Since 2009, the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) has been rapidly implemented as a policy tool for strengthening teacher professionalization across the United States. However, its national assimilation has become a target for both praise and critique among teacher educators. In this article, we examine such diverse perspectives.…

School leadership is a key factor in school turnarounds. The general prescription for what school leaders should do tends to be this: Set high expectations for staff and students and give strong instructional supports. Most school systems recognize how tall an order this is, given everything else the principal job entails. Even principals who are…

This paper reports on the development and implementation of a process of peer evaluation of teaching to assess librarian instruction in a high-enrollment online information literacy course for undergraduates. This paper also traces a shift within libraries from peer coaching to peer evaluation models. One common model for peer evaluation, using…

Summative performance assessments in teacher education, such as the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) and the edTPA, have been heralded through polices intended to enhance the quality of the teaching profession and raise its stature among other professions. However, the development and implementation of the PACT, and…

The traditional student teaching experience includes a complex, triadic relationship between student teacher, cooperating teacher, and the university supervisor. Studies seeking to understand this experience from the perspectives of the student teacher and cooperating teacher are commonly found in the literature; yet research specific to the…

This study analyzes end of course institutional teaching evaluations (ITEs) done anonymously by students in a pre-service teacher education course over a 15-year span. The purpose was to determine if and how the ITE findings might inform practice and relate to teaching metaphors as a tool of study. Analysis revealed: (a) teacher effectiveness…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which cooperating teachers deem required student teaching skills and activities relevant to the agricultural education student teaching experience. The population for this descriptive study consisted of individuals who served as cooperating teachers in Iowa and South Dakota during the last 5…

This quantitative study investigated the relationship between teacher dispositions, subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and reasons that school principals recommend non-renewal of teachers' contracts. Nearly 2,000 school principals in 13 states completed an emailed survey. In deciding whether to non-renew a teacher contract,…

This quantitative study investigated reasons that school principals recommend non-renewal of probationary teachers' contracts. Principals in the Southeast and Midwest completed an emailed survey. The ordinal nature of the data gathered dictated that comparisons be made between groups using the Mann Whitney U. The study investigated the barriers…

There has been a wealth of research examining learning environments as one of the variables that contributes to academic success for students studying science. A constructivist learning environment has been explored as one way to assist students in achieving greater success with science learning. There is a lack of research concerning how and if…

Principals know that effective teachers are the greatest school-based contributors to improved student outcomes. What is not always clear is how principals can help teachers adapt their instructional practices to the increasingly diverse learning styles they find in their classrooms. Teacher evaluation practices are typically not seen as a tool…

As the accountability movement has gained momentum, policy makers and educators have strived to strike a difficult balance between the sometimes competing demands at the local, state, and federal levels. Efforts to improve accountability and teacher evaluation have taken an especially unique route in Iowa, where local control and resistance to…

The effects of Physical Education Teacher Education program modifications upon selected characteristics identified with effective teaching were assessed utilizing the Teacher Work Sample (TWS). Data were collected from all student teacher candidates during the 2002 student teaching sessions. Based upon the 2002 data, interventions were made to a…

In an effort to accommodate mandated standards-based assessment for measuring pre-service teacher quality, the Teacher Education Program at The University of Iowa has used for the last decade a web-based electronic portfolio system--ePortfolio[TM]--to help pre-service teachers document fulfillment of professional teaching standards throughout…

Shows how a mastery teaching program was applied to one Iowa school district to improve and evaluate teacher performance. Emphasizes the principal's role in such a program. (JW)