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Where I have found philosophy important to science is in epistemology. As a scientist, you do need to be aware of your own views about how it is we come to know things. But science and philosophy certainly are different and should not be mistaken for each other. There are all sorts of sloppy thinking that gets us into trouble, and that sounds like one of them.

Clearly, I am an advocate of science having a role in how we conduct education. And you've asked me a good question. Before I try to answer it, I want to note one thing, and (rhetorically) ask another thing.

I acknowledge that teachers are constantly subjected to changes in education policy that come and go when political winds shift with different ideologies in charge. The unfortunate fact is, there are deep disagreements in the education world. We have near universal agreement that education is important, but when you get down to the nuts and bolts, you see that people value different things. Education has a values problem in the USA.

In any case, it is no wonder that the world of shifting plans and directives might make any teacher suspicious of whatever it is that they think is responsible for the situation. And politicians often use science and anything that sounds like it as a tool to lend additional authority to their initiatives, so teachers may learn to be suspicious of research. I get that.

So, now I ask a rhetorical question. Teaching and learning are not without their challenges. We need to act with an understanding of these problems in order to address them satisfactorily. Where should we turn for that understanding? Who is trying to gain an understanding of these problems that is accurate in the description of them, faithful to participants, trustworthy in methods and results, authentic within their settings, and honest about the assumptions? My answer, of course, is science. And because science writing makes many things explicit, we can look at what researchers are, in fact, living up to the ideals I suggest in this paragraph (which I would use to evaluate good science).

If someone were to say they wanted to be guided by something else, I would wonder how they know they can trust it. Teaching, as a profession, has been around for ages (as has been pointed out). But there are issues both old and new that we need to address, and teaching is not explicitly about investigating these issues. If teachers had already solved them, they wouldn't be existing issues. New issues are definitely encountered, because education exists in a changing world. We need to turn to a set of practices that can help us extend our understanding in ways that help us act to address our issues.

That's what science can do; that's what researchers should do. As researchers, we can't tell other people what to do. But we can tell people what we are learning about the world. And I think the understanding we gain from research can be of use.

Back to your question: you wanted to know what I thought was good research to pay attention to. Excellent question, and not something I can give a comprehensive answer to. But I can mention a few things. I'm in mathematics education, so this will mainly pertain to that.

What does important research look like?

In the 70's, Erlwanger did a study of students learning the standard algorithms for certain math operations and found that students could perform the steps of an algorithm successfully without understanding fundamental concepts underlying the algorithm. The implications of this are huge. Students had long been tested by asking them to solve math problems, and the assumption was that they understood what they were doing if they got the right answer. A whole branch of math education shifted. This is an oversimplification, but students behaviors alone were no longer reliable data about their understanding. Now we knew that without talking to students, we might never really know what they understand. Without making understanding more central to instruction, we might not be teaching in ways that are likely to result in understanding.

I mention that partly to show how profound a change one qualitative study can have. This was not an at-scale study. There were just a few students, and the paper (Benny's Conception) written about it focused on one student.

But also, the role of understanding has become important, so we put concern for it up front. Other previously existing approaches valued repetition, speed, efficiency, and an over-reliance on memory. But it turns out that stressing things like memory actually drains the meaning and relevance out of math for students. Jo Boaler mentions here how math learning needn't overburden a student's memory resources.

The rest of my answer is a slight cop-out because others have written better about this than I have. I will tell you, I value inquiry-based approaches to learning, which are summarized here. I hate to point you towards one book, but I'm in a bit of a hurry today (dissertation work) and I don't want to leave you with nothing. The book mentioned in that article is here. and the reason I link to it is that the chapter-writers are researchers who write well for practitioners and policy makers. They back up what they are saying with many, many research results, which they also describe. This is, in my experience, unusual for a book on education.

Forbes is annoying with adblockers:


It’s not uncommon for public school teachers to experience burnout or feel demoralized by the weight of their work. Many leave the classroom and the education profession behind to pursue other careers. In fact, U.S. Labor Department data reveal that public school educators are quitting their jobs at record-breaking rates.

But some public school teachers wonder if conventional schooling may be the root of their discontent, not education itself. They are frustrated by standardized curriculum expectations, more testing, an emphasis on classroom compliance and the antagonistic relationships between teachers and students that a rigid schooling environment can cultivate. Rather than abandoning their passion for education, some of these teachers are building alternatives to school outside of the dominant system that nurture authentic teaching and learning relationships.

