls for paying greater attention to the informal conversations that are embedded in teachers' day-to-day work and through which they learn from one another what it means to be a teacher and how to perform their duties. The authors build on theory and research in teacher on-the-job discourse and learning in order to (a) argue that, as a field, we need to pay more focused and systematic attention to teacher on-the-job discourse; (b) offer a coherent conceptual framework for "pedagogically productive" teacher talk; and (c) highlight key research directions and challenges in investigating this and related phenomena.

Background: Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are proliferating in education, generating increasing interest and posing many challenges. In this study, we shed light on the challenge of supporting practitioners' leadership and building capacity in an RPP. In the RPP literature, practitioner leadership is often highlighted as both a way to improve design development and enactment and as imperative for capacity building and sustainability. However, cultivating leadership also creates challenges which have not yet been adequately explored. Purpose: We explore these challenges and related dilemmas in a large-scale Israeli RPP designed to cultivate teacher leadership and build district capacity. We investigate how local actors asserted their leadership, the resources they drew upon, and the dilemmas this posed for us as researchers in an RPP. We critically reflect on how we addressed these dilemmas, and the consequences and implications of our courses of action. Setting: This study explores our partnership with two large Israeli districts, as part of a state-wide professional development reform supported by the Ministry of Education and a philanthropic foundation. The partnership aims to support teachers' collaborative, reflective inquiry on teaching and learning, in weekly in-school meetings facilitated by in-school leading teacher. The partnership began six years ago and currently includes 158 schools (458 leading teachers). Research Design: We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyze leadership assertion in three focal cases, representing three different leadership roles, at different levels of the system: (1) a leading teacher demonstrating creative non-compliance in the team meetings she facilitated, (2) a coach exercising her voice and authority in her professional development workshops, (3) and a district manager independently shaping structures. Data Collection: Data were collected during the first three years of the RPP, including (participant) observations, audio-recordings, and field notes of in-school meetings, professional development workshops, interviews, and informal conversations. Findings and Conclusions: The analysis shows that leadership assertion played an important role in constructing actors' identities as competent leaders but posed dilemmas for us, such as how to acknowledge leaders' expertise while also maintaining program integrity. The case studies underscore the difficulties involved in managing a partnership in a large-scale educational intervention and the challenges to maintaining productive dialogue with different partners. The paper advances our understanding of the complexities involved in supporting leadership at different levels of the system, in day-to-day interaction, and at multiple micro and macro contexts in which it unfolds, in particular in a large-scale RPP.

Classroom videos can make instructional practice public, cultivating collaborative, critical teacher discussions. However, video-based learning also involves a risk--the risk of hurting one's own or a colleague's public image, or face. In this study, we investigate the role of face threat and face management in teacher professional learning in 16 cases of video-based discussions in six school-based teacher teams. We present findings about the prevalence of face-work, which inhibits or mitigates face threat, as well as an account of various face-work strategies. We illuminate the role face-work plays in shaping opportunities for teacher learning, by analyzing in detail one video-based discussion. This linguistic ethnographic analysis suggests that face threat and face-work in video-based learning are inevitable and have the potential to both catalyze and constrain productive pedagogical discourse. The study demonstrates the critical role of face-work in video-based teacher learning, and the feasibility of investigating it.

Teachers are increasingly called on to use dialogic teaching practices to engage active pupil participation in academically challenging classroom discourse. Such practices are in tension with commonly held beliefs about pupil ability as fixed and/or context independent. Moreover, teaching practices that seek to make pupil thinking visible can also make perceived pupil "inarticulateness" and/or "low ability" visible, with important implications for pupil identities. This article explores how teachers in a dialogic teaching intervention managed the participation and identities of "low ability" pupils. We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyze three different case studies in which teachers seek to include underachieving pupils' voices in the discussion and discuss implications for dialogic pedagogy and the study of classroom social identification processes.

