To be considered a competent educator, there are almost 2000 strategies, concepts, and terms that you must know. However, since teachers wear so many hats, who has the time to learn them all? Don’t worry; we have you covered. In this series, we will discuss all the teaching and learning strategies, concepts, and terms that you need to know to be considered an effective educator. There are over 70 articles in this series, so pace yourself. We recommend reading one piece per weekday, which will allow you to complete the series in three to four months. We hope you enjoy it.

Click here to read all the articles in this series.

In-school Leadership Projects Activities in which students take an active leadership role in school improvement projects and decision-making such as monitoring student behavior or solving problems in curriculum selection, classroom rules, safety, or sanitation.

INSERT Method A teaching idea designed to encourage students to become engaged readers by inserting different symbols into the text. This gives students an opportunity to reflect on what they know and make decisions about the different ideas presented in the text.

In-Service Training On-the-job training and other learning opportunities provided to employees and teachers after they are already certified and employed.

Instructional Intervention A modification in the way a student is taught in an attempt to increase academic proficiency.

Instructional Reading Level The standard of reading ability at which students are challenged but not frustrated to allow them to read successfully in the ordinary teaching and classroom environment.

Instrumental Enrichment A program designed to develop various cognitive abilities, which involves students working through a set of paper-and-pencil exercises.

Instrumental Enrichment A thinking skills program designed to cover impulsivity; egocentric behavior; identifying, defining and solving problems; use of multiple data sources; analyzing, comparing and categorizing; planning and testing hypotheses; understanding the importance of evidence, and using time and space dimensions. This program was written by Feurerstein.

Integrated Teaching Methods Combine direct and indirect teaching methods. The teacher begins with an instructive session and gradually engages the students to take the lead.

Integrity vs. Despair In late adulthood, individuals look back at their life and realize that their life has been their responsibility and that they need to take responsibility for their actions. Those who regret their past life choices feel despair.

Intellectual Excitability One of Dabrowski’s five areas of overexcitabilities. It includes the pleasure students derive from asking questions, discovering new things, searching for truth. Students with this overexcitability often love ideas and theoretical analysis.

Intelligence A general aptitude for learning which is frequently measured by an individual’s ability to engage meaningfully with abstract concepts and to solve problems.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) An assessment that evaluates a person’s level of intelligence.

Intelligence Test As assessment measuring abilities that are widely viewed as signs of intelligence, or an individual’s potential regardless of previous learning.

Intelligibility, Acceptability, and Comprehensibility Intelligibility is the degree or level to which a listener understands a speaker’s given message. There are three methods for assessing intelligibility that includes rating scales, connected speech measures, and single word measures. A listener’s ratings may depend on their relationship with the speaker, a family member as opposed to a stranger or SLP. Accessibility must be differentiated as it includes the degree to which a speaker’s message is different from  considered acceptable by the linguistic community. Additionally, comprehensibility is defined by whether a spoken message is accompanied by cues that can be understood (gestures or orthographic cues).

Intentional Teaching Teaching that happens when an educator is focused on creating a plan to instruct students with a specific learning goal or developmental outcome in mind.

Intentionality Acting with a purpose; teachers employing intentionality plan their lessons according to the particular results they want to achieve.

Interactive Assessment An evaluation method in which a teacher determines which types of environments will provide students with the most meaningful and effective reading experiences.

Interactive Creative Leadership Model A theory of leadership that defines its components skills as vision, courage, absorption and talent recognition. This theory was developed by Sisk.

Interactive Read Alouds A reading activity in which people, usually adults, read something aloud and discuss new ideas or words to engage the learners.

Interactive Writing A writing activity used to support emergent readers and writers. Learners write down sentences which the teacher reads aloud, stretching each word to help the learners distinguish between sounds and letters. The learners then write the letters or words as they repeat the sounds read aloud.

Interdisciplinary Team A team where each member represents a different discipline but all members work together for a more integrated process.

Interest Inventory An assessment of interest in potential future fields of work.

