Fall 2004 Table of Contents-Harvard Educational Review

In this article, Walt Haney, Michael Russell, and Damian Bebell summarize a decade of work using student drawings as a way to both document and change education and schooling. After a brief summary of more than one hundred years of literature on children’s drawings, the authors point out that drawings have been little recognized as a medium of educational research in recent decades. Next they explain how the work reported here has evolved, recounting how they have used student drawings as a way to document educational phenomena. They then present reliability and validity evidence to support such use on a macro level. The authors go on to relate examples at the micro level of how drawings have been used to inform and change education and learning. Finally, they argue that student drawings, though only one form of inquiry, help illustrate the fundamental point that, if educational reforms are to succeed, we must treat teachers and students not just as the objects, but also as the agents, of reform and improvement. (pp. 241–272)

In this article, Graham Nuthall critiques four major types of research on teaching effectiveness: studies of best teachers, correlational and experimental studies of teaching-learning relationships, design studies, and teacher action and narrative research. He gathers evidence about the kind of research that is most likely to bridge the teaching-research gap, arguing that such research must provide continuous, detailed data on the experience of individual students, in-depth analyses of the changes that take place in the students’ knowledge, beliefs, and skills, and ways of identifying the real-time interactive relationships between these two different kinds of data. Based on his exploration of the literature and his research on teaching effectiveness, Nuthall proposes an explanatory theory for research on teaching that can be directly and transparently linked to classroom realities. (pp. 273–306)

Based on her study of the assessment and validation of final year projects in two academic departments — one located in a humanities faculty and the other in an engineering faculty of a South African university — Suellen Shay argues that the assessment of complex tasks is a socially situated interpretive act. Her argument centers on three questions. The first question explores the basis of assessors’ "common ground" and is rooted in Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus and his analysis of how academics develop a "feel for the game." The second question "drills down" into these differences, using dissensus (lack of consensus) as another window on the interpretive process. Shay’s data suggest that assessors’ interpretations are powerfully shaped in predictable and unpredictable ways by their disciplinary orientations, years of experience, and levels of involvement with students. While these differences of interpretation are often resolved collegially, a careful analysis of these occasions illuminates the social-situatedness of assessment practices. Shay also argues that assessors’ interpretations are constituted not only to sustain (or challenge) systems of belief, but also to maintain (or challenge) identities and interpersonal relations. The article concludes with a discussion exploring the implications of assessment as a socially situated interpretive act for academic communities of practice. (pp. 307–329)

In this article, Peter Sipe compares his first year as a middle school teacher in Brooklyn, New York, to that of a rookie corrections officer at Sing Sing prison. Sipe explores what he considers to be disturbing similarities in these experiences, namely, a preoccupation with control, immersion in an adversarial social dynamic, and the prevalence of stress. Most ominously, Sipe suggests that both institutions share a legacy of failure. He posits that, just as prisons do not live up to their titles as "correctional facilities," his middle school does not produce educated children. (pp. 330–339)

Harvard Educational Review
Fall 2004 Reviews of Current Books
(Full Text)

Rethinking Globalization is a coordinated effort between a high school teacher and a fifth-grade teacher from a bilingual public school to offer a new understanding of social studies teaching. Published by a nonprofit educational publisher committed to social transformation, Rethinking Globalization is a rich resource for educators who want to teach about global justice from a critical perspective. Educators teaching about this world cannot avoid dealing with the big picture, since issues traditionally confined within national boundaries cannot be understood as isolated or independent of what is going on in the other parts of the world. By pushing students to reflect on their immediate community, teachers can help them to see the global world and how they can make a difference in it. Taking a critical stance against U.S. hegemony, this book aims to spark reflection about global injustice in a different way, breaking down the false dichotomy between "us" and "them." It also shows that there are multiple exploitative situations "at home," and not only "over there" in distant lands. Far from trying to avoid a neutral picture of the effects of globalization, the editors hope to invite "diversity of opinion but . . . not lose sight of the aim of the curriculum: to alert students to global injustice, to seek explanations, and to encourage activism" (p. 5).