One of the pioneers of schooling alternatives is Kenneth Danford, a former public middle school social studies teacher who left the classroom in 1996 to launch a completely new learning model. Along with a teacher colleague, Danford opened North Star, a self-directed learning center in western Massachusetts. They sought to create a space for young people, ages 11 and up, that prioritized learner freedom and autonomy, while rejecting the coercion and control they witnessed in the conventional classroom. This involved building the learning center as a resource for peer interaction, optional classes, workshops and adult mentoring, while providing teenagers with the opportunity to come and go whenever they chose.

Using homeschooling as the legal mechanism to provide this educational freedom and flexibility, North Star members attend when they want, frequently using the center to supplement community college classes, extracurricular activities and apprenticeships. Full-time, annual membership up to four days per week is $8,200, but no family has ever been turned away for an inability to pay these fees. Some families choose part-time enrollment options that start at $3,250 per year for one day a week at North Star.

In his new book, Learning Is Natural, School Is Optional, Danford reflects on his more than 20 years of running North Star and the hundreds of young people who have gone through his program, often gaining admission to selective colleges or pursuing work in fulfilling careers. He told me in a recent interview: “I feel like I’m making an important difference in teens’ lives, perhaps the most important difference. And all this loveliness has social implications and can be shared.”

Sharing this model with others was the next step for Danford. After receiving many calls and emails from educators across the country and around the world who wanted to launch centers similar to North Star, in 2013 Danford helped to establish Liberated Learners, an organization that supports entrepreneurial educators in opening their own alternatives to school.

One of the centers that sprouted from Liberated Learners is BigFish Learning Community in Dover, New Hampshire. Founded by Diane Murphy, a public school teacher for 30 years, BigFish allows young people to be in charge of their own learning. Murphy opened the center in January 2018 with five students; today, she has over 30. Full-time tuition at the center (up to four days a week) is $9,000 per year, with part-time options also available.

An English teacher, she never expected to be the founder of a schooling alternative. “I loved my job,” she says, but she quit to create something better. “The main reason I left is because the kids began showing up more and more miserable,” Murphy continues. “In my last few years, I was meeting dozens of students who were depressed, anxious and burned out at just 13 years old. More and more rules, more tests, and more competition had sucked the fun out of learning and truly broken many kids.”

Granted more freedom and less coercion, young people at BigFish thrive—and so do the teachers. “Real teachers understand that our role is to support and lead young people to discover and uncover their talents, most especially to find their passions and their voice,” says Murphy. Working outside of the conventional school system may be a way forward for more teachers who want to help young people to drive their own education, in pursuit of their own passions and potential.

According to Kevin Currie-Knight, an education professor at East Carolina University, it’s rare for teachers to recognize that their dissatisfaction as an educator may be a schooling problem, not a personal one. Currie-Knight, who studies self-directed education and alternative learning models, says that the tendency is for teachers to internalize the problems they encounter in the classroom. If children aren’t engaged or are acting out, teachers typically assume that it must be their poor teaching and that they must not be cut out for the job, rather than seeing it as a problem with coercive schooling more broadly.

“School isn’t challengeable,” says Currie-Knight of its entrenched position in our culture. “The teachers who leave to create alternatives have a really amazing ability to separate learning from schooling. It takes a higher level of thought and an amazing ability to detach.” Currie-Knight explains that most teachers go into education either because they really like a certain subject area or they really like kids, or both. “In the conventional environment,” he says, “teachers are going to be in rooms where the vast majority of students just really don’t care about that subject at that point.” Many of these teachers conclude that it’s their teaching that is the problem, rather than the underlying dynamics of conventional schooling that compel young people to learn certain content, in certain ways and at certain times.

Teachers who leave the classroom to create schooling alternatives can be an inspiration to other teachers who may feel frustrated or powerless. Rather than blaming themselves, entrepreneurial teachers are the ones who imagine, design and implement new models of education. As BigFish’s Murphy proposes: “We need to flip schools to become community learning centers filled with mentors, classes, programs and materials, and we need to trust young people and let them lead.”

> ... but we can't tell which teachers are better than other teachers.

