Teacher effectiveness has long been identified as critical to student success and, more recently, supporting students attaining the skills and dispositions required to be successful in the early 21st century. To do so requires that teachers engage in professional learning characterized as a shift away from conventional models of evaluation and…

This inquiry focuses on the "overall instructional leadership" approaches used by exemplary principals in three high performing Canadian provinces to overcome three persistent obstacles to effective teacher supervision and evaluation: (a) the management challenge, (b) the complexity challenge, and (c) the learning challenge. Analysis of…

This book discusses teacher evaluation and how it can provide the foundations for professional development. The editors and contributors illustrate how teachers with varying levels of expertise, experience and learning needs can benefit from differentiated evaluation and professional development designed to help them reach their full potential.…

This study examines the views of administrators (i.e., principals and vice-principals) in Ontario, Canada, with regard to the province's Teacher Performance Appraisal process. A total of 178 responses were collected from a survey that examined five areas: 1) preparation and training; 2) classroom observations; 3) preparing the formal evaluation;…

Saskatoon Public Schools made the decision 10 years ago to undertake major changes in how it supports professional learning. The district began with two major priorities: increasing literacy in elementary schools and transforming high schools to increase student engagement. The district appointed a facilitator for each priority in central office,…

This paper presents the results of a study of interviews (N = 17) conducted with members of a community of practice (CP) comprised of school principals, vice principals, and department heads responsible for teacher supervision in their respective schools. This CP met once a month over the course of 2 years to work on adapting the New Brunswick…

Contrary to what many people assume, writes Stewart, a high-quality teacher workforce is not the simple result of some traditional cultural respect for teachers that exists in some countries. Rather, it requires deliberate policy choices. In a tour of seven countries that traditionally score high on international tests of student performance…

Observed and interviewed eight male principals from a large urban school system to identify their activities as instructional leaders. The ways principals acted as instructional supervisors could be organized into the following four broad categories: (1) setting and maintaining expectations; (2) providing resources and support; (3) observing…

Interviews with 10 elementary/secondary St. John's (Newfoundland) principals revealed impacts of collective bargaining on principal's role in teacher evaluation including more formalized relationship with staff, increased involvement of school boards, reservations over ability to adequately evaluate teachers, greater centralization of authority,…

The present study examines and provides a description of the teachers' (N = 382) preferred models of supervision from seven of Canada's large urban centres: Evaluation by school supervisors, school council members, school principals, peers, students, teachers' self-evaluation or no evaluation at all. The results show that teachers from the seven…

This paper begins with summaries of research on individual characteristics of effective administrators and on the effectiveness of administrator evaluation. The paper then presents materials, forms, and questionnaires used in the Calgary (Alberta) public schools administrative evaluation process. The evaluation process includes a personal…

The education of students is fundamental to shaping a preferred provincial, national and global future. It is also essential in maintaining Alberta's standard of living and ensuring its global competitiveness. The education system must simultaneously prepare the citizens of tomorrow while equipping the students with the knowledge and skills they…

This report is part of a study of school districts in British Columbia (Canada), and deals with school district ethos--interest in defined focal areas--both as a measure of school district quality and as a potential predictor of student achievement. The study concentrates on one of these focal areas--holding schools accountable through monitoring.…

This study investigated the degree of teacher evaluation policy implementation in Alberta, the events that influenced teacher evaluation policy adoption, and the variables that affected the policy implementation process. The first phase of the study was primarily qualitative, using semistructured interviews with selected key decision-makers and…

Although it has been the practice of the University of Manitoba to place the majority of student teachers in metropolitan schools, recently there has been increasing pressure to place students in rural school divisions as well. One rural school division, however, has given some evidence of distrust in the university faculty and in its methods of…