Research shows that professional learning can have a powerful effect on teacher skills and knowledge, and on how well students learn. To be effective, however, professional learning for teachers needs to be conducted in the ways that it is in many high achieving countries--continuously, collaboratively, and with a focus on teaching specific…

Around the world, the importance of education to individual and societal success has increased at a breathtaking pace as a new knowledge-based economy has emerged. As a consequence, most countries have been engaged in intensive reforms of their education systems, and many have focused especially on improving teacher education, recognizing that…

This paper offers an overview and analysis of the status of teaching as an occupation and of teacher development in the United States. An opening section describes the development of the industrial-based education model that has been in place for this century and the reform movements that have started in the past two decades. A section on the…

The four papers presented here address teacher development from an international viewpoint. In "Professional Development and Standards" (Linda Darling-Hammond) it is suggested that U.S. educators engage in new kinds of collaborations with universities, and it proposes a shift from information transmittal to "co-construction" of…