Teaching through controversial, politically charged issues is promoted in Anglo-American democracies as a key means for cultivating active citizenry and democratic values. However, the challenges of discussing controversial issues in the classroom may differ in younger, deeply divided democracies that lack common ground and institutional stability. In this study we ask, what approaches to the teaching of controversial issues do Israeli teachers adopt while enacting a curricular unit concerning Israel's founding fathers? The data were collected in an ethnographic study in two primary schools during the 2012-2013 school year. We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyse the curricular materials and their enactment in four video-recorded lessons in three classrooms. We argue that while the curriculum addresses deeply controversial content, it is designed to inculcate a shared national ethos and therefore avoids controversy. In practice, teachers and students engaged with controversial issues, but in ways that defused their volatility. We highlight two heretofore undocumented approaches to controversial issues: (1) "sidestepping" controversy by stripping it of real world complexities, and (2) "scholasticizing" the discussion by focusing on literacy practices. Finally, we discuss the rationales for using these two approaches to defuse controversy in the classroom, and their limitations.

This article is about language corrections in Israeli Hebrew-speaking primary classrooms. The ideological significance of language corrections, particularly within the highly contested context of Israeli society and Modern Hebrew, underlies the current study. Teachers in Israeli, Hebrew-speaking classes were found to frequently correct not only their students' language, but also their own. Furthermore, teachers use language corrections not only for instructional purposes (i.e. modeling standard or super-standard language), but also for regulatory purposes (i.e. emphasizing their authority when managing behavior). Interestingly, in contrast to previous studies, we did not encounter explicit student resistance to teacher corrections, indicating Hebrew-speaking students' internalization and acceptance of the standard language ideology. Teachers' self- and other-corrections, as well as the metalinguistic comments accompanying these corrections, likewise reveal a monolithic language ideology, bearing significant pedagogical implications.

Dialogic pedagogy is widely viewed as an excellent means of educating students for civic participation in deliberative democracy. While many intervention-based studies have researched dialogic teaching and learning, we know very little about the enactment of dialogic and related ideas "in the wild," in regular classrooms. This paper contributes to the naturalistic study of dialogic pedagogy through close examination of an episode of sustained student engagement with, and argumentation about, a controversial social issue in an Israeli primary school classroom. In particular, we focus on the emergence and interaction of voices, defined as (1) opportunity to speak, (2) expressing one's own ideas, (3) on one's own terms and (4) being heeded by others. While the norm in Israeli classrooms is exuberant, voiceless participation, in the rare classroom episode examined here, we find students--and their teacher--engaged in heated, multivocal deliberation. We follow the struggles of marginalized students to be heard and heeded, exploring the conditions which ultimately allow for the actualization of student voice, and the accompanying pedagogical challenges and dilemmas.

Within current educational discourse, dialogic pedagogy is diametrically opposed to "teaching to the test", especially the high-stakes standardised test. While dialogic pedagogy is about critical thinking, authenticity and freedom, test preparation evokes all that is narrow, instrumental and cynical in education. In this paper, we argue that such positioning of dialogic pedagogy as antithetical to testing is detrimental to attempts both to foster dialogue in classrooms and to constructively manage the high-stakes standardised tests that are compulsory in so many schools. Drawing on an extended case study of dialogic teaching in one London primary school, we argue that while standardised testing is indeed an impediment to dialogic pedagogy, it does not follow that dialogue is impossible or undesirable within the testing context. By adopting an ironic stance towards the test, teachers can fulfil test preparation mandates while maintaining dialogic ideals and practices.

