Professional associations and professional development activities
Another way to stimulate reflection about teaching is by joining and participating in professional associations—organizations focused on supporting the work of teachers and on upholding high standards of teaching practice. Table 1 lists several major professional associations related to education and their Internet addresses. Most of them are composed of local branches or chapters serving the needs of a particular city, state, or region.
- American Association for the Mentally Retarded (AAMR) [ www.aamr.org ]
- Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation,&Dance (AAHPERD) [ www.aahperd.org ]
- Association for Experiential Education (AEE) [ www.princeton.edu/~rcurtis/aee.html ]
- Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) [ www.thearc.org/welcome.html ]
- ENC Online Resources for Math and Science Education [ www.enc.org/stan.htm ]
- National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) [ www.nabe.org/ ]
- National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) [ www.naeyc.org/ ]
- National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) [ www.nctm.org/ ]
- National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) [ www.socialstudies.org/ ]
- National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) [ www.ncte.org ]
- National Science Teachers Association [ www.nsta.org/ ]
- Organization of American Historians (OAH) [ www.oah.org ]
A selection of professional associations related to education
To achieve their purposes, a professional association provides a mixture of publications, meetings, and conferences intended for the professional development of educators, including classroom teachers. Typically the publications include either a relatively frequent newsletter or a less frequent journal focused on issues of practice or research. Very large associations often publish more than one newsletter or journal, each of which is focused on a particular topic or type of news (for example, the National Education Association in the United States publishes eight separate periodicals). Some also publish online journals (there are several listed as part of Table 2 or online versions of print journals. Whatever format they take, professionally sponsored publications stimulate thinking by discussing issues and dilemmas faced by professional educators, and sometimes also by presenting recent educational research and the recommendations for teaching that flow from that research. We discuss ways of using these publications further in the next section of this chapter.
- Annotated Bibliography of Education Journals - annotations of over 426 education related journals and extensive links to educational organizations and institutions that sponsor them.
- CSS Journal - Computers in the Social Studies - dedicated to the encouragement of the use of computers and related technology in K-12 social studies classrooms.
- Education Policy and Analysis - published by the College of Education at Arizona State University
- Educational Theory - publishes work in the philosophy of education and other disciplines.
- Effective Teaching - electronic journal devoted to the exchange of ideas and information relevant to college and university teaching in North Carolina.
- Harvard Educational Review - quarterly journal that provides an inter-disciplinary forum for innovative thinking and research in education.
- Interact - European platform for interactive learning and new media.
- Journal of Computing in Higher Education - publishes articles that contribute to our understanding of the issues, problems, and research associated with instructional technology
- New jour - electronic journal and newsletter archive.
- Revista Iberoamericana de Educacion - Revista de la OEI.
- Scholarly Electronic Journals - Trends and Attitudes: A Research Proposal
- WORLDSPEAKER online - an international academic journal written by and for international scholars, university administrators, and researchers.