Urban public schools and their teachers are under siege. From increased standardization, privatization and testing to a growing number of students whose needs are not being met by schools, urban public school teachers face a daunting task. Without a space in which to critically examine their daily experiences within schools, many well-intentioned…

This paper describes the experiences of an English teacher from Washington State University who taught English in Japan for a year. The teacher concluded after her year in Japan that the country is and has been involved in a less-than-conscious national effort to "stonewall" the effective teaching of English as a second language in all…

A new national research consortium, the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy (CTP), is designed to investigate the relation between excellent teaching and policymaking at the national, state, and local levels. Policy efforts to produce excellence in teaching must: (1) attract, recruit, and retain capable teachers; (2) develop teachers'…

This study, begun in October 1987, was conducted to explore the effect of particular contexts of schooling on educational outcomes and to provide a comprehensive look at what and how context conditions affect teaching and learning. The study design integrates 3 years of field research in 16 public and private high schools in 2 states and analyses…

This paper describes the experience of an educational psychologist who completed a Fulbright Lectureship at Moscow State Pedagogical University in Russia during April and May of 1993. The chaotic situation brought about by the dramatic and rapid changes that have taken place since the collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in hyperinflation,…

This report is intended to stimulate discussion among and within the 18 countries comprising the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) about recent, current and future changes in the role and functions of their universities. Of particular concern are difficulties associated with preparing, legislating, and implementing…

To overcome teacher isolation and help make teaching a more attractive profession, educators might consider a peer support system based on the Stanford Collegial Evaluation Program. This paper describes the program's background, functioning, barriers to successful implementation, and how to neutralize them. The Stanford program uses a peer…

In response to education reform mandates, rewards and incentives such as career ladder and master teacher programs are being designed to break lock-step salary schedules and to retain competent teachers. While these "pay-for-performance" plans seem acceptable to taxpayers, few realize that such approaches have already been tried and…

This collection of papers is the final product of a project designed to explore the ways in which high schools as organizations facilitate and frustrate teachers' ability to be engaged with their work. Ordinary schools were chosen as the research subjects: two in high socioeconomic (SES) settings; two in middle SES settings, and two in low SES…

Meaningful and useful evaluations of teaching and teachers must not only identify and define all the mitigating contexts, but must also account for their influences, both constructive and negative. Among the contextual factors that need to be considered in planning teacher evaluations are: student characteristics; goals, objectives and curriculum…

A data processing program that can be used as a research and collective bargaining aid for colleges is briefly described and the fields of the system are outlined. The system, known as BRAIN (Baruch Retrieval of Automated Information for Negotiations), is designed primarily as an instrument for quantitative and qualitative analysis. BRAIN consists…

Teaching is not considered a desirable occupation in China, and many teachers are unhappy in their jobs. Education is the weak sector within the bureaucracy. Because it has been neglected for a long time, especially during the Cultural Revolution, many people, including government officials, do not take the problems of education seriously. From…

This paper provides a broad overview of the teacher shortage situation and concludes that shortages may occur during the next 10 years, depending upon the factors of supply and demand. Demand, it appears, will increase until an additional 200,000 teachers will be needed by 1990. The supply of teachers may increase enough to met this demand, but…

Reprints of four articles from the journal "Phi Delta Kappan" provide discussions of initial findings from "A Study of Schooling," a study of contextual variables in 38 elementary, junior high/middle, and high schools. The project had two purposes: (1) to formulate hypotheses and provide insights about schooling through indepth…

Prospective teachers must face numerous pressures and difficulties during their training and subsequent negative factors in their lives as professionals. Among the conditions that exist for the prospective teacher, economic constraints play an important role. Pressures also exist during student teaching, when students must attempt to please both a…