Two papers concerning staff development for small/rural community colleges are presented. In the first, practices at small/rural colleges are contrasted with those at larger and more urban colleges. It is noted that (1) small colleges try to keep pace with institutional growth and development needs mostly in the area of curriculum, disregarding…

A program promoting international education in South Dakota's rural elementary schools has provided staff development opportunities and assistance in curriculum modification based on information about the status of international education in the schools and student knowledge of the world. The program succeeds where key teachers and administrators…

One small, rural high school used cooperative professional development (CPD) as a means of group investigation to promote school renewal. CPD involves teaching, identifying, studying, and reporting on an issue of importance to teachers and their school. This paper describes how the school implemented and used CPD, examining lessons learned.…

Examined the Prairie Teachers Project, a program of support for new teachers in eight rural schools, focusing on why teachers remained or left. Teachers who remained tended to have lived in and feel committed to small communities. Rural schools likely to retain new teachers had ongoing programs of professional development, supportive colleagues…

The purpose of this paper is to report on the professional development model of Teacher Institute for Curriculum Knowledge about Integration of Technology (TICKIT). This paper will situate the TICKIT model with past findings from professional development research, and provide researchers and practitioners facilitating future programs advice based…

A strong international dimension has always been and is increasingly becoming an essential ingredient of the university. This article investigates the state of and prospects for internationalisation of an extremely peripheral and historically marginalised South African university. Questionnaires and semistructured interviews with academic and…

This document summarizes a study examining perceptions of supervision by teachers in small, isolated Alaskan schools. The study was conducted to provide information for improving rural teacher supervision, for assisting teacher development, and for improving teacher-supervisor relationships. The study, based on a mail survey that gathered 156…

This study examined the incentives and obstacles to instructional improvement perceived by 27 rural elementary teachers who participated in a cooperative school district/university language arts staff development project. Participants were almost all female, and averaged 42 years of age and 12 years of teaching experience. Most had lived in the…

This study examines the effects of changes made by a small rural school division in Manitoba (Canada) to its professional development model in response to requirements for new curricula and provincial standards tests. The study looks at the effects that sharing of local expertise, the restructuring of the traditional professional development…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and the efficacy of regional special education programs. Focus groups were conducted in an independent school district and two special education cooperatives. Focus groups were conducted with general education teachers, special education teachers, principals, paraprofessionals,…

Little information exists to provide an accurate portrait of education in small rural schools, including staff development practices and needs in such schools. The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory conducted a review of literature and a survey of rural educators in the Southwest concerning staff development in their schools. The survey…

The articles describes the efforts of seven rural systems in northeast Alabama to respond in a cooperative manner to new initiatives from the State Department of Education to improve their inservice/staff development programs. The University of Alabama, primarily through its Gadsden Center, provided professional support and coordinating…

Australia has long been of interest for its attention to educational equity by the relative quality of its state based provision of schooling in a country with a similar landmass to the 48 mainland states of the USA but a population of only 18 million. The six states and two territories had organised centralised systems of schooling which managed…

This document provides a research study of a 10-year elementary school teacher science staff development project, "The Science in Rural California Teacher Enhancement Project." The study investigated the long term effects on teacher participants 3 to 5 years after project contact: beliefs about science, confidence levels about teaching…

Common strategies to assist at-risk students are remediation and special programs, but these strategies are difficult to accomplish in small rural schools. A more effective strategy for rural school districts may be to improve curriculum and teacher instructional skills, but curriculum development is labor intensive. This paper examines a…