Yes, you're correct to an extent, which is one reason (of many) why it's so dangerous to use merit pay. You're right that Finland provides a good example. Moreover, it's questionable that we really need to precisely quantify teacher quality. As Finland (and other countries - even the US really) demonstrate, we really need to be able to tell what systematically improves teacher quality.

Anki sounds like an interesting tool. I'm skeptical of the importance of so much focus on memorization in education, but I know I personally wouldn't mind some memory improvements. Generally, I think it's better and more motivating to learn things in context. Then, students have the motivation to learn. The book Brain Rules has some interesting discussion of how memory works and how we might better leverage this knowledge.

> I think there's room for improvement. I'm not sure it's the optimal place to focus efforts on improvement, but it's what I deal with.

Yes, I totally agree and would actually like to see it be a priority. My main point is that the data (which are based on very limited test scores) don't indicate that US schools are drastically worse than other countries or than how they used to be (in some mythical golden age).

> Can you provide a citation for this?

This article provides a good background on the link between teacher experience and student outcomes, along with links to research. For teacher certification, refer to here or Linda Darling-Hammond's book The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. The article Thinking through cost-benefit analysis and layoff policies has a very interesting discussion of the dangers of using test scores for layoff policies (which applies to general teacher evaluations as well).

I teach elementary school (K-4), so the students' own sexual orientations aren't really an issue at that age. However, I still think that it's important to consider LGBTQ issues/diversity even at the lower levels, not just for the students who will eventually come out as gay or trans, but for all students. Attitudes can be learned very early, and my goal is to teach acceptance.

I do teach some students who come from families that have two moms or two dads, and so I'm thoughtful about using inclusive language when talking about families - "Ask a grown-up at home for help getting materials for your science project" instead of "Ask your mom and dad...", etc. This also is important for kids who come from other kinds of families: single parents, divorced parents, raised by grandparents, foster families, etc. And yes, I do think it makes a difference: if one kids says "you could ask your dad for help," another very often says something like "My dad lives in Detroit" or "I don't have a dad." I also work hard to keep gender stereotypes out of my language, not talking about moms making lunch (even though that is the norm in my student population) and dads teaching their kids to throw baseballs or hammer nails.

I feel very supported by my school in this. We have multiculturalism training and administrative support for these issues. Several times in the elementary grades the social studies curriculum (developed by the school & individual teachers here, not a textbook-set) focuses on different kinds of families. The school had a contingent marching in the gay pride parade downtown last summer. We're working right now on expanding and improving our anti-bullying programs (obviously this is not just LGBT-related, but it's part of it). It's very much a culture of inclusiveness.

OP, it sounds like you're perhaps having some difficulties around this right now. Can you give more information? What kind of issues are you dealing with? What age are the kids? Is the administration supportive, neutral, or actively unsupportive?

Without knowing more about your situation, here are a few resources that might or might not help:

• Always My Child by Kevin Jennings - although this book is directed at parents of gay/lesbian/trans/questioning kids, it's still a good resource for teachers as well (and a great resource if part of the issues you're facing are about parents). It talks about the issues that LGBTQ teens are more likely to face than non-LGBTQ teens, and gives straightforward advice about how to support those teens. It also helps straight parents accept that their own feelings about their child being LGBTQ are normal and a process.
  
  
• It's Elementary (and It's STILL Elementary) - documentaries about teaching about LGBTQ families/people in elementary school. Includes footage of some really amazing lessons helping kids talk about and overcome stereotypes.
  
  
• Straightlaced - unfortunately I haven't seen this yet, but my co-workers who have found it really thought-provoking. Another documentary from GroundSpark dealing with gender/sexuality issues that teens face.

Ok, I've worked with EBD kids for about 8 years now, here are some recs I'd give you:

1. Check out the TIERS system by Clay Cook and Diana Wright-Browning - Here's the Amazon link (full disclosure - Clay Cook is my grad school advisor, but he is one of the most phenomenal people to talk with about EBD kiddos)
   
   
2. Learn the basics of Applied Behavior Analysis (I'm a BCBA, don't get into the weird specifics of ABA, but understand the function of a behavior)
   
   
3. Use data to make your decisions. For example, make a very big effort (this will be hard) to count the number of times a kid engages in a problem behavior over the course of a few days. Keep track of that so that you'll know objectively when the behavior is increasing/decreasing. Super bonus: the kid will know too and I promise you kids in EBD classrooms would LOVE to know when they're doing well at something. Nobody ever tells these guys this stuff.
   
