Describes a professional-development project designed to establish a community of learners among high school teachers. Diverse English and history teachers met twice monthly for two-and-a-half years to read and discuss fiction and history, develop an interdisciplinary humanities curriculum, and videotape and view classroom instruction. Teachers at…

This volume in the Language Teacher Research Series (Thomas S. C. Farrell, series editor) presents research conducted by language teachers at all levels, from high school English teachers to English language teacher educators, reflecting on their practices. The countries represented in this book are Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,…

This collection focuses on a particular kind of teacher development, called "guiding teacher learning" or "guided practice" to distinguish it from teachers' independent learning in and from teaching. The papers grew out of a seminar for doctoral students interested in developing their practice as teacher educators and…

This paper draws on data from a larger case study of teacher development to identify what knowledge teachers value most highly in their professional development. The study found that teachers appraise the sources of knowledge available to them through formal, informal, and personal means according to three main criteria: relevance, capacity for…

Teachers progress through stages of professional development chronologically and sequentially. To provide continuous professional development, these stages should be identified and programs effective for each stage offered. The pre-education student needs introductory and experiential programing. This presents an opportunity for assessing the…

This book demonstrates how teachers and administrators can work collaboratively on maintaining continual growth, focusing on the Life Cycle of the Career Teacher Model, which crosses the continuum of practice from preservice preparation through professional development. Case studies illustrate the Reflection-Renewal-Growth Cycle Model in action.…

This paper describes the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in secondary chemistry and physics preservice teachers. Teacher beliefs are intricately tied to how they make decisions for implementing instructional strategies, and those beliefs aid in the development of pedagogical content knowledge. A model for pedagogical content…

Reports a study that examined eight Canadian elementary schools that were implementing cooperative learning, describing the context and design of the cooperative learning project, identifying nine common concerns of elementary teachers beginning to implement cooperative learning, offering suggestions to staff developers for supporting teachers,…

Discusses experiences of U.S. and British psychology professors who exchanged teaching duties. Reports perceptions of differences between departments. Examines views concerning students, approaches to teaching, and faculty issues. Concludes that upper level U.S. undergraduates could benefit from British teaching methods. Suggests the British…

This paper describes a zero budget alternative to state-funded induction programs in Texas: the Beginning Teacher Academy (BTA). BTA culminates the third phase of a three-phase (initiation, implementation, induction) professional development model. (IAH)

This study was prompted by the current availability of newly designed mathematics curriculum materials for elementary teachers. Seeking to understand the role that reform-oriented curricula might play in supporting teacher learning, we studied the ways in which 8 teachers in the same school used one such curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data,…

This article first offers an overview of policy contexts in the four countries of the UK. Second, it reviews recent research into perspectives on special educational needs and inclusion in the preschool years. Third, the rationale and research design of a study to investigate preschool educators' perspectives on these issues are outlined. Five key…

The purpose of this study was to develop methodologies to support experienced teachers in taking on the role of participant researchers and engaging in collaborative inquiry through action research projects about their teaching practices. Although the structures designed were not content-specific, the teachers in the study were using the LOGO…

For a community college business communication teacher, a whole new world has opened in her field and in her city, a city which has changed from a major industrial economy to a service economy. The changing environments require adjustments for class size and location (to retrain laid-off mature workers), in types of examples and vocabulary…

Teachers attending a 5-week in-service retraining course completed a survey asking them to rate their current competencies and training needs in 24 variables (N = 210). Intuitively, teacher competencies and their perceived needs of retraining should be negatively correlated. However, the correlations between teacher competencies and perceived…