Exploring Teaching: An Introduction to Education with Free Interactive Student CD-ROM and Free PowerWeb

Do I want to become a teacher? What do I need to become the best teacher possible? What should a professional in the field of education know? If you have students asking themselves questions like these, Exploring Teaching: An Introduction to Teaching focuses them on getting the answers. This book takes students contemplating careers in teaching on a journey of exploration into the world and work of teaching, and into themselves as future teachers. It is the only text to make a sustained effort to help students decide whether teaching is the right career for them. There is much more of a focus than found in other texts on what teachers really do, on the realities of the classroom, and on the instructional demands teachers face.

Part 1 provides an overview of teaching and teachers, while parts 2 through 5 profile the various contexts of teaching (classroom, school, sociopolitical, and professional) and examine the demands of each context. Each part ends with application and portfolio activities (self-assessment, observation, and interview) that help students evaluate themselves in terms of these roles and settings.

Richard I. Arends is currently Professor of Educational Leadership at Connecticut State University where he also served as dean of the School of Education for nine years. Prior to his coming to Connecticut, Professor Arends was on the faculty and chair of the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his Ph.D. in education from the University of Oregon where he was on the faculty from 1975 to 1984. A former elementary, junior high, and high school teacher, his special interests are teacher education, and organizational development, and school improvement. Professor Arends has authored or contributed to over a dozen books on education including the Second Handbook or Organization Development in Schools, Systems Change Strategies in Education, Classroom Instruction and Management and Exploring Teaching. He has worked widely with schools and universities throughout North America, in Jamaica, and in the Pacific Rim, including Australia, Samoa, Palau, and Saipan. The recipient of numerous awards, he was selected in 1989 as the outstanding teacher educator in the state of Maryland and in 1990 received the Judith Ruskin award for outstanding research in education given by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). Between 1995-97 Professor Arends held the William Allen (Boeing) Chair in the School of Education at Seattle University.

Nancy E. Winitzky has been involved in teacher education for eleven years. She received her doctorate at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1991 she received the AACTE Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Teacher Education. She has taught biology, chemistry, physical science, and math in a rural junior high, and served as department chair. Dr. Winitzky teaches as an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Utah. Her areas of specialization include teacher thinking, preservice teacher education reform, and cooperative learning. She has most recently focused on applying constructivist theory to understanding beginning teacher learning.

Margaret D. Tannenbaum received her Ph.D. in Foundations of Education from Temple University in 1972. She is currently an Emeritus Professor of Education at Rowan University (formerly Glassboro State College), where she taught for 29 years. In addition to having served as department chair in the Secondary Education/Foundations of Education Department and University Senate President, she was a member of the local school board for 9 years and a non-profit pre-school board for 10 years. Having taught at all levels pre-k to 12, she also has had extensive experience working with public school teachers and administrators to integrate technology into the curriculum. Her special interests include school choice and vouchers, collaborative teaching, the training and evaluating of substitute teachers, and the restructuring of early childhood education. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on some of these topics, as well as an edited collection of readings, CONCEPTS AND ISSUES IN SCHOOL CHOICE.