Rethinking Globalization includes a variety of educational resources to alert students to global injustice, such as songs, cartoons, testimonies, historical documents, literary texts, students’ poems, and many other materials teachers can use in the classroom. Also included in the text is a list of videos, video distributors, books and curricula, journals, organizations, and websites all dedicated to global justice (e.g., Tracy Chapman songs, Jamaica Kincaid novels, Ken Loach films, and Eduardo Galeano books). The book has a companion website where visitors can download handouts and other materials.

Defined by the editors as "curricular without being a curriculum" (p. 8), the book can be used by upper elementary, high school, and college students, as well as teachers and adult learners. As educators themselves, the diverse authors of this volume also share moments of reflection from their lessons, asking "What would I do differently?" The activities included in the volume are thus meant to really push students to reflect on existing world inequalities, to challenge their own thinking, and to encourage them to take actions. For example, the editors suggest that students look at the labels of their own clothes, find out about the place where these clothes were made, and the conditions of production involved in making them. If they discover unjust conditions, students will be encouraged to write a letter of protest to the t-shirt manufacturer or an article for the local newspaper.

The book’s nine chapters cover a wide range of issues within the globalization debate, such as external debt, sweatshops, child labor, poverty and famine, mass consumption, and environmental threats. Each chapter is structured in the same way, presenting first a particular topic and then related "teaching ideas." The second chapter traces the historical roots of present-day inequalities back to colonialism, the "discovery" of America, and the origins of exploitation through trade. Chapter three is dedicated to helping students unveil historical connections between the colonial past and present global inequalities. The goal here is to question ideas such as underdevelopment, famine, and poverty by discussing their real causes. It is worth noting the editors’ clear position and recognition of, without any reservation, the role played by international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. Accordingly, the multiple controversies around the issue of external debt are profoundly dealt with in this chapter, for example, with ironic cartoons that denounce the historical, political, social, and economic consequences of colonialism on the so-called poor countries.

Chapters four and five focus specifically on global sweatshops and child labor. Unlike other texts, comparisons between "here" and "there" are avoided, thus opening readers’ eyes to the exploitation that also exists within our wealthy societies. In chapter six, the editors present farmers, in the Philippines and India, for example, who revolted against the effects of agricultural globalization, such as the commodification of traditional food, forced food exportation, farmers’ displacement, and poor working conditions. Chapter seven brings the environmental dimension into the debate through hot global topics like over consumption, water scarcity, the depletion of natural resources, and global warming. Again, in all activities, students are encouraged to connect their everyday habits to larger global problems in a very real and practical fashion, thus revealing how our students can be encouraged to think in a more "eco-logical" way. Chapter eight offers some "final words" from people committed to global justice, like the subcomandante Marcos (the Chiapas indigenous insurgency leader), Martin Luther King Jr., Eduardo Galeano, and young activists who persuade each of us to get involved in global justice matters.

Bigelow and Peterson have done an excellent job sharing their own experiences as critical educators who teach social studies from a global perspective. Their comments and reflections are brilliantly written and clearly discussed by and for practitioners. This practice-oriented tone makes Rethinking Globalization the ideal book to help educators teaching from a critical perspective to challenge their students and overcome the difficulty teachers often face in everyday practice of raising critical questions. Even with the best material, many teachers wonder, How am I going to use this? Will I be able to facilitate such class debates? How will I make sure that all the ideas of the text are brought up?

Many struggle to connect activities that take place in the local community and classrooms to global issues. The goal of this book is to help educators in their effort to increase student’s awareness of the global world: "Every effort to make a difference needs to be grounded in [a] broader analysis. Likewise, every effort to teach about the world also needs to be informed by the bigger picture" (p. 7). Rethinking Globalization reminds us that big changes can be achieved with small actions developed in our classrooms.

The Sign of the Burger: McDonald’s and the Culture of Power reveals the secrets, strategies, history, and significance of the McDonald’s enterprise in the United States and the rest of the world. Using a cultural studies framework for his analysis, Joe L. Kincheloe offers a multifaceted view of McDonald’s, the "Golden Arches," from the impact on people’ lives, as a global cultural signifier, and as a corporation viewed as ranging from an exploitative company to a target for antiglobalization activists. Kincheloe ultimately tries to answer the question: "Why is McDonald’s a lightning rod for debate and discussion, an object of fascination, evoking strong feelings and emotions in the United States and around the world?" (p. 7).

The book includes a review of previous studies on this topic, like George Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society (1993) and John Watson’s Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (1997). However, the study is more than a mere addition to the ongoing conversation about the influence of McDonald’s; instead, it presents a new layer by bringing sociological, economic, and educational perspectives into the discussion. The analysis is framed within the critical cultural studies perspective that not only focuses on McDonald’s as a cultural signifier, but also unveils the power dynamics underneath.

It is remarkably important to connect Kincheloe’s study with the modernity and postmodernity debate. Unlike other books, Kincheloe does not use inaccessible jargon. The author instead shows an uncommon willingness to make sure that the reader is able to access and follow his arguments throughout, including definitions for concepts like modernism and postmodernism in the introduction. Methodologically, The Sign of the Burger is the result of more than ten years of data collection through what the author calls "interview-based research as a form of improvisational ethnography" (p. 17), which includes a variety of techniques from content analysis to historiography and rhetorical analysis.

The book is divided into six chapters, each one covering different aspects of the Golden Arches’ meaning and trajectory. The first chapter opens with the author’s personal journey "as a boy growing up in the rural mountains of East Tennessee"(p. 20), who discovers that McDonald’s represents an open door to modernity. From this personal perspective, the author moves to articulate an important critique of some liberals: that the discourse of their criticisms and denouncement of working conditions is elitist and condescending toward fast-food company workers. In chapter two, Kincheloe analyzes the role of McDonald’s as a producer of the ideology of a worldwide corporation. He points out all the aspects of the ideological process: creating a world that satisfies and offers freedom to the consumers, hiding racial injustice, and disguising class inequality. The conception of the Golden Arches as ideological machinery is completed with a reflection on McDonald’s as a fast-food company that contributes to labor exploitation. Obviously, as a capitalist enterprise, McDonald’s serves the ideology of those in power at the expense of the less powerful.

In chapter three, taking postmodern theory as a frame, the McDonald’s presence in hyperreality — referring not to the reality itself but to the representation of it — and the media is critically analyzed. The Golden Arches have become a signifier that goes beyond the representation of a fast-food company; they have become a cultural symbol with strong subliminal effects. Along similar lines, chapter four is dedicated to the role of the Golden Arches as public educator, or, in other words, the role that McDonald’s has played in support of a market-oriented society. Kincheloe eloquently refers to the curriculum of consumption to describe the clear agenda of the company. In chapter five, Kincheloe points out the strategies used by the company to maintain its popularity and educational role; that is, by becoming associated with socially accepted values like family, idealized views of the past and of home. In the last chapter, Kincheloe reviews the history of McDonald’s marketing campaigns. It is clear throughout the study that the clientele par excellence are the younger ones, who unconditionally follow the company’s innovations and become the most faithful consumers.

In a very personalized tone, The Sign of the Burger reveals the parallels found between the history of this enterprise, the American way of life, and how this phenomenon has made it overseas: from the entrance of women into the labor market and their need to stop by a fast-food restaurant to grab something for their families to eat, to its presence in many parts of the world. Kincheloe leaves us with an encouraging message: "This hegemonic, ideological, semiotic, and pedagogical dynamic may be complex, but people can understand it when it is explained to them in an accessible manner" (p. 213). This book undoubtedly does a great job of making this highly critical analysis accessible for all. It asks readers to critically examine elements present in our everyday lives, like McDonald’s. Kincheloe’s study is a crucial tool for educators who are desperately seeking new educational resources that promote critical thinking, not only for themselves, but also for their students.