What is the appropriate unit of analysis for the study of classroom discourse? One common analytic strategy employs individual discourse moves, which are coded, counted and used as indicators of the quality of classroom talk. In this article we question this practice, arguing that discourse moves are positioned within sequences that critically shape their meaning and effect. We illustrate this theoretical claim through exploration of a corpus of over 7000 discourse moves in primary literacy lessons. First, we use conventional measures such as the proportion of open and closed questions, and show how these indicators can be misleading when abstracted from the sequences in which they are embedded. We propose a complementary method, lag sequential analysis, which examines how discourse is sequentially structured--i.e. which discourse moves are followed by which other moves, and which chains of moves occur more frequently than expected by chance. We illustrate this method through re-analysis of our corpus of literacy lessons, examining differences between the sequential patterns found in the different classrooms observed. While lag sequential analysis does not resolve all problems inherent in systematic observation of classroom discourse, it does shed light on critical patterns in the data-set that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Scholarly efforts to identify core design features for effective teacher professional development have grown rapidly in the last 25 years. Many concise lists of design principles have emerged, most of which converge on a consensus of 5–7 presumably 'effective' features (e.g. collaborative tasks, active learning, focus on content). The proliferation and convergence of reviews create the impression that this consensus is based on strong evidence from large-scale, replicated, and rigorously controlled research studies. We critique the empirical foundation on which conclusions about evidence-based design features for teacher professional development have been based, by the same evidential standards that have been adopted within this field of scholarly work. We conclude that the empirical foundations for these lists are problematic and that claims to methodological rigour are misleading as they are based on flawed inferences. We further argue that the ambition to identify general features of effective professional development is also problematic, and reflect on why, despite its weaknesses and potentially adverse consequences for research and practice, we as a field continue to herald this consensus. We call for greater focus on the development, testing, and refinement of theories about teacher professional learning in order to advance understanding, policy, and practice in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and educators have puzzled for decades about how to provide K-12 teachers with the resources necessary to support and improve teaching. New information and communication technologies have opened up infinitely more possibilities, setting the stage for a renewed discussion about what teaching entails and how best to support it. In this conceptual article, we propose a theoretical framework to understand how on-line resources can support K-12 teaching, and apply this framework to three on-line platforms. Our analysis highlights several design tradeoffs that reflect deeper tensions surrounding teaching and the teaching profession, and that direct our attention to (1) teacher agency, (2) the required expertise and effort, (3) teacher community, (4) and the desired degree of oversight. These tradeoffs imply that designers should go beyond attending to technological tools, and engage also with fundamental questions concerning the nature of teaching and the teaching profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) advocate discussion as a promising instructional method yet rarely specify how such discussions should be conducted. Facilitating classroom discussions is highly challenging, particularly about emotions. Furthermore, the SEL literature contains contradictory discursive imperatives; it typically overlooks the gaps between students' and teachers' emotional codes and how these codes are shaped by culture, class, and gender. The current study explores different ways in which teachers facilitate classroom dialogue about emotions. We analyze data drawn from a two-year ethnographic study conducted as part of a design-based implementation research project aimed at fostering productive dialogue in primary language arts classrooms, looking in particular at two lessons centered around a story about crying. We found two different interactional genres for discussions about emotions: (1) inclusive emotional dialogue, in which students share emotions experienced in their everyday lives; (2) emotional inquiry, in which students explore emotions, their expressions, and their social meanings. Both types of discussion generated informative exchanges about students' emotions. Yet the discussions also put the teacher and students in challenging positions, often related to the need to navigate between contradictory discursive norms and emotional codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International comparative testing, such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has considerable impact on policy-makers, the media and the general public. A central assumption underlying PISA is that global variation in students' academic performance is attributable to national educational structures and policies. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problematic nature of this assumption. Rather than critiquing it from the outside, we turn the tools, data and presumptions of the current discourse of international comparisons upon themselves, showing that this assumption is refuted by analysis of immigrant student test scores. Data from the PISA 2009 tests show that Chinese immigrant students in New Zealand and Australia achieve math scores that are more similar to those of students in Shanghai than to their non-immigrant Australian and New Zealand peers. Thus, cultural background appears to be more consequential for the educational attainment of Chinese immigrant students than exposure to the educational systems of Australia or New Zealand. We discuss limitations of our analysis, using them as basis to discuss the shortcomings of PISA more generally.

English education policy-makers have targeted classroom time as a key area for regulation and intervention, with "brisk pace" widely accepted as a feature of good teaching practice. We problematise this conventional wisdom through an exploration of objective and subjective dimensions of lesson pace in a corpus of 30 Key Stage 2 literacy lessons from three classrooms in one London school. Systematic classroom observation produced an anomaly: the lessons we experienced as fast-paced were rated objectively as slowest, and vice-versa. We contrasted the fastest and slowest episodes in the corpus, demonstrating that for these episodes the accepted measure of pace primarily reflected differences in utterance length. Linguistic ethnographic microanalysis of the episodes highlighted predictability, stakes, meaning and dramatic performance as key factors contributing to pace as experienced. We argue, among other claims, that sometimes accelerating pupils' experience--and learning--necessitates slowing down the pace of teaching, and that government calls for urgency may, perversely, make lessons slower. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures, and 17 notes.)

This article explores the school inspection as a political ritual for the management of tensions between competition and equality inherent in neo-liberal educational regulatory regimes. At the centre of the article is a case study of how teachers in an allegedly failing working-class English primary school coped with issues of social class, educational success-and-failure and an Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection and related accountability measures. National educational policy--relative performance data and inspection--generated a crisis within the school, and intervened in teacher discourse about the role of social class in pupil attainment. Whereas previous scholarship on OFSTED and inspections has emphasised their harmful effects on teachers and teaching practice, the current article broadens the focus from regulatory to political issues, from specific schools to the stability of the educational order more generally. Based on this case study, situated within a broader analysis of shifting discourses about social class and education in English educational policy, I argue that (1) the current regulatory regime makes "failure" inevitable, thereby posing a symbolic problem for policy-makers and politicians; (2) by identifying failure and allocating blame, the inspection ritual fulfils an important symbolic function; which (3) serves to buttress the legitimacy of the neo-liberal educational order.

This article explores the political dimensions of teacher learning, both in theoretical work on teacher professional vision, and in an empirical study of video-based teacher professional development. Theoretically, we revisit the origins of "professional vision" in linguistic anthropology and trace the concept's evolution in teacher education research, demonstrating how its political dimension has been overlooked. We explore the implications of re-asserting the politics of professional vision through examination of a video-based teacher development programme conducted in an English primary school. We describe this research, investigate the contestation of teacher and researcher professional visions, and discuss implications for professional development practice.

This article problematises a broad consensus in favour of importing popular culture into classrooms as a means of engaging pupils, transforming interactional norms and facilitating pupil understanding. A literacy lesson in which an English primary school teacher invoked the televised talent show, "X factor", in organising the class to provide feedback on pupil writing, was video-recorded and subjected to detailed linguistic ethnographic analyses. The ways in which teacher and pupils drew upon and managed the possibilities and constraints posed by the mixing of "X factor" and classroom feedback discourse genres are investigated. While the incorporation of "X factor" led to heightened pupil involvement and significant changes in classroom interactional patterns, its overall effect on opportunities for pupil learning was mixed. The article offers a conceptual framework for contrasting discourse genres and for examining the realisation of these genres in classroom interaction. (Contains 4 tables, 2 figures, and 14 notes.)

To what extent and in what ways should researchers share their views with research participants during ethnographic fieldwork? This article discusses the author's experience of adopting different communicative stances with respondents in the context of an ethnographic study of the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy in a "failing" primary school. A commonly accepted communicative stance in ethnography, according to which the researcher avoids disclosure of his or her own views, is problematised; and the potential advantages and disadvantages of feedback as a research tool are explored. (Contains 6 notes.)

