This article describes a long-term effort to improve student achievement in an urban school district through a unique school-university partnership. The Oak Park School District in Oak Park, Michigan, collaborated with Western Michigan University (WMU) to design and administer special master's and doctoral degree programs for nearly half the…

The Teacher Leadership Project (TLP) is a program developed to assist teachers in their efforts to integrate technology into the school curriculum. The program also encourages and facilitates teachers in assuming leadership roles to help schools and districts develop and implement technology plans, and to provide training in using technology.…

Outlines 10 areas requiring teacher leadership in schools; discusses benefits for students, teachers, the school, and the principal; and lists impediments (workload, time, testing constraints, colleagues' disapprobation, and unsupportive principals). Determined, goal-driven teachers have the power to unlock one another's leadership potential and…

This monograph examines the existing role of teacher leaders while addressing many of the missed opportunities for teacher leaders to impact student achievement. The work of teacher leaders must impact teacher expectations, teacher content knowledge base, and teacher practice. In an era of teacher accountability and teacher quality schools can no…

Teacher education in England has evolved to a practice-theory model, in which trainees on a one-year postgraduate certificate of education spend 24 weeks of a 36 week course in schools, rather than on the more traditional and comfortable, theory driven, predominantly Higher Education Institute (HEI) based programme. Partnership between the HEIs…

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…

In the 1980s, the National Geographic Society launched a multi-million dollar campaign to improve teachers' knowledge of geography through the establishment of geographic alliances--networks of geography professors, teacher educators, and elementary and secondary teachers. To coordinate reform efforts in geographic education, the Society provides…

Three broad challenges to Thailand's educational system (participation, effectiveness, and resources) have deep, far- reaching consequences for the teaching profession. Major problems include teacher shortages in critical areas; low salaries; and recruitment, qualification, and professional-development inadequacies. Teacher/leadership programs are…

Findings from a study, which examined the development of leadership skills and roles among the teachers in a professional development school (PDS), indicate the emergence of a nontraditional teacher leadership paradigm at the PDS. In contrast to typical teacher leadership models, in which carefully selected and screened teachers are placed in…

The creation of multiple small schools from a single comprehensive high school elevates the necessity for many, rather than few, to assume leadership for various functions associated with helping each school to thrive. The nature of this effort calls for a view of leadership that moves away from reliance on administrative hierarchies and toward a…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…

In Kentucky, one of the six participating Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) states, the Teacher Partner concept soon gave rise to the Regional Teacher Partners (RTPs). This complementary project, known as the "Master Teacher Project," was designed after the Teacher Partner model but with one key difference. This paper…

This is the story of Barbara Shoemaker and her work as an Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) Teacher Partner in Oneida, Tennessee. It is the story of what she values and the experiences that shaped her approach to education. In particular it is about what she learned from her experience with the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative, and…

Closing the digital divide requires much more than buying equipment, it requires increasing the knowledge and skills of teachers using the technology, and access to digital tools in the community. In such a larger system of change, technology can serve as a catalyst for increasing teacher and student learning. The Anaheim City School District…

Many of the people who live in Knott County today are direct descendants of the early settlers of the region. Today the people of Knott County share an identity that is grounded in the place they and their ancestors called home. Perhaps the public endeavor in which the influence of place is most evident is education. In Knott County education has…