In 1964, Judith Richards Hope, author of Pinstripes and Pearls, graduated with fifteen other women (out of a class of 513) from Harvard Law School (HLS). The women of the class of 1964 were not the first group of women to graduate from HLS, but are known as "the class on which the stars fell" because of their extraordinary professional success (p. 224). Among her many achievements, Hope was the first woman named associate director of the White House Domestic Council in 1975, served on the boards of some of the world’s largest corporations, and is the first woman in over 350 years to sit on Harvard University’s governing board. Hope’s classmates included Pat Scott Schroeder, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 1972, and Judith Rogers, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the country’s second-highest court.

Pinstripes and Pearls is Hope’s personal account of the class of 1964, but it is far more than a memoir. She draws from personal interviews, correspondence, archival sources, and her own recollections to document the educational, personal, and professional struggles of her classmates. She describes the responses of HLS’s administrators, professors, and male students to women on campus and details the strategies the women devised to cope with the combined pressures of law school, marriage, and societal expectations. Hope is fiercely proud of her classmates and their achievements, but honestly portrays the compromises and mistakes they made as they sought to be both lawyers and women — what she refers to as their struggle to wear both pinstripes and pearls.

Hope details the various ways gender influenced the educational experience of the women of 1964. She describes how the women were forced to waste precious minutes during exams to race to one of only two women’s bathrooms on the large campus. She also recounts that HLS lacked housing for women and crowded them together in a small, dingy residence hall. Hope provides anecdotes of surly men who refused to sit with women in the cafeteria, thus relegating the women to a few welcoming tables, and professors who assigned all the women students to a block of seats in the front row. Hope observes that the isolation of the women as a group ironically facilitated their creation of supportive personal and academic networks. Unlike their male classmates, the women exchanged class notes, and older women students coached their younger colleagues on professors’ techniques, classroom recitation, and how to handle antagonistic men (p. 33). Hope’s chapter describing the way the women dealt with their property law professor, "Pappy" Leach, showcases their collective creativity in dealing with overt sexism.

Hope follows her classmates after graduation to elucidate the ways the women confronted law firms that simply did not hire women, and details the strategies they used to tenaciously build their careers. Hope describes the quick realization of many classmates that simultaneously being a mother, wife, and lawyer was an impossible task. As a result, some of the women left their high-pressure private-sector jobs, while others deferred childbearing or hired housekeepers and baby sitters. Hope poignantly describes one of her own coping strategies to successfully combine her responsibilities in the Ford White House with motherhood. She recalls,

Hope organizes her chapters into short segments to focus on individuals, and as a result many of the overarching themes that are embedded in the women’s stories are not made explicit. Nevertheless, Pinstripes and Pearls richly documents a pioneering cohort of professional women. Hope provides an invaluable contribution to the fields of women’s educational history and the history of women in the law. Pinstripes and Pearls will be of interest to women struggling in any male-dominated profession to earn, as Hope puts it, "a place at the table" (p. 225).

Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, is widely known for his role in the 1960s student movement as president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). While Gitlin has written extensively on the media, the culture wars, and the New Left, in his most recent book he returns to the topic of student activism. Gitlin’s Letters to a Young Activist is the latest addition to "The Art of Mentoring" series inspired by Rainer Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

In Letters to a Young Activist, Gitlin emulates Rilke, addressing eleven didactic messages to the next generation of young activists. Gitlin’s topics, which range from "Patriotism without Embarrassment" to the "Burden of History," are bolstered by his extensive knowledge of fields including sociology, media studies, and history. The strength of the collection, however, lies in Gitlin’s willingness to set theory aside, reflect on personal experience, and speak directly to the reader. As Gitlin explains in the letter "On Duty, Love and Adventure, or Some Leaps of Faith,"

Gitlin offers the young activist advice on the art of political protest in his letter, "On Idealism and Right Action." He begins with an incisive critique of the media’s portrayal of the 1960s student movement, which he deems overly simplistic and distorted (p. 47). This has resulted, he insists, in a misunderstanding of activism that can be reduced to a familiar script: "Lights! Camera! Cops! Dissolve to Viet Cong flags flapping in the breeze to the soundtrack of ‘Street Fighting Man!’" (p. 47). Gitlin inspires the young activist with a personal story about the 1964 Free Speech Movement and a spontaneous sit-in at the University of California, Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, but he sternly warns that such acts cannot be blindly emulated. Gitlin instead advises the young activist that "the timing must be right, the tactic, apt. Originality counts. One size does not fit all" (p. 54).

