This paper offers three constructive recommendations that apply specifically to public school teachers, the largest group of state and local government employees, and one of special importance to the long-term economic competitiveness of the country. The recommendations embrace and protect existing defined-benefit pension plans, which are under…

Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) is a promising program to improve the teacher evaluation system and teaching quality more broadly. Under PAR, an innovative approach that uses expert teachers to conduct regular evaluations for novice teachers and underperforming veterans, districts can focus attention on instructional quality, retain the most…

The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), in conjunction with local school systems (LSS) and institutions of higher education (IHE), has conducted an annual educator supply and demand study since 1986, the original purpose of which was to determine critical teacher shortage areas. Although data are collected annually, since 2008 the…

The paper sets out to show that teaching is among the five undeniably oldest and historically character-shaping professions in the world, the others being engineering-architecture, medicine, law, and accounting and each of these professions has a unique story in connection with its genesis and its influence on social organisation. The paper…

This book examines both the promise and complexity of diversifying today's teaching profession. Drawing from a 5-year study of 21 new teachers of color working in urban, hard-to-staff schools, this book uncovers a systemic paradox that the teachers confront. They are committed to improving educational opportunities for students of color by acting…

This article explores how exposure to aesthetic education approaches can help novice teachers reconsider their literature instruction in an age of mandated curricula and increased pressures to "teach to the test." The guiding questions were as follows: What similarities exist between transacting with a text on the page and aesthetically…

Teacher preparation has been under intense scrutiny in recent years. In order for preparation of special education teacher candidates to remain viable, candidate assessment practices must apply practices identified in the extant literature base, while special education teacher education researchers must extend this base with rigorous efforts to…

In this paper, I analyse the history of teacher education in Australia from 1974 to the current policy moment in which questions are increasingly being asked about the quality of teaching and teacher education. Teacher education is, and has been, a highly scrutinised domain in Australia. Since the 1970s, we have seen more than 100 reviews of…

This article examines the interconnections between mentoring and teacher collaboration in view of the intergenerational gap between experienced and novice educators in the post-Soviet Ukraine. The conceptual framework utilized a constructive postmodern perspective as an analytical lens and examined mentorship as a collaborative form of teacher…

Through a mixed-methods study, teacher educators investigated recent graduates' perceptions of their preparation program. Beginning special education teachers completed surveys and indicated (a) their level of preparation and confidence associated with 25 core competencies, (b) the most beneficial components of their preparation program, (c)…

What is an action learning set (ALS)? An ALS is a regular, action focused peer discussion group, generally facilitated, to address work place issues. Methods of undertaking ALS: methods are flexible within a range of approaches according to the group's developing needs. Benefits of ALS: builds trust, professional development, enables action,…

During 2005, the Education Alumni Support Project (EdASP) (Maxwell, Smith, Baxter, Boyd, Harrington, Jenkins, Sargeant & Tamatea 2006) provided online support for University of New England (UNE) graduand, and later, graduate, teachers as they commenced their careers. The project was based on research which reported that many beginning teachers…

The Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) AISD Survey is a unique opportunity to gather information about school conditions from those whose views matter most--practicing educators. This report is for the 2013-2014 school year.

This paper speculates how a model for the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development of novice science teacher educators in a science education doctoral programme could have wider application to future teacher educators in science (and other subject domains) who enter tertiary teaching via different pathways. When the model is aligned with…

Assumptions are often made about new lecturers in terms of previous experience, development needs and orientations towards the new role. Postgraduate certificate (PgCert) programmes tend to operate on the assumption that new lecturers are already familiar with the research element of their discipline, in a default transition from PhD to…