This paper investigates beginning teachers collaboratively making sense of and responding to the micropolitical environments of their schools. Drawing on a qualitative multi-case study conducted within the context of a university-sponsored, inquiry-based induction program, this research employs a community of practice frame to examine how novice…

Testing students on higher order thinking skills may reinforce these skills among them. To research this assertion, we developed a graduate course for inservice science teachers in a framework of a "Journal Club"--a hybrid course which combines face-to-face classroom discussions with online activities, interrelating teaching, learning, and…

How does one become an effective teacher? What can be done to stem high attrition rates among beginning teachers? While many teachers are left to "sink or swim" in their first year--learning by trial and error, there remain a number of outstanding examples of collaboration and collegiality in teacher induction programs. Analysis of the…

This paper describes the findings of a qualitative research study examining the perceptions and practices of inservice teachers who blog. Open-ended interviews and electronic dialogues were conducted with 16 K-12 bloggers to identify emergent themes. A content analysis of each participant's Weblogs was conducted to confirm these findings. Findings…

Nearly two decades of research has taught some powerful lessons about how to design and implement meaningful and effective professional development for teachers. This newsletter examines the characteristics of high-quality professional development and offers some suggestions for improving its impact and effectiveness. For reform efforts centered…

CADMOS is a graphical learning design (LD) authoring tool that helps a teacher design a unit of learning in two layers: (i) the conceptual layer, which seems like a concept map and contains the learning activities with their associated learning resources and (ii) the flow layer, which contains the orchestration of these activities. One of CADMOS'…

Establishing an online community of professional learners was one component of a multi-year professional development project with an overall goal of improving the ability of career and technical educators to use and interpret technical assessment data. Educators from five states and nine different schools participated in a research-based workshop…

Evidence suggests that school focused staff development programs are more likely to bring about real school improvement because the individual school is the primary unit of change. These guidelines for the development and implementation of school-focused delivery of staff development programs were prepared for Georgia school systems. The term…

This report reviews the 248 home visiting programs serving children ages birth to 18 which provide a written training curriculum to their paraprofessionals. Programs were identified as part of a national survey of 4,162 potential home visiting programs (1,904 responses). Through a categorization process, 115 programs were identified as having…

During the 1982-83 school year the Austin Independent School District served 2,212 students in grades Kindergarten-12 with 173 programs of gifted and talented education in 23 subject areas. This report is a description of the Gifted and Talented Program of the District and a summary of the major evaluation findings for the 1982-83 school year.…

The masking of experience as the basis of learning and development is a major limitation of the school-based approach to inservice education. Neither case studies nor the teacher development literature supports the association of professional learning with a specific site, such as the school. On the contrary, locating the study and practice of…

The report presents information on current practices and issues in training direct care staff working in facilities serving developmentally disabled persons in Iowa and seven other states. The first section provides background information including purposes of the report and methods used to collect information. Section II is organized by four…

The Colorado Migrant Education Resource Center (CoMERC) was established in September 1979 to provide services to 12 migrant education projects in northern Colorado. The center's objectives were to establish task forces to address the needs of the area and assist in dissemination of expertise and to provide technical assistance to project staff in…

The Bilingual Pupil Services Program (B.P.S.) has been administered for ten years by the Office of Bilingual Education of the New York City Public Schools. In the 1983-84 school year the project provided in-service training of para-professionals to work with students of limited English proficiency (LEP) in grades one through six in the already…

The document presents the final report of the Model Vision Project (MVP) Outreach Phase, funded to demonstrate appropriate educational, diagnostic, training, and other services to severely multihandicapped, visually impaired children. Roles of various staff are reviewed, and individuals serving as consultants are listed. Summarized are the goals…