Unwrapping the Shrink Wrap

This chapter describes a team of teachers and university instructors' investigation of teacher-led instructional improvements in elementary classroom writing instruction through peer observation and collective dialogue examining everyday teaching practices. Established tools and processes in place such as district curriculum, the Units of Study, and tools of observation and collaboration, specifically Learning Labs (www.pebc.org) protocol and professional learning communities, supported a naturalistic inquiry of practice. Teacher leadership, like writing instruction, is a process, and these educators identified co-constructed observation as a tool for sustaining joy, an under researched element of teacher leadership and professional development. Additionally, collaborative debriefing fostered professional growth, and collective inquiry provided inroads to autonomy in curricular decision making. The team sought to lead from within to develop understanding of and improvements in writing instruction.

Dilemmas and Directions in the Consideration of Differences in Teachers and Students’ Evaluations of Recommended Financial Accounting Textbooks

This provocation focuses on the problems that may emanate from the consideration of differences between stakeholders–teachers’ and students’ evaluation of recommended textbooks for informed curricular decision making. The article draws on empirical data from a study on the evaluation of recommended senior secondary financial accounting textbooks in Southwestern Nigeria. It highlighted the emergence of four dilemmas and describes how a focus on resolving them can proffer remedy for the perennial worrying about the contemptuous misconstructions in the consideration of curriculum (evaluation) outcomes. The article also offers an open discourse for evaluative research practitioners.

“Am I Doing What I think I’m Doing?”: The Importance of a Theoretical Frame when Integrating Tablets in Teacher Education

In the following self-study, we share our investigation of the shifts in faculty pedagogical beliefs, instructional practices, and curricular decision-making while engaged in a cycle of reflection on tablet-focused teacher education course. We conducted this inquiry into our practice, using Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) and the Substitution-Augmentation-Modification-Redefinition (SAMR) model as frameworks to examine data from interviews and reflective writing. We conclude the need for the explicit connection of technology professional development, specifically tablet technology, with a meaningful theoretical framework, in order for faculty to engage in effective integration. We also share our model for examining the development of instructor’s thinking about integrating technology, including influences on thinking and classification of instructional decisions into the SAMR taxonomy.

Transforming Lesson Design Through Animation

This chapter reports on a project in which elementary mathematics preservice teachers visualized lessons through an online animation platform. Preservice teachers at two universities engaged in an extensive project that translated printed mathematics curricular materials into visualizations of enactment. The project centered on preservice teacher-created animations as a way to extend the lesson planning process and more closely approximate actual decisions of teaching practice, including representations used, student contributions, and mathematical understanding. Project components are described with an emphasis on the role of animations as an extension of lesson planning. The intent is to understand the ways in which the technology platform illuminated preservice teachers' curricular decision making as they transitioned from a written lesson plan to animated lessons. Consideration is made for how the technology may provide transformational opportunities that otherwise may not have occurred.

Transforming Lesson Design through Animation

This chapter reports on a project in which elementary mathematics preservice teachers visualized lessons through an online animation platform. Preservice teachers at two universities engaged in an extensive project that translated printed mathematics curricular materials into visualizations of enactment. The project centered on preservice teacher-created animations as a way to extend the lesson planning process and more closely approximate actual decisions of teaching practice, including representations used, student contributions, and mathematical understanding. Project components are described with an emphasis on the role of animations as an extension of lesson planning. The intent is to understand the ways in which the technology platform illuminated preservice teachers' curricular decision making as they transitioned from a written lesson plan to animated lessons. Consideration is made for how the technology may provide transformational opportunities that otherwise may not have occurred.

“Whatever Is Comfortable:” Secondary Physical Educators’ Curricular Decision Making: Issues of Knowledge and Gendered Performativity

Throughout history there have been debates as to what content knowledge (CK) is of most value for physical education (PE). Much recent conversation has circulated around the hope that time spent in PE supports students’ regular participation in physical activity (PA). Researchers’ use of the term PA, however, often stresses the similarities while ignoring important differences. Utilizing teacher knowledge theory, feminist poststructural scholarship, and interpretive methodologies we attempted to better understand how teachers selected curricular content by examining their CK. We found that the teachers’ PA biographies led them to develop deeply embodied and gendered knowledge and competencies, or ±comfort,“ when it came to teaching particular PAs, and this was a major factor in how they selected curricular content. Implications of the study highlight the socially constructed nature of teacher CK and issues associated with secondary PE curricula and wider physical activity culture(s).