This book is based on the belief that decision making is perhaps the most critical of all teaching skills and that good assessments lie at the core of good decision making. To become better teachers then, teachers must learn to make informed decisions about both individual students (learning decisions) and about groups of students (teaching decisions). This book gives equal status to both types of decisions and shows how assessment is integral to both. The organization of the book is sequential, mirroring the way in which information should be used to make decisions. It begins with a conceptual framework linking information to decision making, then moves to the design of assessment instruments and the collection of assessment information, then to the interpretation of assessment information and, finally, to reporting the results of both the assessment and the decision-making process. There is an emphasis throughout on linking why teachers assess with what and how they assess. Other key features include: * Practical Framework -- The book's framework corresponds to the framework that teachers use to grade their students: conduct (classroom behavior), effort (student motivation), and achievement (student learning). * Unique Chapters -- There are separate chapters on interpreting assessment information prior to decision making and on reporting assessment information to parents, teachers, and administrators. * Flexibility -- Because of its modest length and price, and its practical focus on the links between assessment and everyday teacher decision making, this text can be used either in full-length assessment courses for teachers or to teach the assessment units in educational psychology or integrated methods courses.

"Gathering data and using it to inform instruction is a requirement for many schools, yet educators are not necessarily formally trained in how to do it. This book helps bridge the gap between classroom practice and the principles of educational psychology. Teachers will find cutting-edge advances in research and theory on human learning and teaching in an easily understood and transferable format. The text's integrated model shows teachers, school leaders, and district administrators how to establish a data culture and transform quantitative and qualitative data into actionable knowledge based on: assessment; statistics; instructional and differentiated psychology; classroom management."--Publisher's description.

This book examines how and what teachers think in their practice of language teaching.

Making decisions is one of the main activities of the teacher’s work. Considered or apparently unconsidered, these decisions significantly affect the lives of all who work in classrooms, both children and the teachers themselves. Originally published in 1979, the aim of this collection of papers was to achieve greater understanding of classroom decision-making and its consequences, to identify and map existing knowledge, and to indicate where it might be augmented. The contributors were researchers and teachers from schools, universities and colleges at the time, and they examine the process of teacher decision-making from sociological, psychological, economic and other perspectives. The book includes a detailed analysis of life in the classroom from a phenomenological perspective, explorations based on micro-economic techniques, and structural perspectives on the role of the teacher in the school. The concluding papers examine the possibilities for social change, given the constraints on the work of the teacher.

In a context where schools are held more and more accountable for the education they provide, data-based decision making has become increasingly important. This book brings together scholars from several countries to examine data-based decision making. Data-based decision making in this book refers to making decisions based on a broad range of evidence, such as scores on students’ assessments, classroom observations etc. This book supports policy-makers, people working with schools, researchers and school leaders and teachers in the use of data, by bringing together the current research conducted on data use across multiple countries into a single volume. Some of these studies are ‘best practice’ studies, where effective data use has led to improvements in student learning. Others provide insight into challenges in both policy and practice environments. Each of them draws on research and literature in the field.

The book describes the rationale for classroom negotiation and is accessible to practitioners.

Making decisions is one of the main activities of the teacher's work. Considered or apparently unconsidered, these decisions significantly affect the lives of all who work in classrooms, both children and the teachers themselves. Originally published in 1979, the aim of this collection of papers was to achieve greater understanding of classroom decision-making and its consequences, to identify and map existing knowledge, and to indicate where it might be augmented. The contributors were researchers and teachers from schools, universities and colleges at the time, and they examine the process of teacher decision-making from sociological, psychological, economic and other perspectives. The book includes a detailed analysis of life in the classroom from a phenomenological perspective, explorations based on micro-economic techniques, and structural perspectives on the role of the teacher in the school. The concluding papers examine the possibilities for social change, given the constraints on the work of the teacher.

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, , language: English, abstract: This research attempts to make its contribution to the growing sociolinguistic literature on classroom foreign/second language learning and teaching. It reports a comparative ethnographic inquiry into the similarities and differences of decision making and decision-making process employed by two categories of teachers when approaching planning and instruction in the language classrooms in Chinese EFL teaching context. And the thought-provoking reasons for these similarities and differences have also been explored through the analysis of a range of broad research questions, i.e. first, how do two sets of teachers approach instructional decisions in the similar settings; second, can we have access to the similarities and differences between their instructional decisions; third, what factors might affect their pedagogical decisions; and fourth, are their instructional decisions consistent with their theoretical ideas. Two categories of teachers consist of five Chinese TEL and five western teachers respectively, who work in two similar teaching institutions in China.The selected basic data gathered through a sequence of survey, observations, and particular information elicitation techniques consist of the running accounts of observation, lesson plans, and over fifty hours of audio-recording of class sessions and interviews. Through analysis of selected lesson excerpts and teachers’ comments on these data we identify similarities and differences in the classroom interpretation of the tasks and participation structures that these teachers adopted in their instruction, and the underlying reasons behind them with reference to beliefs, context, prior experiences and culture. The most general conclusion is that: whether they emphasize accuracy or fluency, and whether they prefer student-centered instruction or teacher-centered, they tend to capitalize on these theories eclectically, though they do differ in the extent to which they stress one focus or another. Therefore, much of a teacher’s decision on planning and instruction resides in the way he/she interprets the teaching setting and acts on the information from the ongoing classroom interactions. In the last two chapters of this book, the subject of teacher's decision-making is explored from the perspective of soft power and critical discourse analysis, so that teachers' decision-making research can be considered more deeply in the aspect of cognitive, discourse and linguistic philosophy.

In its sixth edition,Principles of Classroom Managementapproaches creating positive learning environments by providing teachers with a theoretically based yet highly practical system for preventing disruptive behavior and influencing appropriate behavior. Written for classroom management and general methods courses, this concise text presents an array of decision-making options that guide teachers in thinking about how to approach particular classroom management situations and choose from a range of options designed to prevent, cope with, and solve a range of problems. A variety of theoretical perspectives, each fleshed out with cases taken from actual classrooms, gives teachers and prospective teachers many choices for handling issues that may arise in their classrooms. The new sixth edition of this thoroughly revised and updated text includes the most current issues surfacing in classroom management such as cyber bullying as well as expanded discussions of effective teaching techniques, functional behavior assessment, violence in the media, cultural synchronization, and student resiliency. The new edition also includes an expanded number of classroom management models.