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

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.