The purpose of the article is to provide and an exemplar of an inquiry-based unit on pollination for designing and implementing constructivist instructional practices while simultaneously providing outstanding teacher preparation. The unit on pollination was developed by preservice teachers through a partnership between the Monmouth Conservation Foundation and the Monmouth University School of Education. Through collective action, these institutions were able to enhance student learning on a vital part of the science curriculum, provide a rich clinical experience for pre-service teachers, and familiarize teachers with a more constructivist approach to pre-school science instruction.

The earliest years’ experiences of children can ensure their future success, and parenting is noted to be an influential factor (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Lamb et al., 2002). Many researchers theorized that parental involvement could encourage children to actively engage and improve their academic achievement in schools (Epstein, 2018). However, less attention was paid to the significance of parental involvement in infants’ development. This paper explores the role of parental involvement in infants’ development by reviewing and discussing abundant relevant studies. This study recommends that parental involvement should be considered as an affluent resource and a useful tool because it could provide rich information about infants’ individual needs and positively help infant teachers to improve their instructional skills.

The purpose of the study was to investigate differences in writers' abilities to perceive global text organisation in self-, peer- and teacher/researcher-authored essays. Eight student participants were identified as proficient, middle or developing, based on the levels of paragraph subordination, the average number of T-Units and the number of words in an initially written essay. Participants read aloud 10 essays written by themselves, by their peers and by the teacher/researcher. A comparison of their reading protocols showed that more proficient student writers used a greater variety of reading strategies, commented more frequently on global relationships across the essay and were more likely to discern and align global and local relationships within the text. These findings suggest that the students' ability to "see" the global organisation of an essay is closely associated with their use of multiple reading strategies. The importance of teaching reading strategies to improve writing is discussed.

The purpose of this chapter is to define gifted practitioners, to describe how they develop, and to show how their development can be fostered. Gifted practitioners are teachers who have continued to grow in their practice until they have become widely recognized as extraordinary teachers. The authors begin by examining the creative process, then showing how the creative process and teacher development are very similar processes. Both involve tacit learning through experience, the discovery of new ideas by making tacit knowledge explicit, and the further development of those ideas through design and evaluation. These ideas will be used as a basis for fostering giftedness in teaching. A case example will be used to provide an illustration of the gifted practitioner, followed by a discussion of the implications for the profession of teaching.

Tourism has been identified as a potential source of economic development and diversification in many developing countries. However, many of these countries are unable to fully leverage this potential due to a lack of human resource capacity within the hospitality and tourism industry. This lack of capacity is due in part to inadequate educational programming in the area of hospitality and tourism at secondary and tertiary levels. This study sought to address this problem through an exploration of the extent to which tourism education is incorporated into the secondary school curriculum in Botswana as well as ways to more fully do so. In particular, the researchers considered the potential value of place-based education as a theoretical framework for more fully incorporating tourism education into the secondary school curriculum in Botswana. The researchers relied on findings from a case study of a secondary school located in the Okavango Delta of Botswana to accomplish these two aims. The researchers found that tourism is addressed only to a limited extent within the school curriculum and that clear opportunities exist to enhance tourism education in secondary schools in Botswana.

Initial interview/meeting It’s a good idea to have an informational interview early in the relationship. This gives both the mentor and student the opportunity to determine how to make the mentoring relationship valuable for both parties. Informational interviews are a great way to obtain insight in areas that interest you and to develop contacts that may be useful in the future. A list of possible discussion questions can be found below:

The purpose of the chapter is to provide an exemplar of an inquiry-based unit on pollination for designing and implementing constructivist instructional practices while simultaneously providing outstanding teacher preparation. The unit on pollination was developed by preservice teachers through a partnership between the Monmouth Conservation Foundation and the Monmouth University School of Education. Through collective action, these institutions were able to enhance student learning on a vital part of the science curriculum, provide a rich clinical experience for pre-service teachers, and to familiarize teachers with a more constructivist approach to pre-school science instruction.

The purpose of the study was to examine the differences among significant changes in the practice of individual teachers. Seventeen US teachers were interviewed about the most successful change in their teaching career. The differences in teacher change were based primarily on the source and impact of the change. The sources of change were divided into two categories: other-initiated or selfinitiated. The level of impact was determined in three ways: by whether teachers described a new practice, a new direction, or a change in their beliefs. By organizing according to both the source and impact of the change, four types of change were identified: Response to School Initiatives, Professional Development Initiatives, Student-Centered Changes, and Self-Designed Changes. Self-Designed changes were further distinguished based on the time required for the change process. Implications for developing new strategies to foster teacher development are discussed.

In recent decades, teacher education programs around the world have placed an increasing emphasis on the role of practice in learning to teach. This global trend in teacher education is exemplified by the use of practice-based methods in France, the emphasis on partnerships and school-based learning experiences in the Netherlands and Great Britain, and the worldwide expansion of student teaching experiences (Maandag, Deinum, Hoffman, & Buitnk, 2007; Ronfeldt & Reininger, 2012; Villegas-Reimers, 2003). In the United States, the movement in