This article traces the trajectory of educational ideas through policy, curricular materials and enactment in the classroom. Specifically, I examine current English policy regarding the teaching of grammar in primary schools, and its enactment in a Year 3 (8-year olds) literacy lesson. While the policy advances a broadly rhetorical approach to grammar and its instruction, the enacted lesson retains a number of features characteristic of the formal, rule-based grammar instruction this policy seeks to replace. I discuss possible explanations for this outcome, and implications for language education policy. Among other issues, I argue that rhetorical grammar teaching has been thwarted by the "grammars" of schooling and educational accountability. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Background/Context: Literacy education has always been hotly contested, and in England the debate has recently intensified in controversies over synthetic phonics teaching and the National Literacy Strategy. This article brings together four theoretical and policy contexts in studying this debate: (1) the long-standing and on-going "reading wars"; (2) theories of deliberative democracy, and the particular problems of how the mass media facilitate and/or suppress public discourse and the participation of academic experts in the public sphere; (3) the affordances and constraints of television news reporting, and in particular, the emergence of the makeover reality television genre as a model for current affairs reporting; and (4) the "evidence-based policy" movement in educational research. Purpose/Questions: This article examines a prominent media event--the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television program Newsnight's reports on synthetic phonics teaching--to reflect on the relationship between educational research, the media, and the treatment of educational problems in the public sphere. I ask: How are educational problems represented in the mass media? How do and should academic researchers participate in public debates about these problems? Research Design: This interpretive study is based primarily on critical analysis of three news reports and was informed by rhetorical criticism, genre analysis, ethnographic research of the educational program represented, and theoretical concerns about the interaction of research, the mass media, and the public sphere. Key participants in the media event were also interviewed. Findings: The prestigious news program has poorly served public debate by narrowing the problem of educational improvement to a question of teaching method; by promoting a "makeover" approach to school reform; and by casting the issue in the inherited yet inadequate terms of the traditional "reading wars" frame. The two educational researchers appearing on the program adopted different rhetorical strategies. One invoked his academic authority and acted as an epistemological gatekeeper. The second, who was deemed to be more successful, addressed viewers as consumers of educational goods and couched her academic concerns in everyday language. Conclusions: The case study has implications for the way that educational researchers communicate their ideas to the general public. In particular, it raises questions about the desirability and likely effectiveness of the currently popular strategy to maximize research influence through the promotion of "evidence-based" policy.

How and why is national policy translated into interactions between teachers and pupils? This article examines the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in a case study of two literacy lessons, which are drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study of the NLS in one school. Although the teacher taught directly from and adhered closely to the prescribed materials, curricular contents were recontextualized into habitual classroom interactional genres, and the open questions that constituted the primary aim of the lesson were suppressed. In explaining these enactment patterns, the author supplements analysis of teacher knowledge and policy support with consideration of conditions of teacher engagement with the policy and the durability of interactional genres, rooted in pupil collusion and "habitus." (Contains 3 tables, 2 figures, and 20 notes.)

This article is about current discourse regarding teaching and its regulation and reform. It argues that underlying most positions in current debates are two competing visions of teaching--one technical and the other personal. Technical teaching is manifested in recent developments in English education--for example, the National Curriculum, National Primary Strategy, accountability measures, and the drive for evidence-based practice. Advocates of personal teaching tend to oppose these developments, which they see as "deprofessionalising" teachers and "dehumanising" educational relationships. This article explores these two competing visions, examining their assumptions and assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Technical teaching and personal teaching are manifestations of broader worldviews, which the author calls instrumental rationality and experiential wisdom, respectively. Each vision captures critical aspects of teaching, yet each is also partial and problematic: teaching cannot and should not be reduced to either. Moreover, seeing the world in terms of one vision often blinds us to the realities and possibilities revealed by the other. When discourse is polarized between these two visions, conceptions of teaching methods and expertise are distorted, and critical questions regarding the interaction of teachers and teaching methods are eclipsed. The article concludes with an illustration of how technical and personal teaching could be integrated in the design of curricular materials.

Suggests that failure of progressivist school reforms results in part from inadequate treatment of the relationship between pedagogy and classroom control, examining how schools in one Israeli progressivist school reform initiative cope with classroom control. Teachers' thinking and discourse are partitioned, with teaching and control issues kept distinct. Numerous school structures and other practices reinforce this partition. Questions for the creation of a progressivist theory of classroom control are presented. (SM)