Practitioners as Decision-Makers: What and How They Teach

This issue of the Journal of Curriculum and Instruction presents four articles and a book review that focus on choices that educational practitioners make as they address various aspects of K-12 teaching in a range of classroom settings and locations in the United States and other countries.  To begin, the research studies describe results of two large-scale teacher surveys that explore how practitioners allocate instructional time, what methods they use to teach content, and the effect of mandated testing on time and teaching methods.  Next, the practitioners' articles provide international perspectives on the use of multimodal instruction and the determination of graphic quality in textbook selection.  Finally, the reviewed book offers insights on skill-based practice that addresses a series of related questions: What makes an effective teacher?  If an effective teacher applies specific skills at specific points in a lesson, can those skills be identified, studied, and taught to other teachers?