Advances in Research on Teaching

Learning to teach in ways that are academically, linguistically and culturally responsive to diverse learners in today’s schools is a complex and challenging endeavor for novice and experienced teachers. In recent years, educators in schools and universities have been collaborating to create more powerful ways for prospective and practicing teachers to explore and develop what some call “best practice” in teaching and learning (Zemelman, Daniels & Hyde, 1993, 1998). Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies has provided exciting opportunities to invent innovative ways to document, explore and enhance our understanding of teaching as a professional practice. Many educators have written about the rich potential of hypermedia to document the everyday work in which teachers engage – curriculum development, planning, teaching, assessment and reflection – in ways that preserve the highly contextualized and situated nature of teaching practice (Lacey & Merseth, 1993; Lampert & Ball, 1998; Spiro & Jehng, 1990). Video clips of classroom teaching and artifacts associated with it (e.g. student work, the teacher’s reflections, planning documents, district curriculum) can be accessed by computer in flexible, non-linear ways. Moreover, the use of hypermedia materials affords opportunities for novice and experienced teachers to engage together in taking an inquiring stance to investigate practice and to generate new understandings and insights that can inform future practices (Lampert & Ball, 1999). Lacey and Merseth (1993) argued that hypermedia is a curricular innovation that addresses “three currently held beliefs about teaching and learning to teach: namely, that teaching is complex and context-dependent; that engaging in the construction of knowledge about teaching is a powerful way to learn it; and that learning to teach can be greatly enhanced by participation in a community of inquiry” (p. 547).