Interference An inhibition in the recollection of certain information due to the presence of other data in one’s memory.

Internal Consistency A measure of assessment reliability. The degree of consistency in answers to multiple questions which are designed to assess the same trait or characteristic.

Internal Consistency An attribute of a strong, gifted program. Each element of the gifted program: the goal, student selection process, student services, and assessments, should all be consistent with each other.

Internal Control A sense that an individual is responsible for his or her own success or failure and can control outcomes in their lives. Individuals who believe that have internal control are likely to use failures constructively to improve outcomes on future tasks or goals.

Internal Locus-of-control An individual’s perception that they are in control of outcomes in their own life and their fate.

Internal Working Models A child’s expectations for relationships based on past experiences, which shapes how he or she interacts with caregivers and others.

Internalization The progression of a child from being regulated by others to being able to begin purposeful actions with other available people who provide limited amounts of support.

Internalizing Behaviors Internally directed responses to problems a student is having trouble facing including anxiety, social withdrawal, and sleeping problems.

International Baccalaureate (IB) Program A rigorous pre-college initiative that students can take to earn college credit. The program stresses critical thinking and cultural diversity. At the end of the program, students are awarded a diploma, which allows graduates access to universities worldwide.

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet, otherwise known as IPA, began in 1886 and is considered the universal symbol system used for transcribing consonants (non-pulmonic and pulmonic), suprasegmental features, and vowels, diacritics that are evident in speakers across the word, and tones and accents.

Internship An on the job learning and training experience that allows students to work in a professional environment to gain valuable training.

Interoperability Interoperability is defined as “the ability of computer systems or software to exchange and make use of information.” In other words, various software programs and systems can communicate with one another. We use data interoperability every day without even realizing it. For example, when we use Google for driving locations or mobile apps to make purchases. These different programs are speaking to one another. Unfortunately, many schools are not quite there yet. As the Educause Review explains, “Data about a student’s background, their benchmark test results, or their school schedule sometimes remain fragmented across different systems.”

Interpersonal Intelligence The degree to which a person comprehends the emotions, goals, and motivations of others, allowing them to function in social or group-task situations effectively.

Interscorer/interrater/interobserver Reliability An assessment of the correlation between two or more rater, observers or scorers. The degree to which they would agree on the scoring of a test or interpretation of observed behaviors.

Intersubjectivity When two people or groups understand the purpose of a task and each recognizes the understanding of the other group.

Intimacy vs. Isolation During young adulthood, an individual learns how to share aspects of their life with another person.

Intonation Using the sound of your voice to convey meaning. For example, your voice inflects up a bit at the end of asking a question {a part of prosody}.

Intonation Variations of the pitch in speech used to express emotion or the opinion of the speaker.

Intrapersonal Intelligence The degree to which a person understands themselves, their own emotions, goals, motivations, and capabilities, allowing them to plan and manage their own life.

Intrinsic Motivation An individual’s ability to focus effort on a goal based on their enjoyment of learning or doing a task.

Intrinsically Motivating Something that a student will do or keep doing based solely on the nature of the task itself.

Intuition The capacity to see relationships that others do not, to make inferences or take mental leaps.

Intuitive Mean An individual’s capability to identify and interpret subtle cues or understand the importance of current events and use them to predict future events. One aspect of leadership.

Intuitive Responses Instinctive responses to a child’s underachievement that reinforce the actions that led to failure.

Investigative Journals A medium through which students record ideas about topics they want to investigate or about their ongoing research and that promotes inquiry, reflection, and critical thinking. Students should be encouraged to begin their journal entries with “I wonder,” which can serve as the basis for peer discussions or conversations in writing.

Involuntary Immigrants People who were forced to emigrate to a new country against their will due to outside circumstances.

Item Analysis An assessment of an individual test question’s difficulty and discriminating power. The process used to determine whether a question should be included on a standardized test.

Item Response Theory A statistical measurement of how well a test question differentiates between students at various levels of abilities or with differing characteristics.