Learning Policy: When State Education Reform Works
By David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill

Yale University Press, 2001

Education reformers and policymakers argue that improved students’ learning requires stronger academic standards, stiffer state tests, and accountability for students’ scores. Yet these efforts seem not to be succeeding in many states. The authors of this important book argue that effective state reform depends on conditions which most reforms ignore: coherence in practice as well as policy and opportunities for professional learning.

The book draws on a decade’s detailed study of California’s ambitious and controversial program to improve mathematics teaching and learning. Researchers David Cohen and Heather Hill report that state policy influenced teaching and learning when there was consistency among the tests and other policy instruments; when there was consistency among the curricula and other instruments of classroom practice; and when teachers had substantial opportunities to learn the practices proposed by the policy.

These conditions were met for a minority of elementary school teachers in California. When the conditions were met for teachers, students had higher scores on state math tests. The book also shows that, for most teachers, the reform ended with consistency in state policy. They did not have access to consistent instruments of classroom practice, nor did they have opportunities to learn the new practices which state policymakers proposed. In these cases, neither teachers nor their students benefited from the state reform. This book offers insights into the ways policy and practice can be linked in successful educational reform and shows why such linkage has been difficult to achieve. It offers useful advice for practitioners and policymakers seeking to improve education, and to analysts seeking to understand it.

David K. Cohen is John Dewey Professor of Education and professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. Heather C. Hill is a research associate in the School of Education at the University of Michigan.

Making American Literatures in High School and College: Classroom Practices in Teaching English, Volume 31
Edited by Anne Ruggles Gere and Peter Shaheen

National Council of Teachers of English, 2001

Offering classroom-tested ideas for helping students explore crucial issues, this book addresses five major themes: working creatively with and against anthologies to explore the multiple literatures that make up “American literature”; evolving one’s practice by listening to students; helping students use critical reading and writing to situate themselves in the world; using literary pairings to enrich the study of “classic” and contemporary texts; and meeting the challenges of professional development and curriculum revision. Individual chapters cover specific concerns such as: including students in curriculum and syllabus decisions; exploring “Whiteness” as a racial category; helping students write themselves into local histories and explore the idea of “place” in their lives; pairing texts (print or otherwise), e.g., The Great Gatsby and Passing, alternate translations of a Yiddish poem, or print and screen versions of The Grapes of Wrath; planning curriculum change while allowing for flexibility. Filled with lively and compelling teaching ideas, this book supports new and experienced teachers who want to make informed and principled choices for classroom practice.

Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching
By Magdalene Lampert

Yale University, 2001

In today’s education debates, many experts call for school vouchers, smaller classes, more standardized testing, or rigorous teacher accrediting as the key to improving student performance. Remarkably, none of these approaches addresses what actually goes on in the classroom. In this book an experienced classroom teacher and noted researcher on teaching takes us into her fifth grade math class through the course of a year. Magdalene Lampert shows how classroom dynamics--the complex relationship of teacher, student, and content--are critical in the process of bringing each student to a deeper understanding of mathematics, or any other subject. She offers valuable insights into students and teaching for all who are concerned about improving the learning that happens in the classroom.

Lampert considers the teacher’s and students’ work from many different angles, in views large and small. She analyzes her own practice in a particular classroom, student by student and moment by moment. She also investigates the particular kind of teaching that aims at engaging elementary school students in learning fundamentally important ideas and skills by working on problems. Finally, she looks at the common problems of teaching that occur regardless of the individuals, subject matter, or kinds of practice involved. Lampert arrives at an original model of teaching practice that casts new light on the complexity in teachers’ work and on the ways teachers can successfully deal with teaching problems.

Restructuring High Schools for Equity and Excellence: What Works
By Valerie E. Lee with Julia B. Smith

Teachers College, 2001

This distinctive volume is the first to explore these questions using data from a large (over 800 private and public schools) national survey. Demonstrating empirical links to achievement, this book investigates how restructuring relates to such organizational and structural properties of schools as their size, the curriculum, instruction, their teachers’ attitudes toward students, and how they press their students to work hard and succeed. Going beyond any existing work on this topic, Restructuring High Schools for Equity and Excellence demystifies the statistical analyses to draw implications and make recommendations for school reform and school policy.

Educational Administration: Theory, Research, and Practice
By Cecil G. Miskel and Wayne K. Hoy

McGraw-Hill, 2001

The leading text in its field, the sixth edition presents the most comprehensive synthesis available of theory and research in organizational behavior as it applies to the practice of Educational Administration. It provides practitioners with the concepts and research findings necessary to solve practical problems. Each theoretical perspective concludes with an authentic case study which challenges students to apply their knowledge to an actual contemporary school problem.

Constructions of Literacy: Studies of Teaching and Learning In and Out of Secondary Schools
Edited by Elizabeth B. Moje and David G. O’Brien

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2001

Constructions of Literacy explores and represents, through a series of cases and commentaries, how and why secondary school teachers and students use literacy in formal and informal learning settings. As used in the context of this book, secondary literacy refers to speaking, listening, reading, writing, and performing. It also refers to how these processes or events are constructed, negotiated, and used for specific purposes by teachers and students as they engage in various classroom, school, and community practices and interactions. The authors operate from a stance that literacy is socially, culturally, and historically constructed. They recognize that there are many different perspectives on how that construction occurs--some arguing for institutional and structural influences--others suggesting that people have some degree of agency within the constraints imposed by larger structures. A distinguishing feature of the volume is that the contributors explore and make explicit differing perspectives on literacy as a social construction. The volume is built around case studies of secondary school teachers' and students' literacy practices inside and outside of schools. The cases include diverse (critical, cultural, feminist, interpretive, phenomenological, and postmodern) theoretical and epistemological perspectives and research methodologies, making this one of the first collections of studies in secondary content area classrooms conducted from multiple perspectives. It concludes with two Commentaries, one by Donna Alvermann and one by David Bloome, in which they discuss and critique the contributions made from the different perspectives and grapple with how they simultaneously illuminate and confuse issues in literacy theory, research, and practice. Preservice and in-service teachers, school professionals, and researchers in literacy education, secondary education, and curriculum theory will find this book stimulating and informative. It will help them analyze the complexities of secondary literacy teaching and learning, and examine their own understandings of literacy within their own literacy contexts.

Handbook Of Research On Teaching edited by Virginia Richardson

AERA, 2001 (http://www.aera.net/publications/?id=52)

The 1,296-page handbook reflects current and sometimes competing schools of thought and presents exciting possibilities for educational research and writing. A resource for students and scholars in education and beyond, the updated Handbook presents the robust field of research on teaching characterized by evolving research methodologies and strong, diverse conceptual frameworks. This research will inform practice-policy, school administration, teaching, instruction, and parenting. This edition, with 51 chapters by 85 contributors, will guide educational practice and research in the 21st century.

Pioneering Deans of Women: More than Wise and Pious Matrons by Jana Nidiffer

Teachers College Press, 2000

The "collective biography" of the first deans of women contained in these pages provides both a compelling illumination of women’s history and an explanation of the rise of certain professions within university structures. This book is not only interesting, it is germane to current debates about the roles of women in higher education.