Gitlin urges the young activist to act in ways that are creative and constructive. For example, Gitlin accepts use of violence for self-protection, but scorns those who embrace it as a tenable means of protest. Gitlin speaks from personal experience as president of SDS when he urges the young activist to be vigilant against infiltration by extremist groups like the Weathermen. In his reflection on the events of 1969, he describes "the Weathermen faction — speaking a Maoist-Guevaraist mishmash" successfully dismantling SDS, the student movement’s largest organization. Gitlin reminds the young activist that "a hundred people can start a riot even if ten thousand are wholly nonviolent" (p. 60). Moreover, he insists, the violent minority will always garner the media’s attention. To counter this, Gitlin tells the young activist to "be alert to the novelty of your historical situation. When you search for right action, be original. . . . Overcome the inertia of repetition." Lastly, he urges, "Put something on the earth that wasn’t there before" (p. 60).

Gitlin recognizes that the "Left and left of center" will likely be the audience for his letters (p. 2). Nevertheless, he does not avoid challenging the ideologies and beliefs widely held by members of this group. For example, in his eighth letter, "On Rendering unto Identity No More than Identity Is Due," Gitlin criticizes what he sees as the political orthodoxy that pervades college campuses. In particular, Gitlin warns the young activist away from identity politics, which, he states, "have the allure that the grand narrative of Marxism once enjoyed" (p. 126). Gitlin characterizes identity politics as a "conservative move" that balkanizes the Left into interest groups and "detracts from mobilizing for overarching goals" like universal health care and a better education system (p. 131). Gitlin urges the young activist to see the world in all its complexity and, to this end, commands young activists to "get off campus. . . . It’s not only good for your sense of reality, it’s good for your politics" (p. 131). Gitlin unequivocally endorses the importance of experiences that propel the student beyond the classroom. He writes, "Get to know people who don’t spend their days monitoring petty slights or working out theoretical positions. . . . Let the world shake you up — in other words, educate you" (p. 132).

Gitlin’s Letters to a Young Activist is based on a lifetime of experience, and the advice he offers is both politically and personally instructive. Moreover, Gitlin’s letters are artful examples of persuasive writing. As a result, they linger with the reader and demand to be reread.

Combining history, memoir, and social science research, Ilana DeBare — journalist and cofounder of the Julia Morgan School for Girls in Oakland, California — probes the complicated past and present of single-sex education in her highly readable book, Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Revival of Girls’ Schools. With vouchers, charter schools, and school choice becoming increasingly important factors in the U.S. educational landscape, DeBare’s book is an especially welcome addition to the literature on single-sex education.

As DeBare reports, more than thirty new girls’ schools across grade level, including the public Young Women’s Leadership School in New York, opened their doors between 1991 and 2001. Meanwhile, enrollment at existing girls’ schools — public, private, and parochial — grew by 15 percent. The idea of educating girls apart from their male peers, however, remains controversial in a nation long committed to coeducation.

While founding a girls’ school to which she could send her as yet pre-school-aged daughter, DeBare embarked on a research project exploring the past and present of U.S. girls’ schools. In addition to scouring the archives of such famous institutions as the 180-year-old Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, DeBare interviewed current students, teachers, administrators, and heads of school (headmistresses) across the country. She also spoke with more than 200 girls’ school alumnae who had graduated over the course of eight decades, beginning in the 1920s. The interviews, diaries, photographs, and archival papers — including those from African American institutions — yield vivid images of girls’ day-to-day school lives across two centuries. With a journalist’s eye for the apt quotation, DeBare selects both amusing and touching anecdotes to tell her story; at times it is hard not to laugh out loud at girls’ escapades and young women’s glee.

