This book examines how teachers and students actually go about their classroom business. It carefully avoids the assumptions of policy-makers and theorists about what ought to be happening and focuses on what is happening. In doing so, Cooper and McIntyre offer: a detailed look at how teachers are responding to the National Curriculum a unique insight into secondary school students as learners a grounded analysis of teaching and learning strategies drawing on the psychological theories of Bruner and Vygotsky The book follows on from Donald McIntyre's previous book Making Sense of Teaching and will be of interest to student teachers, teachers studying for advanced degrees and academics involved in teacher education.

Within educational discourse, the idea that teachers should scaffold student learning is extremely widespread, yet it is often less clear what this means in the classroom beyond teacher-structured learning activities and the offering of support to students. Effective Teaching and Learning: Perspectives, Strategies and Implementation opens with a review on the use of the term scaffolding in teaching, and explains the purpose of scaffolding in the context of Vygotsky's developmental theory. The authors draw upon Vygotskys spatial metaphor for how learning activities could be positioned in relation to the learners current and potential levels of development. An analysis of the function of scaffolds, their role in classroom differentiation, and the logic of fading is provided. Following this, the authors report one small-scale study that explored an attempt to design materials using principles of scaffolding in an aspect of upper secondary physics known to present learning difficulties to students. The results demonstrate the difficulty of estimating the level at which to pitch learning materials intended to scaffold learning, but also suggest that such materials may contribute to shifting student thinking even when they are not optimally tuned. The results of this small-scale study indicate both the difficulty and the potential of transferring the scaffolding principle from dyadic contexts to formal classroom teaching. Continuing, our nderstanding of learning and the transmission of knowledge has influenced the design of instructional models. Todays models may appear simplistic, but actually contain very detailed components. Medical education has incorporated instructional designers to assist in developing curricula and to revamp older training programs. Thus, the authors aim to identify the more prominent instructional design (ID) models and their applicability to medical education. With many different instructional design models available, medical educators can be confused and dismayed when first trying to choose an appropriate ID model for educational development. Challenges that medical educators typically overlook, underuse, and overuse when selecting an instructional design model are described. The concluding chapter discusses the need for continuing engineering education and its unique challenges, engineers learning preferences (verbal-visual, learning strategy, and multimedia), the importance of prior knowledge, and instructional design strategies for developing more effective training materials for working engineers. This need has been well-documented and is critical for working engineers due to the breadth of processes and equipment they design and use, as well as rapid changes in technology.

This publication is the first report from the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). It provides quantitative, policy-relevant information on the teaching and learning environment in schools in 23 countries.

Drawing on contemporary psychological insights, this book shows how both teaching and learning styles are rooted in the dynamics of personality. By opening the door to a whole range of teaching techniques addressing the personality needs of different students, Effective Teaching, Effective Learning will prove an invaluable aid to classroom teachers, parents, school psychologists, counselors, administrators, and all those concerned with contemporary educational issues. Filled with practical, concrete suggestions, this book: clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of different teaching and learning styles, helps teachers get more satisfaction out of teaching by identifying new ways to reach students with various learning styles, matches the different types of learners with the teaching approaches and materials most likely to work for them, provides specific steps for handling conflict, discipline, and academic and interpersonal issues.

Designing courses to deliver effective teaching and significant learning is the best way to set students up for success, and this book guides readers through the process. The authors have worked with faculty world-wide, and share the stories of how faculty have transformed courses from theory to practice. They start with Dee Fink’s foundation of integrating course design. Then they provide additional design concepts to expand the course blueprint to implement plans for communication, accessibility, technology integration, as well as the assessment of course design as it fits into the assessment of programs and institutions, and how faculty can use what they learn to meet their professional goals.

Higher education in post-apartheid South Africa was always likely to attract academic interest, and yet there remains a dearth of research on creating teaching and learning spaces suitable for students from diverse backgrounds. Using examples from higher education institutions across the Southern African Developing Community (SADC) region, this volume explores the ways teaching and learning spaces are being used to advance the transformation agenda of higher education in these regions, and provides concrete recommendations for the future. The book is sure to appeal to academics from a variety of disciplines - from African, African American and ethnic studies to education and sociology. It will be of particular interest to teacher trainers, administrators and policy-makers working in higher education, and anyone else with a stake in managing cultural diversity in education.

"School leadership has been identified as a key function in assuring quality in education. The instructional leadership model refers to the role and the functions of school leadership to employ different management tasks with regards to teaching and learning. Instructional leadership role includes (a) developing mission and goals, (b) managing the educational production function, (c) promoting an academic learning climate, and (d) developing a supportive work environment. Instructional leaders were described as leading from a combination of both expertise and charisma focused primarily on the improvement of student learning outcomes. The monograph, entitled Instructional Leadership and Effective Teaching and Learning and written by Nazmi Xhomara, is dedicated to school instructional leadership as an important factor that influences teaching and learning at school. In the first chapter, the author presents and analyzes educational leadership vs educational management, as well as models of educational leadership and management. The author argues on the importance of different leadership models, such as managerial leadership, transformational leadership, participative leadership, interpersonal leadership, transactional leadership, postmodern leadership, moral leadership, and contingent leadership. Chapters Two, Three, and Four shed light on instructional leadership and teaching and learning, understanding of instructional leadership, the concept and practice of instructional leadership, instructional school leadership and learning environment, attributes of instructional leaders, instructional excellence, instructional leadership time management, effective teaching and teachers, as well as teaching challenges and learning environment. Meanwhile, the author has analyzed constructivism, student intelligence, understanding of supervision, instructional collegial supervision, supervision approaches, understanding of evaluation of teaching and learning, teacher evaluation, and instructional observing instruments in chapters Five, Six, and Seven. Chapters Eight and Nine are focused especially on the research work of the relationships between instructional leadership and teaching, learning, and students' achievements, as well as on an empirical study designed and conducted in Albania as a case. Chapters Ten and Eleven are dedicated to instructional leadership preparation and the future of instructional leadership As a conclusion, Xhomara indicates that principals are responsible for developing school climates and cultures that support the very best instructional practices. The new era of instructional leadership has predictably placed significant demands for accountability for student success and equity on the principal as well as for the university programs that prepare them. Working in twenty-first-century schools, the instructional leader is held more accountable than ever for student success"--