British Columbia's (BC) public education system has a critical teacher shortage. While initial recruitment is an important part of a workforce strategy, it is essential to ensure teachers have the working conditions, resources and support they need for a successful start and lasting career in public education. The first five years after initial…

For many years people have discussed the research-to-practice gap in education. Recently, increased attention has been devoted to creating opportunities for practitioners and researchers to engage in highly collaborative partnerships from design to implementation to dissemination (e.g., Institute for Education Sciences, 2016). In this article, we…

Analyzes the stories of three teachers/teacher teams who participated in a grant program designed to empower teachers to integrate technology in the classroom. Instead of experiencing empowerment, the teachers/teams experienced alienation. Two sources of alienation were: resources obtained by teachers through grant acquisition disrupted the…

School-based management is only one way to restructure decision making and planning to create a collaborative and collegial ambience. Schools should not forsake the strong possibilities for improvement through applying effective schools research in exchange for pursuing uncertain goals associated with recent teacher empowerment and self-governance…

Three policy strategies interpreted as intended to empower teachers within the new policy context of school autonomy were studied. Teacher services in Kentucky's school councils seemed to have little effect on empowering teachers since the researchers found in two studies involving 168 and 318 Kentucky teachers that teachers were not even…

Investigates the relationship among principal leadership power; teacher empowerment; teacher compliance; and conflict within self, with peers, and with the principal, based on a survey of 250 teachers. Factor analysis and regression analysis revealed a strong association for expert power and referent power with each conflict dimension and teacher…

Administrators can help teachers avoid burnout by recognizing teaching efforts, advising without prescribing solutions, and treating all faculty in a collegial manner. Career ladders and testing have negatively affected teacher morale, whereas teacher empowerment through participative decision-making produces better results. (MLH)

A technical assistance project in a rural Virginia school district included the goal of building professional learning communities among the district's teachers. Three instruments that measure various elements of a learning community culture were scheduled to be administered to teachers at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the 4-year project.…

Explores the benefits of teacher leadership as well as the barriers to and opportunities for making teacher leadership work in practice. Concludes that teacher leadership could have beneficial effects on school improvement, but that the right conditions need to be in place. (Contains 79 references.) (MLF)

This paper shows that policymakers and researchers have changed their views about school improvement and the role of teachers in the process, suggesting that educational reform initiatives challenge classroom teachers to make sense of new policies, ideas, programs, and their own work. It examines calls for reform, highlighting: the 1957 launch of…

Total Quality Management is a team approach that challenges administrators to rethink their traditional decision-making and problem-solving strategies. This article describes the use of pilot programs (Key Communicators Network, School Leadership Teams, and a Number "One"derful Idea program) to help teachers feel part of a professional…

This study examined participants' beliefs and practices regarding power with personal demographic variables (gender, age, degree level, and years of experience) and school-related variables (level of school employed, type of school community, and overall citizenship) on power beliefs and practices. A principal component analysis of 668 survey…

During the 1990s, Virginia implemented statewide Standards of Learning, but several school districts did not have the capacity to meet these new content and performance standards. In 1996, a "high-need" rural Virginia school district was selected as a development site where elements of a technical assistance system to improve student…

This paper uses teachers' voices to explore transformation processes in teachers as a result of participation in an innovative school-based Master's degree program at the Institute for Educational Transformation. The program is built around a set of beliefs and principles that enunciate a philosophy of teaching and learning emphasizing work within…

George Mason University, Virginia, prepares teachers through a professional development school model, which empowers teachers to assume leadership roles as clinical faculty and site coordinators. Classroom teachers and the former Director of Teacher Education describe the effects of teachers' experiences as teacher educators on their roles within…