Engaging students in worthwhile learning requires more than a knowledge of underlying principles of good teaching. It demands considerable practice as well as images of what good teaching in particular situations and for particular purposes might look like. This volume provides these images. These cases were written from authentic, unrehearsed lessons taught by upper-elementary classroom teachers to diverse groups of real students in intact classrooms. Each lesson contains elements of sound instructional practice from which both preservice and in-service teachers can benefit. Cases are not meant to be ideal, but rather to evoke ways of seeing and thinking about good classroom instruction for all learners. Accompanied by analytic commentaries from experts representing a particular perspective, such as special education and ESOL, these unrehearsed cases are written with the understanding that teaching is complex and multi-dimensional. The cases are drawn from a four-year study of 4th and 5th grade mathematics instruction of culturally diverse classrooms with relatively high rates of students from low-income families.


Marilyn Chambliss is Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland. An educational psychologist with a Ph.D. from Stanford, she is interested in how reading instruction and written materials can be designed to enhance the reading comprehension of all children. Her work includes describing comprehension processes that students use when they read different types of text and developing a system for analyzing the comprehensibility and learnability of textbooks. Linda Valli is the inaugural Jeffrey & David Mullan Professor of Teacher Education and Professional Development in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland. Her Ph.D. is from the Department of Education Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she developed her interests in educational inequalities and critical theory. She has used cases in her own teaching and conducts research on learning to teach, professional development, culturally-responsive teaching, and education policy.