In 1989 an Open University researcher, Rupert Wegerif, collected data in Lyn’s classroom, studying children’s talk as they worked together at computers. When this Thinking Together research revealed that the children’s discussion skills were extremely limited, Lyn devised and taught a series of Talk Lessons. These lessons reflected the research team’s interest in exploratory talk as described by Neil Mercer (University of Cambridge). After a short series of Talk Lessons, the research team recorded increased incidence of exploratory talk. This was heartening; subsequently we found that a benefit of the talk lessons and Thinking Together approach is that children not only learn better in curriculum areas, but also find out how to discuss things with others in a measured, enquiring and exploratory way – an invaluable life skill.

Lyn gained her PhD from De Montfort University in 2002. She has since taught education students at Bedford, Northampton and Cambridge University. She promotes a Talk for Learning approach in which students and children are made aware of the power and purpose of classroom discussions, taught how to conduct and value exploratory talk, and apply their developing talk skills to their curriculum learning.

With Neil Mercer, Lyn now provides in-service education courses for teachers. These establish the theoretical background for importance of teaching discussion skills, and provide practical strategies so that teachers and school managers can integrate effective talk into classrooms. Workshops have taken place in many parts of England (e.g. Coventry, Bradford, Cornwall and Newport, Gwent) as well as in European venues (e.g. Antwerp and Amsterdam). Lyn’s next course is for Museum Education Officers.

The idea of enabling children to be able to communicate better with one another motivated Lyn to write books for teachers which have been published by Routledge. Each book has a different focus but all support teachers in raising children’s awareness of ways that they can develop their thinking through talk with their peers. The books offer practical strategies based on classroom research and extensive experience.

Through research and teaching, Lyn established a novel approach to stimulating discussion, called Talking Points. Talking Points resources stimulate and sustain discussion. Listening to children as they talk about their ideas helps teachers to understand their current thinking. Listening to one another helps children to articulate and examine their own ideas, relating them to other points of view. Children find out how to question, explain and elaborate, and crucially, how to work towards a negotiated agreement. The resources are popular with children because they offer a chance to be heard, and to have ideas taken seriously. The books set out ways that teachers can generate their own talk-focused resources for particular topics or areas of the curriculum; suggest activities based on the group’s discussion; and show how it is possible to assess children by listening to their ideas.
 

Dr. Bárbara C. Cruz is Professor of Secondary Education at the University of South Florida. Her teaching and research interests include the preparation of social studies teachers, diversity issues in education, and the teaching of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dr. Stephen J. Thornton is professor and chair of the Department of Secondary Education at the University of South Florida. Since his first days as a classroom teacher he has been intrigued by what happens to “official” curriculum in classrooms.

For the past five years, Dr. Barbara Cruz has worked closely with Dr. Stephen Thornton. Together, they have published a number of journal articles on social studies instruction and English language learners. Their book, Teaching Social Studies to English Language Learners, is now in its second edition. Many of the strategies called for in their book are evident in Gateway to Social Studies, their textbook for middle school students. They are also editors of the Routledge series, “Teaching ELLs across the Content Areas,” the first of its kind.

Starting with his Ph.D. dissertation at Stanford, which won the Association for Supervision and Curriculum award for Outstanding Dissertation in Curriculum, Dr. Thornton has explored and written about the enacted curriculum of classrooms. His Teaching Social Studies That Matters (Teachers College Press, 2005), which traces the ramifications of curricular-instructional gatekeeping, won a Choice Award from the American Library Association. He has been invited to speak about curricular-instructional gatekeeping across much of the world, including Spain, Japan, and Singapore.

In addition to scholarly works, Dr. Cruz has published a number of young adult biographies of inspirational Hispanics (such as Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and Rubén Blades) and developed curricula on Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the author of César Chávez: A Voice for Farm Workers and Multiethnic Teens and Cultural Identity, for which she received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award.

Dr. Cruz is a frequent presenter at professional conferences, colloquia, and K-12 schools. With the goal of serving as a Latina role model and mentor as well as familiarizing people with the important contributions of Hispanics, Dr. Cruz participates in annual Hispanic Heritage celebrations. She is the recipient of numerous teaching, research and service awards.

Dr. Thornton is also, with David J. Flinders, editor of the Curriculum Studies Reader. Also with Routledge, the fourth edition of the Reader was published in November 2012.
 

This month on the Education Arena, we're focusing on Culture in Education. We have exclusive video highlights celebrating the launch of the new Centre of Race and Ethnicity Studies in Birmingham, as well as a brand new article collection based around Race, Culture and Multiculturalism for you to enjoy.
To find out more, please visit: www.educationarena.com

Working as a Principal Examiner for A Level English Language (and the combined Language and Literature) provided the first opportunities for writing textbooks for students. This proved more successful than early attempts at creative writing, with rejection slips even from Mills and Boon!

