Novice teachers often struggle in their first year. Some succumb to illness, depression, or burnout, and some even decide to abandon teaching as a career option. The classic stressors identified by new teachers have been remarkably consistent over the years, and their challenges have been well chronicled. Less has been written, however, about the…

In a series of investigations, the author and his colleagues have examined ways that students who once did poorly in school made progress and how their teachers nurtured their accomplishments. They have chronicled ways that successful teachers learned to understand why students are reluctant to do their work, how to help them think through their…

Female students have been discriminated against right from birth in their various cultures and this affects the way they perform in Spoken English class, and how they rate themselves. They have been conditioned to believe that the male gender is superior to the female gender, so they leave the male students to excel in spoken English, while they…

The environment has a profound effect on the ability of students to regulate their behavior or disposition and effectively engage in the learning processes. Active engagement is important because it increases performance. Certain types of environmental structures actually increase students' ability to be agents of their own learning. These…

The correlation between positive and negative group interactions and one or another of individuals' attitudes or characteristics--moral development, critical thinking, resilience, and self efficacy--has been examined previously. However, no systemic examination of individuals' development of patterns of these characteristics and those patterns'…

This paper describes an innovative approach to preparing MSW students for work with traumatized clients via a trauma certificate program. It explores conceptual and ethical principles of the program and presents results of the formative evaluation done with faculty, field instructors and students from the program's pilot year. Students reported…

When describing how they experience moments of not-knowing, youth workers often talk about a sense of paralysis, as though their uncertainty becomes physically constraining. This chapter describes the first of five themes associated with youth workers' experiences of not knowing what to do: the paralysis of stuckness. In addition to describing and…

A rich literature--both within education circles and in other kinds of labor markets--links teachers' sense of efficacy and collective responsibility to their teaching effectiveness and improved student achievement. Prior research has found that a teacher's self-efficacy as an instructional leader is strongly and positively associated with…

Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion resulting from chronic stress. It is characterized by feelings of alienation, indifference, and low self-regard, a loss of interest in work, and an inability to perform one's day-to-day job duties. Burnout within the teaching profession has been recognized as a serious problem.…

Alumni who are veteran teachers can become a valuable resource for teacher education programs in mentoring beginning teachers from the same institution. An Alumni Mentoring Guild was established through a School of Education and Office of Career Services to bring back alumni to help beginning teachers. Mentors worked with up to three beginning…

Subjective well-being has often been studied as a context-free construct, reflecting overall life satisfaction and characteristic levels of positive affect and negative affect. But there has also been much interest in domain-specific aspects of subjective well-being, such as job satisfaction. The authors provide a brief overview of the two primary…

A novice assistant principal, eager to lead, begins her career as an administrator in school beset with problems and far removed from the textbook definitions of "learning community". She works with inexperienced teachers, disillusioned veteran teachers, and a principal who is distracted and overwhelmed by personal concerns. Her…

The founding fathers of the new Jewish community in "Eretz Yisrael" (the Land of Israel, or Palestine) as well as many philosophers, public figures, educators and authors both in Israel and in the Diaspora were preoccupied with the image of the new Israeli Hebrew. The educational system was seen as an instrument to create the "new…

This article investigates factors that motivate participants in learning and training activities to transfer skills, knowledge and attitude from the learning setting to the workplace. Based on training transfer theories hypothesized by Holton (1996), one of the major theories that affect an organization's learning is motivation to transfer theory.…

Blending the arts into students' learning of science concepts through role-play and drama is unusual pedagogy in schools. For seven Australian Year Five students seeking extended learning, advanced scientific concepts were learned during the creative process of script writing and production of a science play called "Hectic Electric". A…