This book is a tell-all guide to the euphoric highs and unimaginable lows of teaching. Mahoney and Purr present the naked truth of their own blunder-laden first few years in order to help new teachers, those who think they might want to become teachers, and those in the business of training and hiring new teachers, see the realities that cannot be…

Purpose: This article explores distributed leadership as it relates to two teacher teams in one public secondary school. Both situational and social aspects of distributed leadership are foci of investigation. Methods: The qualitative study used constant comparative analysis and discourse analysis to explore leadership as a distributed phenomenon.…

Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves. The methods used by these weavers vary widely; lectures, Socratic dialogues, laboratory experiments, collaborative problem solving,…

Experienced English teachers can proactively help newcomers in their schools in different ways by relying on research and case studies that focus on the stated needs of new teachers. The efforts of a community of colleagues will serve to sustain newcomers so that they can gain confidence over time, refining their teaching proficiencies to…

According to this author, professional development in most school districts usually is not what teachers call worthwhile. Most is mandatory and tied to the latest literacy "fix," new district systems, text adoptions and occasionally, a speaker who has something new to share. She contends that meaningful professional development should be an…

An itinerant special education teacher talks about her changing role in the development of social skills in young children with disabilities. A continuum of social skills interventions is explained and the importance of matching types of interventions to children and settings is stressed. The special challenges of the itinerant teacher role are…

Discussion of mentoring of beginning special education teachers considers: how mentors can help, matching mentor with new teacher, first-year teachers' comments about their mentors, and alternative sources of mentor support. Topics mentors should discuss with new teachers and useful Web sites for new teachers are discussed. (Contains 12…

This paper examines teachers' perceptions of their professionalism under conditions of educational reforms in government primary schools in Karachi, Pakistan. Conceiving teacher professionalism in terms of four dimensions (teacher efficacy, teacher practice, teacher leadership and teacher collaboration) it reports a quantitative survey research…

This book shows how school leaders at all levels "from the most senior manager to the classroom teacher" can help to build learning communities through collaborating and negotiating with their colleagues, students and students' parents and carers, as well as with external agencies and local communities, to sustain and develop the…

Inclusion is a way of providing a normalized educational experience for all children with disabilities. Educators differ, however, on the meaning of inclusion, from full-inclusion advocates to those who assert "inclusive" means that learning needs are met in a range of service delivery contexts. Three components of inclusionary schooling that are…