This second edition of an annotated bibliography and resource guide on professional development schools (PDS) provides information to facilitate the location of sources of information regarding professional development schools. The publication contains 153 annotations, only one of which was included in the first edition. Most of the resources were…

The project described in this digest was designed with the belief that teacher professional growth can best be fostered through sustained collaborative inquiry between teachers and researchers. It set out to incorporate what is known about quality professional development with the special features necessary for meeting the needs of English…

Intended for administrators and policy makers as well as teachers, this digest explores the components common to effective writing programs. The digest first discusses activities at the classroom level as the foundation of a successful writing program and elements that should be included in classroom instruction, such as the process approach to…

Teacher leaders often teach full- or part-time while assuming leadership responsibilities. Also, they have often learned new roles just by doing the tasks demanded by those roles. A more systematic approach to helping teachers develop the requisite skills for assuming leadership roles (e.g. department chairs, team and grade leaders, and curriculum…

An eight-step organizational approach to the problem of identifying, remediating, and, if necessary, dismissing incompetent teachers is described. Addressed to school superintendents, the eight steps are as follows: (1) establish "excellence in teaching" as a high priority for the district, (2) adopt and publish reasonable criteria for evaluating…

Reflective practice can be beneficial to preservice and inservice teacher professional development. This digest reviews the concept, levels, techniques for, and benefits of reflective practice. Donald Schon introduced the concept in 1987, and since then, many schools, colleges, and departments of education have begun designing teacher education…

This digest, drawn from the summer 2002 issue of the New Directions for Community Colleges journal, summarizes research findings on the similarities and differences among college faculty groups and concludes with a discussion of how this information can be used to increase the relevance and effectiveness of faculty development issues. Huber (2002)…

This review surveys major currents of thought and practice in teacher evaluation. Citing recent state-mandated teacher evaluation policies and procedures, several compelling questions of accuracy, fairness, and utility are raised. In response to these questions, the document first focuses on the distinction between formative and summative…

An effective staff development program for rural teachers will have identified the needs to be met, will incorporate good management principles, and will make use of a variety of resources--the community itself, nonprofessional staff, business and industry, and shared teaching efforts. Distinctive staff development needs of rural teachers may…

Criticisms of teacher education, the low economic and political costs of trying to reform schools by reforming teacher education, along with the difficulty of filling some teaching positions with persons certified in traditional ways, have fueled a movement to create alternative routes to teacher certification in the vast majority of states. This…

The reactions of social studies educators to "A Nation at Risk," the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education that examined the quality of education in the United States, are discussed. The survey was an informal one that asked educators, mainly teachers and professors, what their reactions were to the report in…

Instructional leadership is leadership that is directly related to the processes of instruction where teachers, learners, and the curriculum interact. These three elements constitute the domains of the instructional process. The principal alone often cannot be effective in the supervisory role because of lack of time, lack of specific training and…

The 11 journal articles reviewed in this annotated bibliography focus on ways teachers and principals can improve the quality of teaching. Among the four articles directed toward principals are two that relate to the culture of the school; another presents a model to principals for achieving quality instruction; and the fourth proposes six…

This annotated bibliography was prepared to provide background material for a synthesis paper, "Teacher Evaluation as a Strategy for Improving Instruction." Both formative (teacher improvement) and summative (personnel decisions) aspects of the topic are addressed by the materials collected. The 52 selected items, most of which were…

This report reviews the research and literature on the improvement of college teaching through use of a model that stresses a supportive teaching culture and helps motivate individual faculty members to improve their teaching by utilizing a variety of sources of informative feedback. The sources include: colleagues and consultants, department…