In order to raise the quality of teaching and teacher education in Uruguay, a program of innovation and change was considered at a 1986 educational conference. Conference goals included identifying ways to: (1) increase opportunities to promote innovation and change; (2) search for strategies to encourage creative problem solving; (3) increase…

High quality instructional supervision can be provided when educational objectives have been stated clearly and a strong staff development program has been instituted. The success of the staff development program used in the Newport News (Virginia) Public Schools is dependent on several prerequisites: the existence of clearly established district…

A review of the research indicates that the interface between the findings from research on teaching and staff development of teachers is an important but neglected one. An improvement in teaching skills calls for an interactive or collaborative mode of professional development which is based on classroom interests and the needs of teachers, with…

Successful educational improvement efforts stem from processes and forces that are indigenous to a given setting. Efforts at problem-solving stimulate and are reinforced by a closely related phenomenon: the individual and professional growth of the persons involved. Developmental efforts in education must proceed from a substantially different…

This monograph presents educational innovative practices in India organized into categories of resource-mobilization, structural changes, curricula improvement, introduction of new instructional techniques, and teacher development. Innovations, often pragmatic adaptations of old ideas, tend to cluster in one geographical area, require strong…

The Social Studies Field Agent Training Program was a two year experiment supported by the Office of Education and the Ford Foundation. The primary goal of the program was to test the feasibility of employing specially trained social studies teachers, who were referred to as social studies field agents, to increase the rate of the diffusion of…

Public schools must play a more central role in teacher education than they do now. What is needed is an organization separate from public schools, the university, and the teachers' organizations that can act as an effective force for teacher professionalization. (Author)

School reform in the Soviet Union in the 1980's is discussed. The school entrance age has been lowered from seven to six. Vocational training has been expanded and upgraded as an integral part of public education. Also discussed are the general education curriculum, improving teaching quality, and educational decision making. (RM)

This document provides an overview and analysis of how a series of national conferences held in the fall of 2003 framed conversations around high schools and high-school-age youth This analysis explores the underlying assumptions of these frameworks and the extent to which they coalesced or diverged. The report also examines the content of the…

Behind a simple equation, 2 + 2, lies a rich yet realistic approach to enhancing teaching and learning. As this book demonstrates, the current method of job appraisal consists of sporadic classroom visits from school administrators that frequently serve to reinforce teacher isolation rather than promote professional development. In contrast, the 2…

Some schools struggle to implement comprehensive school reform, whereas others succeed. The difference usually is that the successful schools use a combination of effective change strategies. This issue lists six strategies for change that can nearly guarantee success: (1) developing an atmosphere and context conducive to change; (2) developing…

This paper describes the Professional Development Center at Fitchburg State College, one of the nine colleges of Massachusetts' system of public higher education. The Center's mission emphasizes outreach to public schools in the area. Its tenets include: principles and goals of the whole system must be described and understood before meaningful…

This paper evaluates whether or not there is a direct academic-achievement benefit from additional expenditures on education in the United States. Numerous critics have said that education is already overfunded and that it can never be funded enough to make any appreciable difference. Berliner's study of 900 school districts in Texas in the 1993…

Professional development is the cornerstone of school transformation. The first part of this two-part paper describes the professional development experiences of several hundred teachers and administrators in schools implementing New American Schools (NAS) designs and discusses the links between these professional development experiences and key…

An interview with David Berliner explores his claims that research on teacher effectiveness will only be applied practically when "connoisseurs of teaching" act as teacher coaches, helping teachers to analyze the effects of their behaviors, specify new behaviors, and assess the results. (PGD)