Over the last decade teacher educators have started to systematically study the processes involved in their efforts to improve their teacher education practices. This research by teacher educators (self-study research) has made an enormous contribution to the professional development of the teacher educators involved. Many teacher educators,…

Explains that every school system faces the challenge of how to manage staff more effectively, introducing several articles that focus on whether: large-city school systems are more bureaucratic, a system of family school choice is more efficient or effective, tuition is an answer to a reduction in public education finance, and there are common…

Based on an analysis of the nature of theory that is relevant to teachers, this paper presents an approach to teacher education, the realistic approach, and reports on its use in two countries. The paper uses the concepts of episteme and phronesis to introduce a new way of looking at theory that is relevant for teacher development. Section 1…

Focuses on the effects of a program that taught cooperating teachers at the primary school level in the Netherlands coaching skills for teachers-in-training. Reports that the trained cooperating teachers were not rated higher than the untrained teachers, but the cooperating teachers saw the coaching conferences as positive for their own teaching…

Describes four teacher education seminar techniques that can stimulate students' reflection on their teaching practice and promote change. Effects of the techniques were examined with regard to 18 student teachers. The techniques helped students reflect on the subjective theories and constructs they used in perceiving students. (SM)

This paper describes the preliminary findings of a training program to develop skills of Dutch primary school principals in coaching teachers for improved teaching. The major research questions addressed whether the 28 school principals who participated in the training program implemented the target coaching skills whether teachers coached by the…

Describes efforts in The Netherlands to reform school curriculum, integrate information technology into the new curriculum, and implement new approaches to teacher support and inservice simultaneously, focusing on evaluation of and reactions to some of the innovative approaches to teacher support and inservice. (SM)

This paper is a theoretical description of the mental processes that occur as part of teachers classroom behavior. Concepts are applied from the field of cognitive science and the following model is offered: the brain has an intrinsic dynamic nature with hierarchically organized levels of functioning; there is a large degree of interconnectedness…

Investigates the effects of a pre-service training course for secondary education teachers in the Netherlands. The training course featured two direct instructional models: executive acting, directed at well-structured skills, and strategic acting, directed at higher-level thinking strategies. Observation revealed significantly more effective…

Describes and assesses the effectiveness of a staff development program for Dutch teachers in mixed-age classes as it relates to areas of classroom management, instruction, and pupils' on-task behavior. Results of the quasi-experimental, treatment-control group investigation showed that the training program was an effective staff development tool.…

The two questions in this chapter are whether school restructuring promotes or constrains the professional development of teachers and which mechanisms for workplace learning appear to enhance the capacity of teachers to critically interpret educational reforms. To answer the first question, the implementation of structural changes and…

Discusses the poor transfer of theory taught and skills learned in college to classroom teaching practice, examining reasons for preconceptions that student teachers bring to teacher education programs. The paper offers several teacher educator interventions to help student teachers build world images with consequences for their teaching. (SM)

The effect of inservice teacher training on student perceptions of classroom environment was investigated. Teachers received training on lesson format, classroom management, and instruction in either September or January. Their students completed the Classroom Environment Scale. Student groups differed in perception of student affiliation but not…

A review and bibliography of staff development in higher education in several countries is presented. Contents are as follows: Australia by Geoff Foster and Ernest Roe; Britain universities by John Nisbet and Ray McAleese; Britain polytechnics by Harriet Greenaway and Derek Mortimer; Canada by Bruce M. Shore; Denmark by John Conrad; The Federal…

The aim of this paper is to develop a dynamic view of training and professional development of teachers, focusing particularly on the training of less effective and innovative teachers and on the relationship between teachers' self-efficacy and teacher learning. Teachers' self-efficacy is regarded as the extent to which teachers expect they can…