Important Vocabulary

Chp. 9
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Classroom Management
The ways teachers create an effective classroom environment for learning, including all the
rules and conditions they establish.
Classroom Community
A sense of common purpose and values shared by the teacher and students in a classroom, so
that they see themselves as working together in the process of learning; a classroom
atmosphere that emphasizes trust, care, and support.
Responsive Classroom
An approach to teaching and learning, developed by the Northeast Foundation for Children, that
seeks to bring together social and academic learning.
Service Learning
A teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction
and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen
communities.
Sexual Harassment
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other physical and expressive
behavior of sexual nature that interferes with a persons life.
Bullying
Repeated cruelty, physical or psychological, by a powerful person toward a less powerful
person.
Cyberbullying
Bullying or harassment through electronic means such as e-mail, website postings, instant
messaging, text messaging, blogs, mobile phones, or chatrooms; also called online bullying.
School Resource Officer (SRO)
A law enforcement officer specially trained to work with and in schools addressing a safe school
climate and preventing crime.

Chp. 7
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Digital Natives
People who have grown up using the digital language of computers, video, games, and the
Internet.
Flat Classroom
A classroom in which students, like the teacher, have ready access to information so that the
teacher is not the lone expert.
Simulation
A computer program or other procedure that imitates a real-world experience.

Model

A representation of a system or an object, such as a small physical structure that imitates a

larger structure or a computer program that parallels the workings of a larger system.
Augmented Reality (AR)
AR is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are
augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, or GPS data.
Virtual Reality
Replaces the real world with a simulated one that has all the elements of the real world modeled
by computer graphics and images.
QR Code
A type of barcode that is two-dimensional and consists of black modules arranged in a square
pattern on a white background. When scanned the QR code links to a website or a video or
some printed material that is available digitally.
Wiki
An online site that allows visitors to add, remove, and otherwise edit or change the available
content.
Blogs (Short for weblog)
An online journal using software that makes it easy for the user to create frequent entries:
typically, visitors can add their own comments and responses.
Twitter
An online social networking service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of
up to 140 characters, known as tweets.
Facebook
A social networking service and website that, by 2015, had more than a billion monthly users
worldwide. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create personal
profiles, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications
when they update their profiles.
Technological Fluency
Proficiency in the use of technology, including an understanding of the way technology systems
operate and the ability to use technology to access information from a wide variety of sources.
Digital Divide
The division between people who are rich in technological access and expertise and those
who are poor in this respect.
Assistive Technology (AT)
A device or service that increases the capabilities of people with disabilities.
Interactive Whiteboard
A white board that works together with a computer to display and save information.

Chp. 6
STEM Education Movement

Standing for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education, this movement is
inspired by a desire to foster creative problem solving and apply engineering principles to the
study of mathematics and science.
Exceptional Learners
Students who require special educational services because of physical, behavioral, or academic
needs.
Least Restrictive Environment
A learning environment that, to the maximum extent possible, matches the environment
experienced by nondisabled students.
Inclusion
The practice of education students with disabilities in regular classrooms alongside nondisabled
students.
Special Education
The branch of education that deals with services for students with disabilities or other special
needs that cannot be met through traditional means.
Learning Disability
A disorder in the basic psychological processes involved in learning and using language; it may
lead to difficulties in listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities.
Individualized Education Program (IEP)
A plan, required for every student covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
specifying instructional goals, services to be provided, and assessment techniques for
evaluation progress.
Response to Intervention (RTI)
A service delivery system in schools aimed at preventing academic and behavioral difficulties as
well as identifying the best practices for teaching students with disabilities.
Differentiated Instruction (Differentiation)
The practice of using a variety of instructional strategies to address the different learning needs
of students.
Cooperative Learning
An instructional approach in which students work together in groups to accomplish shared
learning goals
Project-based Learning
A teaching method that engages students in extended inquiry into complex, realistic question as
they work in teams and create presentations to share what they have learned. These
presentations may take various forms: an oral or written report, a computer technology-based
presentation, a video, the design of a product, and so on.
Problem-based Learning
Focused, experiential learning (minds-on, hands-on) organized around the investigation and
resolution of mess, real-world problems.
Ill-structured Problem
A problem that lacks clear procedures for finding the solution.
Homeschooling
Educating children at home rather than in a school; parents typically serve as teachers.
Charter School

Publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that are granted a special charter by the state
or local education agency.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) or Buckely Amendment
A federal law requiring education agencies to protect the confidentiality of students educational
records.
Due Process
A formal process, such as a legal or administrative proceeding, that follows established rules
designed to protect the rights of people involved.
Tenure
A status granted to a teacher, usually after a probationary period, that protects him or her from
dismissal except for reasons of incompetence, gross misconduct, or other conditions stipulated
by the state.

