The context of teaching requires different areas of expertise, and therefore one must know what fits best for his or her priorities, depending upon the teaching environment. All students deserve a full and rich education, but at times it is easy to forget the contexts in which teachers teach and learn and consider alternate context and cultures…

This paper explores a distributed leadership perspective on how leaders create contexts that build and support professional communities in schools. It is argued that professional community results from intentional coordination of social interaction among teachers through the design of structures in a situation of practice. School leaders put these…

Research studies have documented a strong link between perennial high rates of beginning teacher attrition and teacher shortages that impact teaching, especially in the major urban areas of the United States. It is widely concluded that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school academic performance is a teacher shortage and the resulting…

Explores some issues of adult learning, concentrating on three areas: (1) the conditions under which adults are most likely to learn; (2) strategies that trainers can adopt to enable this to take place; and (3) implications for the training organization sponsor. (Author/JOW)

Lists some of the rewards of being a developmental educator and then discusses the harsh realities of a poor image, lack of institutional support, restrictions on facilities and resources, territorial jealousies of academic personnel, different types of students, and demands by evaluators for miracles. (AYC)

Philadelphia's Parkway Program is an alternative high school featuring great teacher autonomy. Recent reductions in force and teacher reassignment for racial balance led to the discovery that both teachers who had originally selected Parkway and those placed in the program involuntarily wished to remain in the program after experiencing it. (PGD)

Teacher professionalism and educational restructuring have the same goal--to make teachers more responsive to their students. To transform teaching into an authentic profession involves six changes: reforming teacher education and licensing, restructuring schools, reforming unions, improving accountability, and bettering salaries and working…

Discusses the impact on El Cerrito High School teachers of the bankruptcy of the Richmond Unified School District. Suggests that the teachers have lost the luxury of a moment to reflect. (RS)

Recounts a dinner conversation between 2 high school English teachers: a 30-year veteran, and a former protege planning to enter college teaching after 5 disappointing years pursuing a vision of classroom integrity. Both seem disillusioned by incessant daily interruptions and distractions beyond their control. Sadly the teacher attrition rate…

Offers suggestions for creating a prepared environment for teachers, within the context of Montessori practice. Maintains that teachers' status can be ensured by practices such as giving concrete individual acknowledgments, creating social times together, learning together, doing purposeful process work, exhibiting respectful behavior,…

Canadian scholar Elizabeth Brule argues in her 2004 essay, "Going to the Market," that the corporatization of the university has led to the construction of students as rational, economic decision makers. As Brule argues, "The only choices considered rational, however, are those that increase one's employment opportunities within the strict…

How society views teachers and teacher education is important because how a phenomenon is seen often influences the reality of that phenomenon. Professional status is important because of its effect on the quality and character of teaching and learning in schools. (MT)

Teacher effectiveness, and the quality of education, will improve if simple solutions to such common problems as classroom discipline and "teacher burnout" are seriously implemented. (2 references) (CJH)

A civil engineer describes his first day as a substitute teacher. Despite detailed lesson plans and good intentions, maintaining an orderly class environment is far from a "piece of cake." Recess duty is an ordeal, and lunch in the shabby teacher's lounge is uninspiring. The biggest benefit is appreciation of what constitutes a full-time teacher's…

Considers the relevance of gender in the teaching of composition as a professional field. Contrasts the cultural images of the male versus the female teacher. Challenges such constructs to posit new images of teaching and teachers, especially with regard to women teachers. (HB)