Practice-based teacher education has increasingly been adopted as an alternative to more traditional, conceptually-focused pedagogies, yet the field lacks causal evidence regarding the relative efficacy of these approaches. To address this issue, we randomly assigned 185 college students to one of three experimental conditions reflective of common…

Teaching is a complex profession; and therefore, micro-teaching is needed to scale down its complexity to train pre-service teachers for future real teaching. However, micro-teaching experiences without reflection are insufficient for building or developing professional teaching skills. Therefore, this book aims at building and developing…

Continued employment and advancement for faculty members depends upon growth in teaching practices; thus, there is a need for faculty across all disciplines to understand best instructional practices and the strategies that develop effective teaching behaviors and skills. While faculty members at the university level are considered experts in…

The issue of diversity in U.S. K-12 schools requires significant training and experiences for preservice teachers to recognize the importance of students' socio-cultural, religious values, and the influence their cultural background have in their quest to succeed in their educational endeavors. This study provides significant information to…

This study describes the presence of professional skills found in poster session proposals in order to consider the use of poster sessions for developing the skills required by the 2012 Ecuadorian Standards for English teachers, specifically related to the fifth domain professionalism. Thirteen poster session proposals for a national English…

In spite of calls for increased literacy instruction in secondary content classes, there appears to be little change in practice. One reason for this may be that content area literacy courses inadequately prepared teachers to teach literacy skills specific to their content area. This article describes a program that embeds content area literacy…

This handbook describes Teacher Workshop. Teacher Workshop is founded on the idea that learning to teach is a great deal like learning to write. That is, learners need to be fully engaged in the process and learn the skills along the way as they are ready for them. Also like writing, the skills of teaching are developed over time with instruction,…

The Nurturing Teacher Leadership (NTL) program offers professional development and candidate support to cohort groups of Chicago teachers who wish to pursue National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification. The 13-month program provides candidates with technical support, mentoring, financial assistance, resource materials, and…

Seven checklists were developed to provide precise feedback to students on their teaching performance during secondary science methods microteaching sessions. These checklists measure performance related to: (1) lesson plans; (2) communications skills; (3) generic teaching; (4) concept demonstration; (5) manipulative skills; (6)…

A self-efficacy quiz for teachers is provided, and guidelines are offered for using the quiz to increase an individual teacher's sense of teaching efficacy. Suggestions are offered for positively altering current beliefs about teaching and students and for addressing a sense of low personal teaching efficacy. (DB)

The Arizona Lesson Observation and Evaluation (ALOE) system of evaluating teaching is presented. ALOE was developed from Arizona adaptations of the Georgia Teacher Performance Assessment Instruments and, with G. Taylor's "Functional Elements Analysis of Teaching Skills" (FEATS), forms an integrated observation package which allows…

A follow-up to a September 1985 survey of Illinois teachers of 3- to 6-year-old handicapped children, these rating scales are designed to determine more specifically the perceived knowledge and skill needs of a random sample of teachers of young handicapped children. Information obtained from the rating scales are to be used by the Illinois State…

This process guide consists of a rating scale for use by supervisors of student teachers. The teacher sponsor is instructed to rate the student teacher's performance on a variety of teaching skills in order to provide a structured format for conferences. It is suggested that the scale be used at least three times during the student teaching…

Test specifications for the Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (TECAT) are presented in detail. These specifications are designed to help teachers prepare for the TECAT, and should also be made available to administrators and persons preparing review courses. This test focuses on reading and writing skills. In the test…

An overview of the field of adult education is presented, and the nature of adult learners and eight basic instructional modes are discussed. The focus is skills that make people better teachers and the intended audience is college professors, continuing education instructors outside the formal education setting, and students of higher education.…