Walter Doyle

• Professor Emeritus at University of Arizona

Practitioner research should be sufficiently trustworthy and useful. We argue, however, that although criteria of trustworthiness are rather well developed, criteria of usefulness are not. As a result, the long-term impact of practitioner research is rather disappointing because, we contend, it tends to lack practicality. We used theories of classr...

Curriculum ideals often get compromised as a curriculum moves through its various levels of representation. Across the different science reforms, this process of slippage is clearly present. Research shows that teacher subject matter knowledge, PCK, beliefs and context factors all influence implementation. Professional development arrangements focu...

This forum article is a response to the article by Alandeom W. Oliveira, Patterson Rogers, Cassie F. Quigley, Denis Sambursky, Kimberly Barss, and Seema Rivera, The article explores agency from the perspective of both personal action and an understanding of causality within environmental systems, and it explores environmental read-alouds as pedagog...

The assumption that laboratory skill training has a direct influence on classroom performance was tested for a sample of social studies student teachers. Experimental group Ss received six weeks of microteaching training and their teaching performance was compared with that of control Ss in student teaching classrooms. Difference in classroom perfo...

In his article "Principled Practical Knowledge: Not a Bridge but a Ladder," Carl Bereiter (2014) argues that theoretical knowledge is too shallow to support the generation of innovative learning activities. He makes a case for principled practical knowledge (PPK)-"principled know-how and know-why"-to fulfill this practical generative role. We argue...

Amid calls for more practice-based teacher education, this article presents a concrete illustration of a practice-based bridging strategy for preparing high school biology teachers to enact open-inquiry labs. Open-inquiry labs were considered a core practice frame that served as a context for identifying core practices and for giving coherence to s...

Background/Context A fundamental tension has long existed between school reform proposals and actual teaching practice. Despite a large literature on teacher change, the discontinuity between innovation and practice continues and many attempts to reform teaching fail to be enacted in most classrooms. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of St...

The fundamental issue we address in this chapter is the relationship between the curriculum and the teacher. Despite decades of efforts to reform education through curriculum development, it is common to find that teachers do not enact curricula according to design (Hume & Coll, 2010; Olsen, 1981). Shavelson and his colleagues (Shavelson et al., 20...

School discipline addresses schoolwide, classroom, and individual student needs through broad prevention, targeted intervention, and development of self-discipline. Schools often respond to disruptive students with exclusionary and punitive approaches that have limited value. This article surveys three approaches to improving school discipline prac...

This article provides a situated perspective on the person-centered classroom management practices described in this issue, in order to highlight the special contribution these practices make to sustaining meaningful student engagement in classroom activity. Building on Paul Gump's efforts to conceptualize the classroom environment, the discussion...

The purpose of the project reported in this paper was to explore the nature of children's everyday interpretations of curriculum events in classrooms and the potential impact of these interpretations on their evolving understandings of subject matter. The particular focus of this study was on how students in a fourth-grade class interpret curriculu...

In this paper I examine the problems of “truth” in the use of narratives to study teaching. The analysis focuses on the themes of universality and control that have dominated the study of teaching and conceptions of the relationship between research and social policy. I argue (1) that teaching can only be known through story; (2) that story gives r...

Research on personal narratives and life history in teacher education identified four themes: (1) teaching is deeply personal; (2) personal understandings of teaching are systematic and theoretical; (3) learning to teach is a negotiated process; and (4) mastery in teaching takes a long time. (SK)

Examines the role of case methods in teacher education, noting that the use of case methods depends upon an understanding of teaching and the learning-to-teach process. Three frameworks for using cases in teacher education are examined (precept and practice, problem solving and decision making, and knowledge and understanding). (SM)

Classroom knowledge provides a framework for understanding how classroom systems work and how curriculum can be represented and enacted in these environments. It also provides a framework for inventing practices grounded in the realities of school settings. Doyle argues that classroom knowledge is the core foundation for teacher research and practi...

The research program described in this article has focused on the work students do in classrooms and how that work influences students' thinking about content. The research is based on the premise that the tasks teachers assign determines how students come to understand a curriculum domain. Tasks serve, in other words, as a context for students' th...

This paper reviews concepts and research findings on classroom management techniques and explores how these techniques are related to student discipline strategies. The first section surveys descriptive and experimental research recently accumulated on classroom management practice, concentrating on strategies for monitoring and guiding classroom a...

This conference reaction paper tracks some of the common themes that run through five papers presented at the same conference at the session on curricular and instructional issues in compensatory education with special reference to Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981. The reaction paper attempts to interpret the div...

