In 1960, Shirley Engle identified the primary purposes or "heart of social studies instruction" as educating citizens living in a democracy and teaching them the process of decision making based on values formulation through genuine problem solving. Engle's recommendations for helping students to confront and comprehend today's complex issues…

This article examines the effects of school organizational and educational climate, and a teacher's sense of efficacy, on general education teachers' attitudes toward inclusion of students with special needs. The sample included 139 teachers from 17 elementary schools in the Northern District of Israel. The results of Pearson correlation and…

This study looked at teachers in their 2nd-4th years of teaching to compare their professional activities with what current studies indicate are teacher leadership behaviors and characteristics. The study sought to determine whether the University of Southern California's teacher preparation program taught the professional skills that elementary…

This paper reports on a longitudinal case study of an elementary teacher during her transition from preservice to inservice teaching. Bandura's (1995) concept of self-efficacy belief is used as a framework for presenting the findings of the study. The subject's experiences in science teaching provided information about her competency as a teacher,…

The degree to which teachers' sense of efficacy and other hypothesized influences on commitment to teaching predicts responses to the question of whether they would enter teaching again was studied for 170 elementary school teachers. General and personal efficacy were the two strongest predictors of commitment to teaching. (SLD)

The issue of teachers' efficacy is of importance as teacher preparation programs throughout the world attempt to address shortages of qualified, competent teachers. In the field of science education, monitoring and reacting to the issue of efficacy seems to be one way in which teacher preparation programs are evaluating the structure of programs.…

This study describes survey responses of 103 bilingual elementary school teachers along the southmost borderlands of Texas and Mexico. The teachers responded to items regarding their (1) beliefs about and utilization of technology when incorporating cultural components, (2) general attitudes toward technology and self-efficacy towards utilizing…

This study examined the relationship between leader power and the amount of conflict with teachers' perceptions of their empowerment. Drawing from the literature, the study identified underlying dimensions of empowerment as teachers' involvement in decision making, and teacher impact, status, autonomy, opportunities for professional development,…

In the spirit of educational reform, the purpose of this paper is to review the literature and present six empirically derived dimensions underlying the construct of teacher empowerment. The dimensions were obtained from a study conducted on school empowerment in nine school districts across the country from 1989 to 1992. Empowerment has been…

Understanding teachers' purposes for having their students use the World Wide Web may help explain why the Internet has not currently reached its full potential as a learning tool in schools. This study explores the various types of purposes teachers have for using the Internet with their students and examines the role of teachers' confidence…

This study evaluated the impact of length of training in the Life Skills Training (LST) program on teachers' perception of the work climate and sense of self-efficacy, identifying process components affecting those outcomes. The LST program is a psychoeducational model of group intervention designed to improve the well-being of children and…

Field experiences in a teacher certification program for elementary science, math, and technology were evaluated for their effectiveness in improving participants' cognitive, affective, and psychomotor ability. Surveys and interviews indicated participants felt little connection between the content coursework and educational methods course. They…

Finds that extended practicum experiences in elementary science teaching positively increases preservice science elementary teachers' (n=64) personal science-teaching-efficacy beliefs. Contains 17 references. (WRM)

In this article, we explore some of the experiences of student teachers, classroom teachers, science teacher educators, and children in co-teaching contexts in primary schools. The model of co-teaching adopted enabled student teachers (science specialist), classroom teachers, and university tutors to share expertise and work as equals, without…

This study investigated components of preservice training likely to influence the development of expertise in teaching. The study examined whether perceived self-efficacy, cognitive skills for teaching, basic teaching skills, beginning training teacher performance, knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of teaching, teacher work environment, and…