   
4. Remember that when a kid insults you/yells at you/hits you/whatever they are NOT doing that to you. They're acting out a lot of hurt and anger and you are the closest thing around. When they first meet you, they'll do it to see if you'll stay or if you'll leave like everyone else (EBD programs have among the highest teacher turnover). When they get to know you better, they'll do it because you love them and you're one of the only safe places they can act that way.
   
   
5. Learn how to do REALLY good Functional Behavior Analyses (FBA). Seriously. I cannot over-emphasize how valuable this will be for you. Seriously. Seriously go do it right now. Here's a good book on FBAs
   
   
6. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Ask everybody. Someone will help you, even if it's just a little bit.
   
   
7. Be gentle with yourself. This is a really really effing hard job and it's normal to be exhausted, to cry, to want to go to happy hour, etc. Be kind to yourself and the people around you.
   
   
8. PM me if you want to talk. I want nothing more in life than to see EBD kids and their teachers succeed. Seriously, it's all I do.

I tend to be a perfectionist and finding myself burning out. I read a book this past summer -- https://www.amazon.com/Happy-Teacher-Scientific-Approach-Classroom-ebook/dp/B072HM5XPJ It reminded me about focus on what is important.

I found I do quite a bit of what is suggested already- but the big idea for me is SAY NO. I tend to be the go-to teacher for so much and have joked I wish I was one of the guy teachers I see and leave and come in with my coffee cup and phone (mind you that depends on the teacher -- we just have a few guys who I want to emulate the way they can compartmentalize work/home). That is my goal It was hard, but I have rough weeks, but with talking to my principals and teacher pals...it has really helped.

I have talked to 3 teacher friends this week who are ready to leave and they are amazing teachers - you are not alone. Loving what we do is core to being successful with the kids (they feel it).

Museums and other non-profits actively seek educators http://www.aam-us.org/resources/careers
As educators we are kings/queens of organization - particularly music teachers. HR and training are a great fit (I actually came from that side -- and teaching is ALOT harder - with less pay). I used to get a couple weeks to develop a program in non-school world, in teaching it's 45 minutes prep.

Good luck with your decision making. It's worth looking. If you decide to stay, you won't be wondering if the grass is greener somewhere else. I hope you find a place you can go home with just your phone and an empty coffee cup.

I recommend these books often, but they really are that much more useful than everything else:
Teach Like a Champion and
Tools for Teaching.

Decide who you think the good teachers in your building are, and watch how they work. Ask them questions - most teachers know how important the details of teaching are, and are happy to share. I see a common professional formality among the good ones. It is polite and thoughtful, listening and supportive, but it is not eager to please or quick to react. Easy to say, harder to do.

Anyway - good luck to you!

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

The opening essay of this short read is a condemnation of traditional schooling techniques---and it's also the speech he delivered when he (again) won the NY Teacher of the Year award. Gatto gets at the heart of why public schools consistently produce pencil pushers, not leaders. Every teacher should read this book.

How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon

If Dumbing Us Down is the manifesto in favor of a more liberal pedagogy, Herdon's book is a memoir of someone trying to put that pedagogy in action. It's also a simple, beautiful easy to read book, the kind that is so good it reminds us just how good a book can be. I've read the teaching memoir that made Jonahton Kozol famous, this one is better.

The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori

In the early 1900s, Maria Montessori taught literacy to children that society had otherwise assumed were unreachable. She did this by using the scientific method to study each child's learning style. Some of what she introduced has been widely incorporated (like child-sized furniture) and some of it seems great but unworkable in overcrowded schools. The bottom line is that the Montessori method was one of the first pedagogical techniques that was backed by real results: both in test scores and in growing kids that thrive on learning and participation.

"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly Daniel Tatum

While not precisely a book on how to teach, this book is incredibly helpful to any teacher working with a diverse student population, or one where the race they are teaching differs from their own. It explains the process that white, black, and children of other races go through in identifying themselves as part of a particular race. In the US, race is possibly the most taboo subject, so it is rare to find a book this honest and straightforward on a subject most educators try not to talk about at all. I highly recommend this book.

If there is any chance you will be teaching history, definitely read:

Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People's History of the United States (the latter book is a classic and, personally, changed my life).

