This study examined the teacher efficacy of special education teachers of English language learners (ELLs) with disabilities by surveying 202 elementary special education teachers. Overall participant teacher efficacy scores were high. No statistically significant differences in efficacy scores were found for levels of teacher preparation, number…

Education researchers and policymakers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student achievement. In this paper, we use a rich administrative data…

The study described in this report investigated the effects of field-based reflective practice on preservice teachers' sense of self-efficacy. Subjects in the study were 24 senior elementary majors participating in a 4-week field experience. Twelve students were assigned to the experimental school and 12 were assigned to two control schools. Each…

A review of studies on early field experiences centers on John Dewey's belief that pre-practice teaching laboratory experiences should foster reflective criticism of educational purposes and instructional methods and result in more effective student teaching experiences. Current studies have indicated that early field experiences, by focusing on…

This paper discusses the manpower and materials that are required for the successful implementation of social studies courses into Nigerian elementary and secondary schools. It also reports on the effects of teacher characteristics on teacher performance and the influences of various instructional materials on teacher and student performance. A…

Learning to teach ought to be a major province of inservice rather than of preservice teacher education. A "learning to teach continuum" consists of four phases in a teacher's development. During the pretraining phase, which begins with the first childhood exposure to school, patterns and ideas of teaching are formed, and a model of teaching is…

Effective training for teachers in urban schools should begin from and be based upon an analysis of teacher work success. The major steps in the development of a success-based teacher training program (both preservice and inservice) are: (1) locate the educational settings where successful teacher practices are evident; (2) study the teachers…

A professor of educational psychology describes the goals of research in progress on the personal characteristics of expert teachers, compares classroom management techniques of expert teachers with those of beginning and student teachers, and criticizes existing teacher evaluation systems for their lack of uniform standards and experienced…

This document is a summary of the findings of an extensive review by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) of empirical research on the effectiveness of current approaches to licensing and certifying teachers. The research review focused on eight questions (and several subquestions) that are of particular interest and concern to policy and…

This review investigated the available literature on diversity and its relationship to teacher thinking. The literature review produced 36 studies, from which five categories emerged: beliefs teachers hold about student diversity and student performance; effective teaching in diverse settings; the impact of teacher experience on teacher cognition…

Discussion of research on student teaching experiences and the process of producing effective physical educators examines: origins of student teaching in teacher education, cooperating teacher/supervisor interactions with student teachers, content of teacher-student interactions, reasons for participating in the process, and ways to enhance the…

Examines student art teachers' perceptions of their progress during their first teaching experiences through a reflective writing format. Reveals that they learned about instructional strategies and student learning and needed to learn more about teaching strategies, art content, classroom management, and student learning in order to become…

This paper reports the findings of a study which aimed to elicit teachers' perceptions of pupils' challenging behaviour. Teachers were asked to indicate: which aspects of challenging behaviour concerned them; their responses to it; which strategies they found effective; what they believed to be the causes of it; how stressed they felt; and how…

Principals and teachers are becoming frustrated with conventional evaluation practices typically used to determine teacher effectiveness and, thus, tenure and promotion. This Digest explains that as new performance standards are being developed, there are reconfigured assessment designs requiring an array of reflective, analytic skills. Creation…

The California New Teacher Project (CNTP) has demonstrated that intensive support, continued training, and informative assessments of teachers in their first professional years result in better instruction for students and higher retention rates for teachers. The 37 projects of CNTP were funded on the basis of their plans to implement alternative…