This article examines the career trajectories and biographies of three women who completed the same graduate preservice program in elementary education. While two have become successful teacher leaders, the third has moved in and out of teaching. This inquiry draws on a ten-year longitudinal study of one of these teachers, positioning that…

Urban Teacher Residencies (UTRs) are an emerging innovation designed to embody best practices in recruitment, screening, preparation, placement, induction, and teacher leadership for urban school districts. UTRs can be a key element of urban districts' portfolio of pathways into teaching and a lynchpin of a larger strategy to strengthen the…

This article shares findings from an exploratory case study about an advanced school leadership development program designed specifically for practicing principals and administrator-trained teachers. The program was designed to help a high-need rural district transform its principalship from school management into learner-center leadership while…

How can teacher educators initiate and sustain a culture of inquiry among participants in a graduate program? This was the core issue in the design of a new Masters degree program that emphasized teacher leadership. Now in their fifth year of this program, the authors decided that it was time to publicly document how they taught and studied the…

This article deals with the use of Problem-Based Learning. The emphasis on high stakes testing, classroom size, diversity, school violence, and much more impact public education and professional preparation programs relative to teacher education. Issues are presented dealing with Accrediting Commissions and Professional Organizations, and the use…

Schools today represent students from diverse racial, linguistic, and other cultural backgrounds. Teacher-preparation institutions have the responsibility of providing prospective teachers with the skills necessary to meet the intellectual, social, and personal needs of these diverse learners. This article examines the rationale for a…

Different circumstances led institutions to increase their reliance on corporate practices. In searching for ways to curb the influence of corporate practices on higher education, it seems reasonable to look toward the faculty. Faculty, especially those who are tenured or on the tenure track, are regarded as "officers" of their institutions and…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…

The Reaching for Excellence in Middle and High School Science Teaching and Learning Partnership Project at East Tennessee State University has a long history in the development of teacher leaders. This article describes the professional development model, the challenges addressed, and the impact on both teacher and student learning. (Contains 3…

The XX IDEA annual conference has been focused and reflected on different ways and means of meeting various kinds of methodological challenges, new technologies and multi-media developments, newly emerging partnerships and collaboration between emerging sectors on one hand and between the institutions functioning with similar objectives and…

The purpose of this study is to describe how 24 elementary and middle school teacher leaders analyzed standardized achievement test scores, utilizing four different approaches: comparing to the norm, analyzing trends, correlating data, and disaggregating data. The analyses were conducted in order to effect positive change in student learning and…

A national study was conducted to examine the quality of mid-level leaders' worklife, satisfaction, morale and their intentions to leave. The study included 4,000 mid-level leaders who were randomly selected from a total national population of 11,300 from both public and private institutions within five Carnegie classifications (e.g.,…

As societal and classroom demands for accountability increase, teacher educators are challenged to prepare and support new teachers for the realities of today's classrooms. Sometimes the preparation and the realities appear to be in conflict. University-based teacher educators may stress critical thinking and active learning. School-based teacher…

In this article, we describe the implementation of a teacher leader program at the University of Northern Iowa designed specifically to address the needs of a nearby urban school district (i.e., to increase their school leadership, to complement district-wide initiatives in assessing and improving instruction, and to close the minority-achievement…

This article presents findings from a 2-year reflexive action research study of a cohort-based Master's degree program in literacy for practicing teachers. Questions revolved around whether and how the program brought about changes in candidates' conceptions about literacy, expertise in literacy, and leadership/activist skills to foster equity in…