Also recommend: The Multi-player Classroom by Lee Sheldon and Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

Finally, anyone who plans to teach math should read this essay, "Lockhart's Lament" [PDF at the bottom of the page].

PS, I was tempted to use Amazon affiliate links, but my conscious wouldn't let me.

I'm interested in doing this too (getting an undergrad degree in game design right now). I feel like it has a lot of potential when implemented well. I don't believe the Extra Credits video does a super good job of explaining the concept, because it focuses too heavily on reward systems (more on that in my comment to u/notjawn), which should not be the core of a gamification experience.

Have you heard about ClassRealm? From what I've seen/read, its creator has had a lot of success with it. However, don't be fooled - it might seem easy, but gamification can be very difficult to implement correctly.

I've read some good books on the subject that I highly recommend: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction and The Multiplayer Classroom.

Additionally, I don't know where you are in your schooling right now, but NYU has a great graduate program in this vein.

EDIT: For anyone looking for an overview of true gamification, here's a quick and simple slideset. It is much more than just giving out points.

The biggest difference is that in China (and actually, most other countries around the world) curriculum policy is set nationally by the government, and thus the sequence of courses students take in high school is remarkably standardized from place to place. In China (as also in Japan and South Korea) upper-middle-class and wealthy families will supplement this with an extensive system of private cram schools and tutors that are meant to help their children get a competitive edge on college entrance exams. But the schools themselves are very consistent in terms of what is taught and how. Their national high-school curriculum also puts a heavy emphasis on mathematics and science, and less of an emphasis on humanities-based subjects.


In America, by contrast, there is no national curriculum (Common Core is attempting to change this, but with limited success thus far). States are free to set whatever curriculum and graduation standards they want, and even at the district level course offerings tend to vary widely. They also tend to correlate strongly with the wealth of the school district-- an upper-class community will tend to have many students taking accelerated courses at a much higher level than in a comparable Chinese school, while a school in a poor district may not even offer Trigonometry or Pre-Calculus in high school. So when you read that American schools are much easier/less rigorous than other schools internationally, this aggregated claim covers up the fact that this it depends completely on the wealth of your district.


If you're interested in differences between the U.S. education systems and other countries, a book you might want to check out is "The Smartest Kids in the World" by Amanda Ripley. (Amazon link)

> Even "winning" in our school environment isn't really good for a person's future, in some sense.

I love that you get that. Most people (especially the "non-winners") don't. You may also want to check out Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto.

Coincidentally, I graduated from MIT. It was an awesome experience, but I wish I had taken more advantage of the resources there. Truthfully, I wasn't ready for it 'cuz I didn't really choose it. It was just the next thing one was supposed to do on the educational path. I would totally encourage my daughters to take at least a year off before heading to college, if they chose to do so at all.

hey, good luck.

The Public Schools

Jim Crow's Children

Ghetto Schooling

We Make the Road By Walking

Teacher in America

Women's Education in the United States, 1740-1840

Savage Inequalities

Shame of the Nation

also, i'll second Tyack's One Best System

a few authors to read/study: John Dewey, Horace Mann, W.E.B. Du Bois, Maria Montessori, Myles Horton, Dianne Ravitch, Jeannie Oakes, bell hooks, Howard Gardner, Betty Reardon, Howard Zinn, Cathy Davidson

topics: Native American boarding schools, ethnic/racial biases of original IQ test designs, desegregation, resegregation, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, Bloom's taxonomy, multiple intelligences, tracking, career and technical education, the Common Core, school choice, special education, peace education, types of schools: traditional public, charter, contract, private, independent; the superintendency and school governance, elected/appointed boards, mayoral control, teacher cooperatives; resource inequalities, the incorporation of technology, teacher training, mind brain education, learning environments, standardized testing, accountability, teacher evaluation...

a list like you've requested could never be exhaustive, but that should be enough to keep you busy for awhile.

As you go you will develop better discernment about when this is appropriate and when to hold fast.

Also let me recommend a book to you, better than all my grad school class books together.

And no, I am not kidding. I got it after 5 years in classroom and still found some great bits. A lot of the time I just chuckled and nodded since it was so spot on.

Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way does a really fantastic job highlighting the South Korean education system and how, for better or worse, it produces multimillionare hogwan directors and internationally competitive students.

