Achieving Balance in Graduate Programs: Negotiating Best Practices

Despite the rhetoric of graduate catalogs, teachers who enter graduate school programs begin their advanced studies, expecting-and sometimes vociferously demanding-coursework that will provide them with a practical framework for teaching English language arts in secondary schools. Many recent discussions of research-based effective teaching have used the term best practice, defining the term as "solid, reputable, state of the art work in a field" (Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde, 1998, p. viii) and as a concept that "has its roots in law and medicine and implies that professionals have standards, are aware of current research, and offer clients the field's latest knowledge, technology, and procedures" (Chenoweth, Carr, & Ruhl, 2005, p. 2).