Teacher Practice Online

Teachers know how complicated their work is. They constantly balance considerations of individual students with those of the group; they think about how past events affect today’s lessons; and they constantly adapt and revise for future lessons. But few people ever get to see teachers’ work in this way. The most energizing, relational, complicated, inspiring, disheartening parts of teaching remain largely invisible. Over nearly a decade at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Désirée Pointer Mace worked with dozens of teachers across the country to “open their doors” by creating multimedia, web-based representations of teaching practice. This book describes how such multimedia representations are envisioned, documented, created, and shared and how others might engage in this process.

This practical book:

• Examines the cutting edge of electronic-media documentation of teaching practice.
• Features cases studies that represent diverse grades, cultures, and contexts with both novice and veteran teachers.
• Provides clear examples of how multimedia representations of teaching can be used as alternative texts in teacher learning environments.
• Describes the positive outcomes for teachers and learners when teaching is made public.
• Includes screen images of teachers’ websites, as well as classrooms and children participating in projects.

Désirée H. Pointer Mace is an Assistant Professor of Education at Alverno College.

“Désirée Pointer Mace is in the vanguard of a new generation of teacher educators. This volume will become a classic reference.”
—Lee S. Shulman, Stanford University

“Must reading for teacher educators at all levels.”
—Ken Zeichner, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Teachers, researchers, doctoral students, parents, and, yes, students will be changed by reading this book.”
—Ricki Goldman, New York University

“(This book) is a rare find….We not only learn from Pointer Mace’s examples, but also get inside what we need to know to learn the power and possibilities of making our own websites, to learn from our own practice, and to secure a position in the conversation about learning from one’s own teaching. ”
— From the Foreword by Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching