This digest examines considerations and strategies for selecting and retaining teacher mentors, suggesting that the degree to which mentors are meaningfully engaged in the mentoring process may have a significant impact on a program's success. Strategies for recruiting mentors range from opportunistic appointment to promoting self-nomination to…

Teacher mentoring programs have increased dramatically since the early 1980s as a vehicle to support and retain novice teachers. However, researchers and facilitators of mentoring programs are recognizing that mentors also derive substantial benefits from the mentoring experience. This digest examines research on how mentoring contributes to the…

Small schools can provide an environment well suited to new and improved forms and models of teacher professional development. A compact faculty size can support close interpersonal relationships, resulting in greater teacher collaboration on interdisciplinary units and personalized teaching plans for all students. Thus, the necessity and…

The generally accepted concept of inclusion is that students with disabilities attend classes with their general education peers with direct support from special educators. This digest, written in Spanish, discusses the rationale for inclusion in middle schools, explores recent research on inclusion, and discusses barriers to implementation. It…

New U.S. teachers are challenged to educate diverse learners in an increasingly complex knowledge-based, technology-oriented society. Often, new teachers receive little support from colleagues or professional development. Many low-wealth urban districts with acute shortages are turning toward beginning teacher induction programs to keep new…

This digest discusses the use of faculty mentoring programs to empower faculty and ultimately benefit the institution and improve the quality of higher education. It refers to the literature on mentoring in terms of conceptual frameworks, mentoring arenas, and roles and functions of mentors and proteges. It briefly addresses the following aspects…

This report discusses the use of faculty mentoring programs to empower faculty and ultimately benefit the institution and improve the quality of higher education. It synthesizes the literature on mentoring in terms of conceptual frameworks, mentoring arenas, and roles and functions of mentors and proteges. The first section provides a general…

The generally accepted concept of inclusion is that students with disabilities attend classes with their general education peers with direct support from special educators. This digest discusses the rationale for inclusion in middle schools, explores recent research on inclusion, and discusses barriers to implementation. The digest notes that the…

This digest discusses strategies for providing students with disabilities with access to the general education curriculum. It begins by presenting educational principles that need to be accepted to ensure successful student access, including: (1) responsibility for learning outcomes of special education students should be equally shared by the…

This report reviews the research and literature on the improvement of college teaching through use of a model that stresses a supportive teaching culture and helps motivate individual faculty members to improve their teaching by utilizing a variety of sources of informative feedback. The sources include: colleagues and consultants, department…

High Schools That Work (HSTW) sites have used a variety of specific approaches to implement a challenging curriculum, provide a systematic program of sustained guidance, and enable academic and career and technical education (CTE) teachers to work together in planning and delivering integrated instruction. The HSTW-recommended curriculum calls for…

This Digest explores facets of collaboration between general and special education teachers that are different from earlier models. Inclusion of students with disabilities into the same class has brought about teams of general education and special education teachers working collaboratively or cooperatively to combine their professional knowledge,…

An evidence-based connection between adult educator professional development (PD) and learner outcomes is difficult to document, yet there is an intuitive assumption that professional development is linked to better teaching and learning outcomes. The field appears to be shifting away from one-shot PD to practitioner engagement in sustained,…

This document is comprised of three papers by various authors, summarizing three different models of programs that successfully promote teacher quality that were introduced at the National Conference on Teacher Quality in January 2000, hosted by the U.S. Department of Education. The first program described, the Pathways to Teaching Program of…

New approaches to career and technical education (CTE) create new roles for career educators, including providing career awareness, counseling, guidance, and self-education. Career educators must understand and reflect upon career development theories; teaching and learning strategies; school-to-work practices; school/business linkages; and…