Monday, November 16, 2009

Topic: Teachers' Reading of Professional Journals.

10-second review: Surveyed 913 K-12 teachers. These teachers say they do not have tome to read educational journals. Don’t believe such reading contributes to their classroom practice.


Title: Professional Reading Habits of Public School Elementary and Secondary Language Arts Teachers in Northwest Iowa. CH Hughes. Dissertation Abstracts International, 54, 1216 (University Microfilms No. 93-22, 972), 1993.


Comment: There is an awful lot of wasted verbiage and redundancy in articles in educational professional journals and if teachers try to read them from cover to cover, they will have wasted a great deal of valuable time.


I learned to sift through the articles quickly to find promising ideas. I begin by reading the first and last paragraphs in the article. The first paragraph should, and almost always does, introduce the main idea of the article and the last paragraph summarizes it. Usually, I don’t need to learn more about that main idea. If the idea is interesting, I simply briefly summarize it and keep it for later reflection on what the idea means to me and my teaching. Reading the first and last paragraphs takes just a few minutes.


If the first and last paragraphs do not arouse my interest, I go on to the next article.


If the first and last paragraphs raise questions about the details of the idea, I read the first sentence of each intermediate paragraph until my questions are answered. Then, I briefly summarize the article and keep it for later reflection on what the ideas mean to me and my teaching. Again, reading the first sentence of each paragraph in the article takes only a few short minutes.


Don’t ignore the step of reflecting on the idea, thinking about what the idea means to you and your teaching. That is a most important step. Otherwise, the idea remains an isolated. inert piece of information.


I almost never read the entire article, although, on occasion, the idea is so compelling that I want to read the whole thing. RayS.

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