Students Teaching, Teachers Learning

by Nancy Martin (Foreword), Amanda Branscombe (Editor), Dixie Goswami (Editor)

This book focuses on shared inquiry. The research projects detailed in these chapters show how classroom dynamics change and more active learning takes place for both teacher and student when collaboration is involved. The projects here range from elementary through graduate school in both rural and urban, public and private settings.

Section One, "Students Teaching," raises questions about what happens when students and teachers share authority in and out of the classroom, empowering each other with the kind of authentic learning that can't be measured on standardized tests. As students become more responsible for how as well as what they learn, a bond of negotiation and trust is formed with the teacher. Expertise is no longer the sole domain of the teacher, but is shared by all as student voices are not only encouraged but respected. The projects include an account of the emergent curriculum in an elementary school in Vermont, students as teachers in a foreign language class in Greece, students as co-researchers on a telecommunications project in Pittsburgh, community research in Kentucky, student-sustained discussion, cross-age tutoring, and a follow-up study ten years later of a former student co-researcher.

Section Two, "Teachers Learning," focuses on teachers who have been changed by listening to their students. As in the first section, the roles of student and teacher are not easily defined. When teachers learn in these chapters, contradictions and problems are examined, not ignored. This is teacher research extended beyond the lonely office of the solitary instructor. The projects include a university school collaboration in urban Michigan, portfolio assessment, learning through talk in teacher preparation, and cross- visitation among teachers in the Philadelphia public schools.

Following each chapter are responses-from such influential figures as Mary K. Healy, Nancie Atwell, James Moffett and Shirley Brice Heath-that tell stories, raise questions, push the argument further, and carry on a conversation with the author that extends the dialogue to the reader as well.

330 pages, Paperback

First published July 6, 1992

About the author

Winner of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement award for mystery writing from Romantic Times magazine, Nancy Martin announces the release of the 8th book in her popular Blackbird Sisters mystery series, NO WAY TO KILL A LADY. Set in Philadelphia, the story features three heiresses whose parents have run off with their trust funds. Now thay have a chance to regain their wealth when their aunt, "Madcap Maddy" Blackbird dies in a volcano and leaves her estate to the sisters. But Nora Blackbird soon discovers all the treasures in Aunt Maddy's house have disappeared...information that leads her to believe maybe Maddy didn't die the way everybody thinks.

Author of 48 pop fiction novels in mystery, suspense, historical and romance genres, Nancy created The Blackbird Sisters in 2002--- mysteries about three impoverished heiresses who adventure in couture and crime --as if “Agatha Christie had wandered onto the set of Sex and The City.” Nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 2002, HOW TO MURDER A MILLIONAIRE won the RT award for Best First Mystery and was a finalist for the Daphne DuMaurier Award. Currently, she is at work on the Roxy Abruzzo mystery series for St. Martin’s Minotaur. In 2009 she received the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award for mystery writing.

Nancy lives in Pittsburgh, serves on the board of Sisters in Crime and is a founding member of Pennwriters. Find her on Pinterest and Facebook.