“My time at Lancaster University shaped many of my beliefs about teaching and learning. I discovered that English Studies, at best, encompasses not only literature studies, but producing your own writing, and understanding how language works. Our teachers made us beware of the tyranny of Jargon to Impress and Oppress. I may be familiar with tomes on linguistics, but my aim in writing student materials is to illuminate the subject, showing its everyday relevance and leaving the reader / listener with confidence in their own understanding. I would confidently make a money-back offer, if my claim about the Joy of Grammar was not upheld.”

The 2nd edition of ‘English Language Knowledge for Secondary Teachers’ now has all the classroom activities (with commentaries) available to download from the internet. This should make it more user-friendly. It was written to ‘plug the gaps’ for the many teachers whose own education missed out on explicit grammar knowledge, yet are required to deliver it in their classrooms.

‘The Language of Humour’, obviously inspired by a love-hate relationship with the world of comedy, is also available. So many students choose this area for their coursework investigations, yet lack a useful framework for their analysis. The way that humour plays on our existing awareness of language structures also makes examples from comedy an ideal way to introduce the study of grammar, phonology, semantics and pragmatics.
 

The fourth edition of Dr. Rock's Teaching Secondary Mathematics is publishing this month. Solidly grounded in up-to-date research, theory and technology, Teaching Secondary Mathematics is a practical, student-friendly, and popular text for secondary mathematics methods courses. It provides clear and useful approaches for mathematics teachers, and shows how concepts typically found in a secondary mathematics curriculum can be taught in a positive and encouraging way.

Dr. Rock received his B.S. in Mathematics form Vanderbilt University, M.A. in Mathematics Education from the University of Central Florida, and Ed. D. in Curriculum and Instruction (Mathematics Education) from the University of Central Florida. David has taught mathematics in Florida and Mississippi at the middle and high school levels. He was a professor and coordinator of Secondary Education at The University of Mississippi (1998 – 2004) and the chair of the Department of Education at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Prior to his return to Ole Miss, he was Dean of the College of Education and Health Professions at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA (2006 – 2010). He has conducted hundreds of educational workshops and seminars at local, state, and national conferences in which his goal is to increase interest and enthusiasm of the teaching and learning of mathematics. David has received numerous awards including The Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Technology at the Twelfth International Conference on College Teaching and Learning (2001) and Outstanding Researcher Award for the School of Education at The University of Mississippi (2002).

David has also published numerous articles and co-authored 15 books including Teaching Secondary Mathematics (2013), Scratch Your Brain Where It Itches (2001, 2006, 2008), and Teaching K-6 Mathematics (2003). For the past 8 years, David served as the editor and co-editor of the Palette of Problems in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics journal, Teacher Middle School Mathematics. He Along with his wife Michelle, a former elementary teacher, he has four children: Carly (15), Kyle (13), Katelyn (11), and Cassidy (8).

David and conducted hundreds of seminars including keynote presentations for the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the Idaho Leadership Conference on Mathematics and Science.

In addition to his professional accomplishments, He is the developer of Ole Miss Math Challenge which encourages students to utilize the Internet to solve challenging mathematics problems from across the globe. After viewing a contest problem, students submit a solution to the contest site. A return message is sent to each individual answering a problem indicating whether the respondent’s solution was correct or incorrect. If the answer is correct, the student's name and school address is listed on the contest site. At the end of the week, the current problem is retired to a page labeled “Past Problems." Teachers, students, and parents can then access and use these problems for mathematical enrichment and fun! The site receives more than five million hits annually and is viewed by thousands of students from 237 different countries from thousands of schools in more than 5000 cities as well as all fifty U.S. states. This site is listed number 1 on google for math contests. In addition, a new math forum has been created to allow participants to communicate with each other about mathematics. Hundreds of participants share their thoughts about mathematics from across the globe. These problems will stretch your mind in places they have never been stretched before!
 

To find out more, visit www.educationarena.com

Jean writes books and articles about action research and professional education across the professions, with sole and collaborative authorship. Her most recent book is a third edition of Action Research: Principles and Practice (2013). Abiding commitments include the idea of how studying their practices can help people explain how they hold themselves accountable for their thinking and their work, in the interests of others and of a co-operative and productive world order.

