The UK Coalition Government has recently introduced a number of education policies that aim to reform initial teacher development in England. It has argued that the training of new teachers will be improved by giving greater priority to the development of "key teaching skills". This narrowly practical and overly managerial approach to…

This study seeks to explore the effectiveness of teachers' appraisal programs as perceived by teachers in primary schools in Israel and to examine teachers' appraisal effects upon their feelings of self-efficacy. More specifically, 290 teachers from 30 primary schools in Israel, where a systematic appraisal system exists, received two sorts of…

Primary and secondary school students spend hundreds more hours in each classroom than any observer ever will. But, until now, school improvement efforts have seldom sought systematic student feedback at the classroom level. One impediment has been the doubt that students can provide valid and reliable responses about the quality of the teaching…

Students with developmental disabilities live in the same communities with everyone else. It is not justifiable to then separate them when it turns up to be in educational setting. They have to learn in the same schools and classrooms with everyone else. An enabling environment that is welcoming have to created within the educational settings with…

Federal policy around supervision and evaluation has prompted state action to develop new evaluation systems to increase student achievement. Systems, such as the Framework for Educator Effectiveness implemented in Wisconsin, are tied to teacher performance as well as student achievement. This type of performance-based evaluation system relies on…

Past experiences influence how teachers identify as teachers, writers, and teachers of writing and impacts what they do in their classrooms, including their motivation and effectiveness in teaching writing. When teachers fail to identify as writers, they tend to spend less time teaching writing and may find it difficult to model a genuine passion…

This article examines standards which would define a teacher who is good enough to teach children. A good teacher should understand the development of learners. To ensure inclusive learning environments, the teacher should use understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures. The teacher should also collaborate with others to develop…

This paper is a position paper, which argues the position that critical thinking is a crucial skill, which needs to be developed in the school curriculum and that the creative arts can do this. The paper explores the states of the Arts in the present curriculum and goes on to argue that knowing how to develop critical thinking is an important…

The single most significant factor in increasing student achievement is having highly effective teachers in the classroom. In Nevada's Washoe County School District, the 58th-largest in the country, a new strategic plan--Envision WCSD 2015 Investing in Our Future--is pushing aggressive reforms in employee hiring. With 94 schools to serve, the plan…

Teachers need a deeper understanding of the texts being discussed, in particular the various textual and visual aspects of picturebooks themselves, including the images, written text and design elements, to support how readers made sense of these texts. As teachers become familiar with aspects of literary criticism, art history, visual grammar,…

The purpose of this case study was to explore with twelve community college professors what they perceived is needed to meet the varied and unique needs of their students. This research attempts to develop a fuller understanding of how professors gain teaching proficiency. The participant sample consisted of 12 faculty members who are recipients…

There is a great deal to learn from colleagues who have had critical and noteworthy contributions to athletic training education. Therefore, this journal periodically includes the Robert S. Behnke keynote addresses from recipients of the Sayers "Bud" Miller Distinguished Educator Award. In this issue, the speech from Danny T. Foster, PhD, who…

This quantitative study investigated the relationship between teacher dispositions, subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and reasons that school principals recommend non-renewal of teachers' contracts. Nearly 2,000 school principals in 13 states completed an emailed survey. In deciding whether to non-renew a teacher contract,…

This study investigated a professional development model designed to improve teachers' inquiry teaching efficacy as well as the quality of their inquiry instruction through engaging teachers in practice-teaching and reflection sessions. The programme began with a two-week summer Institute focused on both inquiry pedagogy and science content and…

Practicum experiences, a crucial component of preservice teacher preparation, help establish the foundational knowledge and skills necessary for beginning special education teachers (SETs). Preservice SETs need cooperating teachers (CTs) who support preservice SETs in proper emotional development (i.e., feeling like a teacher), who can model and…