But DeBare’s narrative, like the girls’ schools she studied, has a serious purpose. Did single-sex schools open doors for their female pupils, DeBare asks, or did they play a conservative role in society, restricting their graduates’ horizons and channeling their interests along socially acceptable lines? The author’s conclusion won’t surprise historians or alumnae of girls’ schools: they did both. DeBare outlines the radical nineteenth-century origins of many Eastern boarding schools, situating their intelligent, unmarried, entrepreneurial founders on the margins of Victorian womanhood. She then describes the differing orientations of turn-of-the-century schools, which presented themselves either as college prep (mirroring the classical curriculum of boys’ schools) or as finishing schools (boasting a curriculum of modern languages, history, science, and the arts, as well as etiquette and manners). As DeBare notes, the finishing school curriculum more closely aligns with today’s education, both coeducational and single sex, and could thus be liberating in and of itself under many circumstances.

By the early 1960s, however, girls’ schools had "calcified" (p. 158). Having forgotten their radical roots and retaining — uncritically — their traditions and rules, the schools seemed trapped in a time warp while other aspects of American society broke open around them. In order to survive, some girls’ schools merged with their wealthier, more modern all-boys counterparts. Others closed their doors entirely. But the crisis was short-lived. Second-wave feminism and the emergence of social science research examining female development and gender bias in schools breathed new life into girls’ educational institutions. This, combined with a new boldness in advertising and fundraising — practices previously eschewed as "unfeminine" — helped girls’ schools gain new bearing and a renewed sense of purpose. The revival had begun.

DeBare’s account of the rise, fall, and revival of girls’ schools does not shy away from the tough issues challenging girls’ schools today. Her chapter on "Smashes, Crushes, and Female Friendships," for example, draws on the work of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg to present a clear discussion of same-sex intimacy — of both the platonic and romantic sort — in historical context. DeBare then uses her knowledge of the past to explore the not-unheard-of association of girls’ schools with lesbianism today. DeBare argues that the long tradition of valuing female friendship in girls’ schools, combined with "society’s growing openness about lesbianism and homosexuality[,] provides an unprecedented opportunity for girls’ schools" (pp. 146–147). Their unique single-sex environment creates a safe space for adolescents to explore sexual identity and same-sex friendship, and schools’ attention to these areas of girls’ development might have a ripple effect on coeducational institutions — just as girls’ schools’ boasts about strong math and science programs affected girls’ mathematics education in coed schools, especially independent ones.

DeBare’s well-researched book forgoes academic apparatus, and the absence of footnotes and bibliographic essay — while easing readability — may frustrate some. DeBare’s brief discussion of eighteenth-century girls’ schools, moreover, exaggerates their haphazard nature — boys’ schools of the time were similarly transient and their pupils’ attendance sporadic. DeBare’s analysis of Catholic schools, moreover, fails to note the pan-Protestantism of public schools that fueled their growth. But these quibbles aside, DeBare’s historical analysis is largely convincing. Pairing her historical narrative with contemporary anecdotes about the founding of the Julia Morgan School for Girls, moreover, makes the historical sketch all the more compelling.

Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Revival of Girls’ Schools provides a thought-provoking discussion of what is best — academically, developmentally, and socially — for girls. It will appeal to a variety of readers interested in school culture, girls’ learning, and the history of education. Heads of schools, principals, policymakers, and parents of girls will find DeBare’s book useful. Where Girls Come First would also spark especially good discussion within independent school communities.

Teacher Research for Better Schools
by Marian M. Mohr, Courtney Rogers, Betsy Sanford, Mary Ann Nocerino, Marion S. MacLean, and Sheila Clawson.
New York: Teachers College Press, 2004. 192 pp. $21.95.

Coauthored by four schoolteachers and two teacher-research support staff members, Teacher Research for Better Schools defines "teacher research" and explores what happens to teachers, schools, and faculty-administrative relations when classroom instructors adopt teacher-researcher identities.

