Authors and scholars published within "Arts Education Policy Review" have been diligent to investigate various topics surrounding music educator preparation, mentoring, retention, as well as avenues for continued professional development and growth. Linda Darling-Hammond and Robert Rothman, along with various chapter authors, address…

Headlines offer a plethora of opinions and arguments both for and against proposed and newly implemented teacher evaluation systems all over the United States. Hardly anyone balks at the idea of evaluating teachers, but many question whether these new evaluation systems really improve teaching and learning. The author's experience with the new…

Mathematicians have, historically, not been overly successful in their approach to teaching and much research has looked in to why this is so. Teaching mathematics is based on a solid understanding of the subject; however, instructors also need to be able to efficiently communicate the subject to their students. The purpose of this study was to…

A variety of factors have converged in the last decade to focus attention on the need for more rigorous designs of professional development (PD). Teacher development is increasingly viewed as one of the primary levers for improving teaching quality and ultimately student achievement. The authors present data from the Teacher Knowledge Assessment…

Teachers in academia are usually not required to have teacher training but must often be evaluated by their students who expect them to have much better teaching qualifications than their high school teachers. However, teachers in elementary and high schools are required to go through several years of teacher training, resulting in a teaching…

Researchers at NIET and elsewhere have studied the effectiveness of "TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement" (TAP) in raising student achievement, improving the quality of instruction, and increasing the ability of high-need schools to recruit, retain and support effective teachers. This document provides summaries of some…

Concerns about inadequate development of subject expertise for American elementary school teachers have been well documented. There are many exceptions to this narrative, and there are many exemplary U.S. teacher preparation programs. However, it is clear that, overall, the preparation of elementary teachers in the United States in key subject…

This study aims to examine to what extent the field of competence regarding curriculum knowledge is concordant with the other sub-competency fields of teaching. These fields are field knowledge, pedagogic competence in field teaching, use of information and communication technologies in teaching, student behaviours and class management,…

The objective of this research study was to identify the factors affecting the professional characteristics of teacher educators by comparing two models of teacher education. The research findings revealed four major focal points that have an impact on professional characteristics: the operational model adopted by the institution where teacher…

In 2014, state and national leaders found many aspects of turning around America's low-performing schools even more daunting than in the previous year. These views were revealed in the Center on School Turnaround's (CST's) 2014 February/March survey of school turnaround leaders in State Education Agencies (SEA) and directors of the nation's…

The task of validating a teacher assessment and improvement system is similar whether the system operates in the United States or in another country. Chile has a national teacher evaluation system (NTES) that is standards based, uses multiple instruments, and is intended to serve both formative and summative purposes. For the past 6 years the…

We examine the distinction between teaching and teachers as it relates to instructional improvement. Drawing from work outside of education on improvement systems and from analyzing the Japanese system of lesson study, we contend that a focus on teaching can shape a coordinated system for improvement whereas a focus on teachers, common in the…

American children deserve the one ingredient we know creates stellar learning results: excellent teachers. These teachers produce "well over" today's typical year of learning growth. Without them, even with solid teachers who produce a full year of progress, children who start behind stay behind, and few students get ahead of their…

Finland's high test scores have prompted international comparisons of educational policy. This article explores the use of assessment in Finland, particularly the intended use of student assessment and evaluation of schools as described in the National Curriculum. This article explores Finnish educational policy through the lens of formative and…

Where their teacher-quality proposals are concerned, the fates of the 11 states that have bid for waivers of core principles of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act appear to depend largely on how the peer reviewers--and, ultimately, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan--interpret their applications. The U.S. Department of Education's criteria…