Facing a teacher shortage in math, science, and language arts secondary courses, a suburban, unified, K-12 district partnered with a university in the southwest to create a program for alternatively certified teachers. This specialized program permitted candidates to teach with an intern certificate while completing university coursework leading…

Background: Institutional theorists suggest environmental stakeholders in the "organizational field" have a symbiotic relationship with governing agencies, leading to institutional isomorphism. Hence state policy makers copy the work of their colleagues across states to create a sense of legitimacy, certainty, and professionalization…

Soon after the author began her first year as a Teach for America (TFA) corps member, she realized how underprepared she felt teaching first grade. Although she grew as an educator over time and still committed to working in education, it was an uphill battle. And, like most other TFA corps members, she left teaching within the first three years.…

Induction support for new teachers is widespread, particularly in the form of mentoring, but research evidence of effectiveness is limited. The majority of existing research has focused on the impact of induction on teacher retention. Of greater interest is the potential impact on student achievement, and on which forms of support are the most…

Little research has been done on the choices of mentors when they are offered a comprehensive range of roles. The mentors in this study were in their first attempt as mentors and did not have an assigned "role". They were involved in a mentoring course that sought to facilitate the placement of in-service teachers and school-institute…

While resources are abundant for helping the mentor and the new teacher, very little has been written to guide the leaders of teacher and mentor development. This book provides an effective, proven model for developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining an induction and mentoring program that results in highly qualified teachers. A…

Alternately certified teachers (ACTs) are teachers who receive teacher training in an accelerated program provided by alternate certification programs (ACPs). Induction/mentoring programs are provided to ACTs as a source of additional training. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine ACTs' perceptions of their effectiveness as…

The Louisiana Board of Regents is currently outpacing the nation in its ability to inform the public about the effectiveness of redesigned teacher preparation programs in preparing new teachers to teach grades 4-9 students in the areas of mathematics, science, social studies, reading, and language arts. Through the use of Louisiana's Value-Added…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) sent a research team to Jackson State University (JSU) on October 13-14, 2008 to conduct interviews with individuals who play important roles in the university's teacher preparation program (see Appendix A). These interviews, along with additional documentation provided by JSU and identified by the AED…

Teacher quality is the single most important lever schools have for raising student achievement. A substantial body of research indicates that new teachers are less able than their more experienced colleagues to help students fulfill their academic potential. Yet in many school districts--particularly those in urban settings--as many as half of…

This article investigates the hidden curriculum of Ontario's New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP). The study involved interviews with 47 teacher educators from eight faculties of education. Responses revealed concerns about (a) who chooses the mentors, (b) the probationary status of new teachers, and (c) the evaluation of new teachers' competence.…

For this study the researchers used data from the 2006 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions survey to investigate the possible relationship between mentoring and intentionality with respect to beginning teachers' intentions to remain in the profession. The sample consists of 8838 teachers who were mentored during their first two years of…

The need for teacher retention has prompted numerous American states to provide programs for training mentors. The goal of mentor training is to offer a support mechanism that will retain novice teachers and assist them in developing their teaching skills. Such a program is the Texas Beginning Educator Support System (TxBESS) which has supported…

Teacher compensation schemes are often criticized for lacking a performance-based component. Proponents of merit pay argue that linking teacher salaries to student achievement will incentivize teachers to focus on raising student achievement and stimulate innovation across the school system as a whole. In this paper, we utilize a policy experiment…

Australia is a multicultural country. In the ten years to November 2007, there were 647,000 migrants who entered Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Of these migrants 76% were born in countries other than those identified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2008) as main English speaking countries (the United Kingdom, The…