Writing the third edition of Action Research: Principles and Practice has been important for me. The first edition, written in 1988, began to draw on ideas that were developing in my doctoral studies, about immanence and emergence and connectedness, and the transformational relationships between people, their thinking and their experiences of the world; these ideas have matured over the years, and now incorporate ideas about dialogue and spiritual relationship. I like the idea, drawing on the work of Howard Zinn, of a people’s history of action research, so the book contains lots of small case studies from people I meet and work with all over the world and from different contexts. It is a real privilege to be able to work with them, and a lot of fun. It is also nice to be able to use your writing to critique your own thinking, and each new edition of a book, including this one, represents a critical step forward in the thinking. Life never stands still.

You can read more of my writings and ideas at www.jeanmcniff.com, and see some of the work undertaken around the world. You can also contact me at jeanmcniff@mac.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Alan R. Sadovnik is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Education, Sociology and Public Administration and Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, where he is the Co- Director of the Institute on Educational Law and Policy and the Newark Schools Research Collaborative, and Coordinator of the Educational Policy track of the Ph.D. Program in Urban Systems. 

The most powerful influence in Peter W. Cookson, Jr.'s career has been a life-long passion for equality of educational opportunity.  Peter W. Cookson, Jr. teaches at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, and is President of Ideas without Borders in Washington, DC, USA. 

Susan F. Semel is Professor of Education at the City College of New York, where she served as Chair of the Department of Secondary Education for a decade and also Professor of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. 

Alan R. Sadovnik is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Education, Sociology and Public Administration and Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, where he is the Co- Director of the Institute on Educational Law and Policy and the Newark Schools Research Collaborative, and Coordinator of the Educational Policy track of the Ph.D. Program in Urban Systems. He received his B.A. in sociology from Queens College of the City University of New York and M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. He previously taught at Adelphi University, where he was Dean of the School of Education from 1996-1998. Among his publications are: the author of Equity and Excellence in Higher Education (1995); coauthor of Exploring Education: An Introduction to the Foundations of Education (1994, 2001, 2006, 2013); editor of Knowledge and Pedagogy: The Sociology of Basil Bernstein (1995) and Sociology of Education: A Critical Reader (2007, 2011); International Handbook of Educational Reform (1992), Implementing Educational Reform: Sociological Perspectives on Educational Reform (1995), “Schools of Tomorrow,” Schools of Today: What Happened to Progressive Education (1999), Sociology and Education: An Encyclopedia (2002), Founding Mothers and Others: Women Educational Leaders During the Progressive Era (2002), No Child Left Behind and the Reduction of the Achievement Gap: Sociological Perspectives on Federal Educational Policy (2008 and Toolkits, Translation Devices and Conceptual Accounts: Essays on Basil Bernstein's Sociology of Knowledge (2010), as well as dozens of journal articles, book chapters and urban educational policy reports. He has served on the editorial boards of The American Education Research Journal, Teachers College Record, History of Educational Quarterly and The Urban Review and Sociology of Education and Educational Foundations. He has given keynote addresses at the University of Hong Kong, the Institute of Education at the University of London, and Griffith University in Australia. 

The most powerful influence in Peter W. Cookson, Jr.'s career has been a life-long passion for equality of educational opportunity. After teaching in public and private schools, I entered graduate school to study sociology. Through the discipline of social science, I have developed a body of work that examines the causes and consequences of unequal educational opportunities. One of the hallmarks of my work is the examination of the educational organizations of the upper class and how inequality is perpetuated organizationally, culturally and socially through the stratification of educational opportunities.

I am a staunch supporter of public education and have argued over time and in many different venues that the preservation and improvement of public education is the foundation of American democracy. My research has been conducted nationally and internationally; I estimate that I have visited over 400 schools and interviewed over a thousand educators in the last two decades. Many of my findings have been published in the scholarly and popular press. I am a regular blogger for the Huffington Post and Education Sector, where I am a Senior Fellow. I have authored and co-authored over 15 books on education and education reform. Some of the most notable include: Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools (Basic); Expect Miracles: Charter Schools and the Politics of Hope and Despair (Westview); School Choice: The Struggle for Soul Of American Education (Yale); Making Sense of Society (HarperCollins); Exploring Education (Routledge); Sacred Trust: A Children’s Education Bill of Rights (Corwin), Hearts on Fire: Stories of Todays’ Visionaries Igniting Idealism into Action (Random House), and a memoir The Red Cadillac (Amazon Single). In 2013 Cradles of Class: American High Schools and Enduring Inequality (Teachers College Press) and Blended Learning: Creating the Classrooms of Tomorrow Today (ASCD) will be published.

Lately, I have expanded my research agenda in an effort to understand the educational possibilities inherent in the knowledge explosion as it is driven by the revolution in communication. I am developing the concept of ultra-intelligence; I am currently completing a study of the learning styles of digital natives and how classrooms should change to meet and exceed the learning needs of today’s and tomorrow’s students.

