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In this study, the researchers used qualitative surveys to explore potential teaching candidates' preliminary perceptions of self as teacher and examine how roles are identified, defined and constructed in the context of a tutoring lab that provides support to English Language Learners. Prospective candidates' perceptions of their tutees, children whose cultural identities and backgrounds differ from their own, are also examined. Findings indicate participants' teaching identities and conceptualizations of their roles as teachers became more specific and elaborated over the course of the semester. Additionally, the significance of multiple practicum experiences in diverse settings for ongoing identity development and for developing knowledge about culturally and linguistically diverse school children was also clear. (Contains 3 tables.)

Background: One of the debates around service-learning is if and what changes can be affected in the short duration of a college course, typically 15 weeks. This study explores how one education program addresses this challenge by taking into consideration students' cognitive and social development and systematically designs a progression of community service and service-learning experiences. Prospective elementary education teachers begin this program by engaging in community service during their sophomore year. In their junior year in a required course in learner diversity, they are students of service-learning. Then, in their senior year, they become teachers of service-learning projects in their elementary classroom placements. Aims: The aim of this investigation is to ascertain whether prospective teachers demonstrate growth in cultural understanding and content knowledge through a credential program which has a community service/service-learning component that develops over three years. Sample: During a three year period, 413 elementary education majors responded to surveys about their service-learning experiences. Method: Students responded to surveys at the conclusion of each of two courses with a service-learning component. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. Results: Findings from the data reveal that service-learning has broadened students understanding of social issues; helped them to examine their own views and biases; provided them with a greater responsibility to the community; and assisted them in acquiring skills useful in their career. Conclusion: Students gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their community as they experience community service and service-learning at different levels throughout the program. Students who participate in this program not only benefit from a change in their own personal views, but also learn the importance of facilitating changes in attitudes, beliefs, and practices in others. This progression of experiences significantly influences students' abilities to apply what they have learned as teachers in a classroom. (Contains 4 tables.)

Project work involves content, products, and processes. Teacher educators may notice that those new to project work adopt ideas and practices related to content and products more readily than they adopt ideas and practices related to the processes embedded in good project work. To fully implement the Project Approach, teachers need to develop an understanding of the underlying dynamics of the processes of project work. The first part of this article defines projects, provides a brief history of the Project Approach, and discusses some benefits of the approach. It then goes on to discuss challenges to implementing the Project Approach, the teacher's role in project work, and processes of the Project Approach. The first part of the article describes how teachers begin to experience a change in their practices as they come to better comprehend the underlying dynamics of the processes that constitute good project work. The second part of the article points to some of the research on teacher learning that may account for the difficulties with this change.

In this paper, we address the need to develop an empirically-based understanding of the use of dialogue in teaching by discussing theory and research related to a pedagogical approach called collaborative reasoning (CR). CR is an instructional method designed to engage elementary school children in group discussions about controversial issues raised in their readings. CR is grounded in social learning and schema-theoretic views of cognition, which are integrated to form a new model, called argument schema theory (AST). According to AST, students acquire generalizable knowledge of argumentation, or an argument schema, through participating in dialogic discussions with their peers. The article reviews empirical evidence from a variety of studies designed to evaluate the educational potential of dialogic interactions. The studies investigated group processes during CR discussions, individual student outcomes following participation in discussions, and the connections between the features of social interaction and individual student performance. We conclude that, despite its complexity, classroom dialogue can serve as a useful mechanism for promoting the development of individual argumentation. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure and 2 notes.)

This article describes the use of poetry as a pedagogical tool intended to intensify the reflective process of a service-learning project. In addition to keeping electronic journal entries, and summarizing and reflecting on service activities, preservice teachers wrote (or selected) poems to reconstruct their experiences and recreate some of the feelings experienced while working with the poor. The purpose was to help deepen students' levels of understanding of children and families who live in poverty through continuously processing, revisiting and reflecting on the complexity of issues faced by the poor. A Poetry-Read-Aloud served as a culmination to the semester-long project. (Contains 3 figures.)

Emergent leadership was examined in 12 discussion groups in 4 fourth-grade classrooms. Children's leadership moves were coded from transcripts of 10 free-flowing, open-format discussions of each of the 12 groups. The transcripts encompassed 26,000 turns for speaking, including 22,000 child turns of which 1,700 were judged to serve one of five leadership functions: Turn Management, Argument Development, Planning and Organizing, Topic Control, and Acknowledgment. Comparison of the number and kind of leadership moves made by the children showed that 1 primary child leader emerged in 6 out of the 12 groups and that, in all but 1 of the remaining groups, leadership was shared among several children. Even in groups with a dominant leader, leadership functions were widely distributed among group members. A three-level generalized hierarchical linear model, with multiple discussions nested within students and students nested within groups, showed that the frequency of leadership moves increased with the progression of the discussions, suggesting that the emerging leaders were learning how to lead. Girls who received stratagem instruction, and who were frequently nominated by their peers as having good ideas and seldom nominated as being too quiet, exhibited more leadership than other children. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have proliferated in the latter half of the 20th century. Many of these transnational actors are new to world politics, a province that historically has been [...]