Chp. 5
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Bilingual Education
Educating English-language learners by teaching them at least part of the time in their native
language.
Sexual Orientation
An enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction that a person feels toward
people of one or both sexes.
LGBT
An acronym used to represent lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals.
Socioeconomic Status (SES)
A persons or familys status in society, usually based on a combination of income, occupation,
and education. Though similar to social class, SES puts more emphasis on the way income
affects status.
Students at Risk
Students in danger of not completing school or not acquiring the education they need to be
successful citizens.
Dropout Rate
The percentage of students who fail to complete high school or earn an equivalency degree.
Multicultural Education
Education that aims to create equal opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social
class, and cultural groups.
SEED Project
The National Project on inclusive curriculum that promotes multiculturally equitable, gender fair
and globally aware curriculum and pedagogy through professional development and leadership
training for teachers, parents, college faculty, and administrators.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Teaching practices that place the culture of the learner at the center of instruction. Cultural
referents become aspects of the formal curriculum.
Gender-Fair Education

Teaching practices that help both females and males achieve their full potential. Gender-fair
teachers address cultural and societal stereotypes and overcome them through classroom
interactions.
Equity
The act of treating individuals and groups fairly and justly, free from bias or favoritism. Gender
equity means the state of being fair and just toward both males and females, to show
preference to neither and concern for both.
Theory of Multiple Intelligence
The theory that intelligence is not a single, fixed attribute but rather a collection of several
different types of abilities.
Intelligence Profile
An individuals unique combination of relative strengths and weaknesses among all the different
intelligences.
Learning Style
The dominant way in which we process the information around us. Different people have
different learning styles.

Chp. 4
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Pedagogy
The art and science of teaching; all that you know and believe about teaching.
Instruction
The act or process of teaching; the way your pedagogy becomes enacted in practice.
Personal Teaching Philosophy
An individuals own pedagogy is informed by his or her own beliefs and understanding of how
students learn best. A teachers personal philosophy outs itself through the instructional
strategies employed with the students.
Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)
The understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues can be adapted and presented
to match the diverse interests and abilities of learners.
Learning Theory
An explanation of how learning typically occurs and about conditions that favor learning.
Blooms Taxonomy
A classification system of educational objectives developed by psychologist Benjamin Bloom in
the 1950s. The taxonomy has three domains: the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The
cognitive domain was revised in the 1990s to represent a hierarchy of behaviors that include
remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.
Behaviorism
The theory that learning takes place in response to reinforcements (for instance, rewards or
punishments) from the outside environment.
Cognitive Learning Theories
Explanations of the mental processes that occur during learning.
Social Cognitive Learning Theories
Explanations that describe how learning involves interactions between the learner and the social
environment.

Constructivism
A group of theories about knowledge and learning whose basic tenet is that all knowledge is
constructed by synthesizing new ideas with prior knowledge. Constructivism holds that
knowledge is not passively received; rather, it is actively built by the learner as he or she
experiences the world.
Curriculum
A plan of studies that includes the ways instructional content is organized and presented at each
grade level.
Informal Curriculum
Learning experiences that go beyond the formal curriculum, such as activities the teacher
introduces to connect academic concepts to the students daily lives.
Assessment
Collecting information to determine the progress of students learning.
Embedded Assessments
Classroom-based assessments that make use of the actual assignments that students are given
as a unit is being taught. These can be used to evaluate developmental stages of student
learning.
Authentic Assessment
An assessment that asks students to perform a task relating what they have learned to some
real-world problem or example.
Rubric
A scoring guide for an authentic assessment or a performance assessment, with descriptions of
performance characteristics corresponding to points on a rating scale.