While the ready-made Lego[TM] Robotics kits are popular in schools and are used by students at both primary and secondary year levels, using the Picaxe microcontroller (chip) to create simple electronic devices, including robotic devices is less popular. The latter imposes an additional challenge as a result of the need to construct the universal…

The paper outlines a practical six-hour workshop and assessment activity for students enrolled in a Graduate TESOL/Applied Linguistics program at La Trobe University, Australia. The program attracts teachers from preschool to university contexts from many different countries. The workshop draws explicit connections between in-service teachers'…

Literature on the goals, barriers, and trends in inservice education is reviewed here, and criteria for development of an inservice program as well as a checklist of possible activities are provided. Specific activities outlined are: courses; workshops; conferences; exchanges and secondments; comparative educational tours; study leave and study…

A review and bibliography of staff development in higher education in several countries is presented. Contents are as follows: Australia by Geoff Foster and Ernest Roe; Britain universities by John Nisbet and Ray McAleese; Britain polytechnics by Harriet Greenaway and Derek Mortimer; Canada by Bruce M. Shore; Denmark by John Conrad; The Federal…

Interviews Jan Turbull about her work with writing teachers in the St. George Writing Project in Australia. (HTH)

Discusses need for supportive teacher education, retraining of professional and technological personnel every ten years, additional formal training for administrators, curriculum officers and lecturers, experimental teaching methods and appropriate incentives to encourage teachers now teaching and to attract new people to the field. (RB)

This document is the result of two regional workshops (attended by representatives of 16 Asian countries) on the preparation of vocational and technical education teachers in Asia. Chapter 1 lists the objectives for the workshops, countries representated at each, and the officers for each. Chapter 2 gives an overall review of the present status of…

Methods of teaching physics and chemistry, which revolve around the inclusion of high school courses within the overall science curriculum and whose emphasis is on the latest developments in scientific research and technology, were the subject of the thirteenth annual Summer School for Senior Science Teachers. Paper themes are concerned with…

Presents a rationale for adopting a client-centered approach for foreign language teacher development programs. An inservice English-as-a-second-language teacher education workshop in Adelaide (Australia) helped participants to select and grade learning tasks. Participants then incorporated the "good" learning tasks into their own…

The outcomes of two studies reported here indicate that the teacher inservice workshops, combined with activity-based science lessons, affected students' attitudes and perceptions about electricity. Australian and U.S. studies produced different patterns and are explored and explained in the paper. (Contains 24 references.) (Author/PR)

An Australian project provided an inservice, team teaching program interspersed with professional development workshops for community-based practitioners in English as a Second Language (ESL) and Adult Literacy and Basic Education (ABLE). The group who participated included four ESL teachers working in community providers and four adult literacy…

This module is the first of five integrated professional development modules for adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) personnel. This module is in the form of a 6-hour workshop, the purpose of which is to develop the participants' competence to conduct initial assessment, placement, and referral of ALBE students. An overview consists of these…

This module is the fourth of five integrated professional development modules for adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) personnel. This module is in the form of a 6-hour workshop, the purposes of which are to develop further the practitioners' knowledge of the theoretical basis of teaching literacy in ALBE programs, to provide a supportive…

This module is the second of five integrated professional development modules for adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) personnel. This module is in the form of a 6-hour workshop, the purposes of which are to provide an experiential approach to ABLE program planning, to empower participants as curriculum developers, and to raise awareness of…

Assembled from perceptual data gathered from questionnaires, this report outlines teachers' and administrators' opinions based on their first year's experience teaching handwriting (the Beginner's Alphabet) to first grade children using a new syllabus. Nine supporting tables are included and response statistics are detailed (Appendix 1 contains…