Dispositions Are a Teacher’s Greatest Strength will fuel and reignite your classroom practice. Focusing on 13 dispositions specific to teaching, this book encourages educators to identify, reflect, and develop their dispositions, attitudes, and self-awareness to flourish in the profession. Emphasizing pedagogical knowledge and skills, this text serves as an affirmation of a teacher’s commitment to challenging, complex and rewarding work. It invites educators to consider what a unique privilege it is to teach—to dive into reading, creating space, and embracing dispositions as a teacher’s greatest strength. Each chapter focuses on one of 13 teaching dispositions—such as curiosity, adaptability, gratitude, resilience, and courage—and offers: definitions and contexts for the disposition of focus; concrete applications for teachers to practice and develop dispositions with reader-friendly examples and practical strategies; a “pause and reflect” section with questions and space for professional reflection. This book serves as a love letter to educators everywhere: teachers in K-12, administrators in K-12, higher education faculty, and pre-service programs and students. Dispositions Are a Teacher’s Greatest Strength reminds teachers of the significant work they do by putting dispositions at the forefront of their daily work.

"This book is a game changer! Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics: 5 Teaching Turnarounds for Grades K- 6 goes beyond simply providing information by sharing a pathway for changing practice. . . Focusing on our students’ strengths should be routine and can be lost in the day-to-day teaching demands. A teacher using these approaches can change the trajectory of students’ lives forever. All teachers need this resource! Connie S. Schrock Emporia State University National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics President, 2017-2019 NEW COVID RESOURCES ADDED: A Parent’s Toolkit to Strengths-Based Learning in Math is now available on the book’s companion website to support families engaged in math learning at home. This toolkit provides a variety of home-based activities and games for families to engage in together. Your game plan for unlocking mathematics by focusing on students’ strengths. We often evaluate student thinking and their work from a deficit point of view, particularly in mathematics, where many teachers have been taught that their role is to diagnose and eradicate students’ misconceptions. But what if instead of focusing on what students don’t know or haven’t mastered, we identify their mathematical strengths and build next instructional steps on students’ points of power? Beth McCord Kobett and Karen S. Karp answer this question and others by highlighting five key teaching turnarounds for improving students’ mathematics learning: identify teaching strengths, discover and leverage students’ strengths, design instruction from a strengths-based perspective, help students identify their points of power, and promote strengths in the school community and at home. Each chapter provides opportunities to stop and consider current practice, reflect, and transfer practice while also sharing · Downloadable resources, activities, and tools · Examples of student work within Grades K–6 · Real teachers’ notes and reflections for discussion It’s time to turn around our approach to mathematics instruction, end deficit thinking, and nurture each student’s mathematical strengths by emphasizing what makes them each unique and powerful.

This book collates the practitioner stories of university-school partnerships for the renewal of educator preparation (US PREP) teacher preparation programs across the nation, documenting the programs’ efforts to enact scaled transformative practices within their institutions. Examples include the way in which educators engage multiple stakeholders in program improvement, transform the clinical preparation of teacher candidates, develop measures of program success, and create the conditions for transformative change. Each chapter highlights the efforts of one or more of US PREP’s 32 university-based teacher preparation coalition programs. Together, the chapters offer insight into how a national coalition can effectively support transformation at the local level while creating opportunities for multilayered collaboration within and across institutions. Contributors include teacher educators and educational leaders, and topics of chapters include using data for program decision-making; applying a change management model; establishing governance over school-university partnerships; developing a vision of teaching shared between universities and school districts; promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion; and improving teacher and teacher educator professional development. Chapters also present solutions for some of the most prominent challenges in teacher education program improvement, including faculty engagement, stakeholder collaboration, university policy alignment, and state and national accreditation. Designed as a textbook, this book provides a series of guiding questions after each chapter to promote further reflection and discussion. Ideal for teacher educators, educational leaders, school practitioners, and graduate students of education, this book offers insider information that can help these stakeholders to better facilitate collaboration and participation in the improvement, scale, and sustainability of clinically rich and culturally diverse teacher preparation.

This book shows principals how to successfully balance the needs and priorities of their schools while continuously developing and refining their leadership skills.

The working and career lives of teachers have changed radically over the last two decades. Reforms have turned education into a commodity and pupils into ‘consumers’. Yet not since 1992 has there been a comprehensive overview of research findings on teachers’ working lives. This anthology plugs the gap by collecting various scholarly contributions and perspectives on teachers’ career trajectories and work lives. The material includes an introduction to previous research within the field, presents a range of contemporary research and offers suggestions as to what lies ahead. Among the contributors are leading educational academics who describe a variety of national contexts, illustrating how problems and challenges relating to the teaching profession manifest themselves and are tackled in different countries. The anthology also shows just how many aspects of teachers’ career trajectories and work lives transcend national boundaries. Common international themes include stronger ties between education and the economy, and a growing importance placed on how students’ skills relate to the perceived needs of the labour market. There is also a greater degree of political interference in curriculum goals and processes, and an expanding obsession with evaluation. In many countries, a whole generation of teachers are reaching retirement age, ‘changing the guard’ with a crop of new young recruits who are ever harder to attract. At a time when there is an increasing focus on issues such as teacher recruitment, retention and professional development, this anthology offers insight and inspiration to teacher educators and educational policy makers as well as to current and prospective teachers. It also aims at encouraging research into the field of teachers’ working lives.

"A variety of approaches to teaching general music influence music teaching and learning and inform the instructional practice of music educators. Although these approaches are valuable, problems arise when teachers choose to utilize a given approach without thoughtfully considering its role in the curriculum and its potential to meaningfully engage children in music learning. Important approaches to teaching general music must be understood, critically examined, and reimagined for their potential in school and community music education programs. 'Teaching General Music' brings together the top scholars and practitioners in general music education to create a panoramic view of general music pedagogy and to provide critical lenses through which to view these frameworks and practices"--OhioLink Library Catalog.

The topic of “dispositions” is central to teacher education and to teacher educators. Because of perhaps precipitous action on the part of accrediting agencies in teacher education, teacher educators need to define, teach, and assess dispositions in their programs. This book examines the sources of the concept dispositions, how it evolved in teacher education, what forms it has taken in selected programs, and what challenges remain in this arena for teacher educators.