Few problems associated with teaching receive more attention than classroom management and discipline. In particular, many critics of teacher education claim that the preservice curriculum does not adequately stress the requisite concepts and skills needed for helping prospective teachers prevent and deal with the discipline problems evidenced in c...

This paper defines a strategic site for research in classroom management, namely, the tension between management and curriculum. Programs of action in classrooms are defined both by the rules for social participation and the demands of academic work. Academic work is directly involved in the process of achieving classroom order, and can be shaped i...

This report contains a description of the conceptual background and methodology for a study concerning how academic tasks are managed in senior high school classrooms. This high school study is Phase 2 of the Managing Academic Tasks (MAT) study. The MAT study is focused on understanding how curriculum experiences are shaped by the classroom environ...

Doyle provides an overview of the research on learning to teach. He describes how theoretical characteristics of the professional curriculum often con flict with survival needs of prospective and practicing teachers. He further discusses voids in the induction and inservice research literature and notes emerging research directions.

Narrative descriptions of class sessions conducted by seven junior high school English teachers were used to map the way order was achieved under different circumstances. (RM)

This review focuses on the intrinsic character of academic work in elementary and secondry schools and the way that work is experienced by teachers and students in classrooms. The first section contains a review of recent research in cognitive psychology on the intellectual demands of the tasks contained in the school curriculum, with particular at...

This report includes an overview of the design and procedures used in the junior high school phase of a study of managing academic tasks (MAT) conducted by the Research on Classroom Learning and Teaching Program at the University of Texas at Austin. A description of the current status of data analysis, a summary of preliminary findings, and appendi...

This report describes the conceptual background, design, and methodology for a study of management of academic tasks in junior high school. Previous research suggests that tasks students accomplish in classrooms determine what they actually learn, and acquisition of higher cognitive skills related to interpretation and planning is essential for cur...

Educational research has begun to focus more on subject matter, grade level, and student characteristics as factors which influence the effectiveness of teaching practices. Research into classroom contexts has been useful in understanding classroom management and on-task behavior. (JN)

Potential contributions of research on classroom contexts to preservice teacher education curriculum are outlined in this paper. A review of traditional teacher effectiveness research cites studies that either extrapolated from laboratory research to design a teaching model or used direct classroom observations to correlate behaviors to outcomes wi...

A report is given on research exploring the theory that stimulation from the teacher does not directly initiate student learning but activates cognitive processes that result in learning. Combined research into classroom processes and student information processing was conducted. An analysis of treatment theories that operate in research on teachin...

This booklet describes a foundation for effective classroom management and focuses on some of the basic processes involved in creating a cooperative atmosphere in the classroom. Four topics are considered: the beginning of the school year, selecting and arranging activities, monitoring and timing activities in the classroom, and stopping misbehavio...

In exploring the question of teaching effectiveness research, this essay provides historical insight, an analysis of present day uses of this research data, and examples of the potential utility of this research. (MM)

This paper summarizes results of an ecological analysis designed to generate hypotheses concerning processes involved in learning to meet the demands of the classroom environment. Ethnographic data on student teachers indicates that classrooms are characterized by multidimensionality, simultaneity, and unpredictability. Teachers, in turn, developed...

Published reports of curriculum innovation were used to develop an analysis of factors contributing to teacher reaction to change proposals. Premised on the theory that a more thorough understanding of naturally existing mechanisms operating in school environments would enhance the development of effective change strategies, the analysis focused on...

This article provides a framework for defining and analyzing classroom management problems of beginning teachers. It also includes a practical illustration of the application of this framework to the solution of a concrete teaching problem.

The interpretive review in this paper is directed toward a reformulation of teacher effectiveness questions. The analysis uses Kuhn's concept of paradigm to designate a framework which defines problems, methods, and solutions for a research community. The dominant process-pruduct paradigm in teacher effectiveness research is contrasted with two alt...

This article argues that researchers, in their efforts to refine measures of teacher behavior, have neglected many of those interconnected processes and events which impinge upon behavior in the teaching environment. This, in turn, has fostered inadequacies in the models used to explain factors influencing teacher behavior. (RC)

Studied the influence of 2 types of verbal feedback on changes in teacher perceptions and behavior. The experiment was conducted in a microteaching-type laboratory setting in which 36 experienced junior high school teachers taught the same content to 2 groups. Feedback between sessions consisted of information about (a) discrepancy between stated i...