Mohr et al. define teacher research as "inquiry that is intentional, systematic, public, voluntary, ethical, and contextual" (p. 23). The last adjective is central to the authors’ definition, as it distinguishes teacher research from conventional scientific studies that control for variables in order to produce reliable results. Instead of isolating variables, Mohr et al. explain, "teacher researchers strive to define, articulate, and elucidate the context as a whole, to reveal the assumptions at work within the context, and to uncover the connections as well as tensions among elements of that context" (p. 25). Teacher researchers seek to create knowledge that is immediately useful with their students in the particular classroom environment in which they teach.

As the teacher researchers observed by Mohr et al. discovered, conducting research (i.e., assuming a teacher-researcher identity) is really no different from adopting good teaching practices. As one teacher researcher described it, "teacher research is paying attention in a different way" (p. 49); that is, with an eye to interrogating and improving practice. Teacher researchers pose questions about student learning, so they must gather data about how their students learn. This process results in teacher educators conveying the message that students should consider "the ways they know." This focus on metacognition — an inevitable outcome of teacher research — helps students develop effective learning strategies. By becoming attuned to the process of problem-solving, students learn not only subject matter but also how to think about that subject matter. Moreover, the process is self-perpetuating: As teacher researchers become increasingly aware of their students’ thinking as a result of their research, they begin to incorporate teaching about learning into their lessons about DNA, the Civil War, or the quadratic formula. Over time, this becomes a standard part of teacher researchers’ repertoire, whether or not they are conducting a specific research project. Teachers’ instruction thus continues to improve, as does students’ learning. Teacher research, therefore, serves as a particularly effective form of ongoing professional development.

Part Two of Teacher Research for Better Schools provides a series of illustrative narratives from teacher-researcher classrooms and research meetings. Betty Sanford’s chapter, "It All Adds Up: Learning Number Facts in First Grade," provides a particularly vivid description of one teacher educator’s journey to best practice. It also highlights a second benefit of teacher research: Although Sanford arrived at a deep understanding of the first-grade mathematics curriculum through her study of student cognition, not through a review of the relevant scholarly literature, Mohr et al. found that the practice of conducting classroom research made teacher researchers both more knowledgeable and more interested readers of scholarly articles. As Sanford illustrates, teacher research can enable classroom teachers to expand their conceptions of themselves as a member of a professional community.

When conducted within a supportive network of colleagues, teacher research helps break down harmful assumptions about an all-knowing teacher. Like academics, teacher researchers ask tough questions. The willingness to ask such questions enables teachers to empathize with their students, who take such academic risks daily. Teacher researchers, Mohr et al. argue, model inquiry by talking to students about their research questions and the ways they seek answers. While modeling is undeniably essential to good teaching, one might quibble with Mohr et al.’s reasoning: It seems more logical to have teacher researchers model the subject matter inquiry they are attempting to teach students than to model inquiry about teaching. Teacher researchers must show students that they are not only learners in the realm of education, but also, like their pupils, students of history, mathematics, or literature.

Part Three, How Does Teacher Research Affect Schools?, discusses how well-supported teacher researchers, working in conjunction with other reform groups, can transform school culture and curriculum. Because the narratives are case studies of specific schools, they are burdened with details that make them less useful than the careful classroom sketches provided in Part Two. Nonetheless, the authors make a convincing case that a teacher-researcher presence in schools transforms faculty interactions, creating communities in which discussions of pedagogy, educational theory, and classroom practice occur more frequently. Part Four, What Does Teacher Research in Schools Mean to the Educational Community?, provides an especially useful summary of recommendations for forging and sustaining teacher-research communities within schools.

Teacher Research for Better Schools provides useful information for school administrators, who will appreciate suggestions about how to support teacher research; teacher educators, who will recognize the link between student teacher journals and teacher researcher logs; and classroom teachers who, after reading the text, will understand the concept of teacher research and may recognize ways they already use it — in the form of reflective analysis — in their own teaching and planning.

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