I believe that we are at the edge of a great educational transformation. My recent work can be characterized as searching for a unifying transformational ideal that will liberate learning and allow all students to develop their talents and be come positive active citizens and leaders.  

Susan F. Semel is Professor of Education at the City College of New York, where she served as Chair of the Department of Secondary Education for a decade and also Professor of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Previously, she taught at Adelphi and Hofstra Universities and for over two decades taught history at the prestigious Dalton School in New York City. Among her publications are The Dalton School: The Transformation of a Progressive School (1992); coauthor of Exploring Education: An Introduction to the Foundations of Education (1994, 2001, 2006, 2013); editor of Foundations of Education: The Essential Texts (2010) and coeditor of Toolkits, Translation Devices and Conceptual Accounts: Essays on Basil Bernstein's Sociology of Knowledge (2010); “Schools of Tomorrow,” Schools of Today: What Happened to Progressive Education (1999) and Founding Mothers and Others: Women Educational Leaders During the Progressive Era (2002) and International Handbook of Educational Reform (1992), as well as dozens of journal articles and book chapters. She has received Critics Choice Awards from the American Educational Studies Association, in 1993 for The Dalton School, in 2000 for "Schools of Tomorrow..." and in 2003 for Founding Mothers and Others and two Spencer Foundation grants for her research on the City and Country School in New York City and the transition to coeducation at Wheaton College in Norton MA. She is coeditor, with Alan R. Sadovnik, of the History of Schools and Schooling series at Peter Lang Publishing, the Palgrave Studies in Urban Education at Palgrave-MacMillan and the Schooling Around the World Series at Greenwood Press. She has served on the editorial boards of History of Education Quarterly, Educational Foundations and the Urban Review. She has given keynote addresses at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education and the University of Hong Kong.

Joan Poliner Shapiro is Professor of Educational Leadership at Temple University’s College of Education, President of Temple University’s Faculty Senate, and Co-Director of the New DEEL (Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership) Community Network.

Steven Jay Gross is Professor of Educational Leadership and Founding Director of the New DEEL (Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership) Community Network at Temple University’s College of Education.

At Temple, Joan previously served as an Associate Dean for Research and Development, and as the Chair of her department. She also has been the Co-Director of the Women’s Studies Program and a Supervisor of Intern Teachers at the University of Pennsylvania. She began her career teaching middle school and high school in the United States and the United Kingdom. Dr. Shapiro received her undergraduate degree from Simmons College, obtained a masters’ degree in social science and a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed a postdoctoral year carrying out research focused on program evaluation and curriculum development at the University of London’s Institute of Education. Her writings have primarily dealt with ethical, gender, multicultural and accountability issues in education. She has co-authored the books Reframing Diversity in Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Gender in Urban Education: Strategies for Student Achievement (Heinemann, 2004), and Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education: Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Complex Dilemmas (Routledge, 2011, 3rd ed.), and has written over 50 articles in refereed journals or edited books. Additionally Dr. Shapiro has received the following awards: the Outstanding Teacher’s Award from Temple’s College of Education in 2004; the Willower Award of Excellence for her co-authored book on professional ethics in 2006; the Lindback Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008; the University Council of Educational Administration’s Master Professor Award in 2009; the Author of the Month, Routledge Publishers, July, 2010; and Temple’s Great Teacher Award in 2011.

Steven also serves as a Director at the Center for the Study of Leadership and Ethics sponsored by the University Council for Educational Administration. At Temple, he has served as Interim Department Chair, Program Coordinator, and Chair of the Collegial Assembly. His research interests center on initiating and sustaining democratic ethical innova¬tions in educating organizations and on Turbulence Theory. His other books include Leadership Mentoring: Maintaining School Success in Turbulent Times (2006), Staying Centered: Curriculum Leadership in a Turbulent Era (1998) and Promises Kept: Sustaining School and District Leadership in a Turbulent Era (2004). Dr. Gross has also published numerous journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Gross is on the editorial board for the Journal of Research on Leadership Education, served as Editor of ASCD’s Curriculum Handbook Series and is a Senior Fellow at the Vermont Society for the Study of Education. His previous professional experience includes serving as Associate Professor of education at Trinity College of Vermont, Chief of Curriculum and Instruction for the State of Vermont, Executive Director of the China Project Consortium, Curriculum and Staff Development Director for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, and high school social studies teacher in Philadelphia. Dr. Gross earned his undergraduate degree in history at Temple University, a masters’ degree in modern Chinese history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a doctorate in educational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania, and was a Klingenstein fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University. Gross also studied Mandarin Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.