A good book that brings this up is "why don't students like school?" By Danile T. Willingham. If I could make teachers read a book this would probably be up in the top 3

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/047059196X

Edit: Not sure why I was downvoted... but OK. Uhm, if curious, the chapter where this topic is discussed is chapter 7: how should I adjust my teaching to different types of learners.

Edit to the edit: and now it's in an upswing. Never mind my previous comment. Never change, reddit

Hi there,

When you say 'under privilaged' and mention that you are white - I assume you are about to work with a population that is primarily not white.

If that is the case, you have a very real challenge ahead of you - the challenge of recognizing and addressing your own biases before entering the classroom.

Teachers often unintentionally create classrooms full of bias and environments for negative 'self-fulfilling prophecies' for certain students. It is best to be very intentional about avoiding these common pitfalls from the start.

I'd recommend these books as a good place to start:

Other Peoples Children

Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together....

For White Folks Who Teach In The Hood...

Read this book. I've got ten years as a white teacher in South Bronx, Harlem, Washington Heights. Great book. Trust me.

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Race, Education, and Democracy) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807028029/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_IRI7BbX2GMJ3C

You don't. When we lie to students and tell them that such and such mathematics relates to their lives, when they know better and we know better, you lose credibility and they lose interest.

Instead, you should be upfront with them. Admit to them that unless they get a job that uses maths, they will never sit down and derive two systems of equations in two variables and solve them. Instead, the act of learning the maths--of thinking about them, struggling with them, and understanding them--will arm them with cognitive tools which translate to all thinking processes in all areas, which is unmatched in studying any other area.

You tell them that you study maths because it makes you a smarter person, physically, through shaping the way neuron connections are eroded into their brains. Convince them that the time they put into studying the abstractions and structures of problems in mathematics will erect a permanent filter in their mind which they will push every thought through for the rest of their lifetime.

And then you prove it to them. You take an idea that you know is just past their understanding--through formative assessment--and you demonstrate to them that they understand it. This part takes work because it is necessarily one-on-one.

Maybe you have a student that doesn't understand a concept. You give him a problem that has that concept and he hits "the wall." This is where you get excited, because you're about to blow their mind. Don't give him the answer or show them the steps, teach him to understand the question. Teach him how to think about the problem, how to reach into what he knows already and put the ideas together to understand this concept. Lead him there, don't take him there.

When this happens you'll get some sort of "eureka" moment from him, and you will have begun a process of successes that you can build off of that will invariably convince the student that he can do it. He'll begin to see that math isn't some magical manipulation, but rather that he can understand it with enough hard work and intentional thought. Most importantly, you've built yourself credibility, and the student has a glimpse into the meaning of what would otherwise seem like idealistic bullshit.

And then, you have built a student who will willingly study maths for the sake of studying maths.

See Daniel Willingham's book Why Students Don't Like School. He makes a much better argument against "making it relevant" and goes through the brain processes to describe what happens in learning and what motivates us to do it.

>The stats become the goal. That is not HOW LEARNING WORKS.

That's how we confirm that the curriculum is working. It's not about predicting outcomes, it's about verifying outcomes.

>There are children who grow physically so fast that for one school year they learn almost nothing.

You can't grow physically and learn at the same time? Obviously you can do both. Your brain isn't entirely focused on just growing your limbs. You can improve your thinking while physically growing at the same time.

We just need to get our students to spend time thinking about the curriculum. Read the book "Why Don't Students Like School,". Students will spend time thinking about stories and we can turn history into a story about the most interesting things that have happened on our planet.

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These are all good books to start with ^^

First off, I'm operating under the assumption that you're looking into English classes at the secondary school level.

Second, it might be helpful note the type of class(es) that could incorporate PnPRPG elements.
Specifically, are you interested in writing about teaching - Literature, Grammar, ESL, Critical Theory, all of the above, or something else entirely?

Finally, here are a couple links to get you started:
The Multiplayer Classroom

Classrealm Start Guide

Analysis of Gamification in Education

This is depressing. For anyone interested in learning more about inequalities in schooling, I recommend checking out the work of jonathon kozol. It'll really make you believe we're living in a country of two vastly different Americas.

Hey you. http://www.amazon.com/Fred-Jones-Tools-Teaching-Instruction/dp/0965026329/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262059116&sr=8-1

Psychologist Dan Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom delves deeply into these questions, especially as they pertain to teaching and learning.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/047059196X