The recent turn toward core practices and practice-based teacher education has been accompanied by a growing literature on the definitions, pedagogies to teach, and assessments of core practices. Despite these developments, the field lacks core practices performance assessments designed to be used across course sections, courses, and subjects.…

This is an era of transformation in the preparation, induction, and assessment of prospective teachers. The tension between local and state control is at the heart of the debate. States should be responsible for establishing performance standards that ensure that new teachers are well-prepared, competent, and ready to teach. This is why the…

The field of teacher preparation is falling short of its most important responsibility: ensuring that the teachers we train are ready to do the job. For more than a decade,TNTP preparation programs produced teachers who were no more or less effective than teachers from any other program-- some were great, some were poor, most were about average.…

This study examined public school partners' expectations of teacher candidates and beginning teachers and the qualities that principals consider most important when hiring new teachers. Teachers in Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia (N = 130) responded to 37 Likert-style survey questions based upon the 100 school principals' interview questions…

To paraphrase a quote by Thomas Jefferson, "there is nothing so unfair as the equal treatment of unequal children." Teachers cannot use a one-size-fits-all model of instruction to successfully reach all children. This "Focus On"--an update of our popular 2004 edition--is designed to help teachers assess and improve their own…

By 2012, all of the states in this study had started implementing new or revised teacher and leader evaluation systems. There are many and varying updates to these systems, and some of them have been made to meet conditions for a state's federal "Race to the Top" (RTT) grant. Other updates have been made to meet conditions for a state's…

By 2012, all of the states in this study had started implementing new or revised teacher and leader evaluation systems. The systems include many and varying updates. In some cases, the updates were designed to meet conditions for a state's "Race to the Top" grant. In others, the updates were made to meet conditions for a state's waiver…

This article reports on an inter-institutional project to design, develop, pilot, and evaluate a state-wide online training course for higher education adjunct faculty who are preparing to teach their first online course. We begin with a brief literature review to contextualize the stated problem the project sought to address: the need for…

This study examined instructor qualifications for teaching dual enrollment students, college-level work. This research focused on Maryland dual enrollment programs that offered both high school and college credit to high school students for each college Associate of Arts and Associate of Science transfer course taken. One significant goal of dual…

A study examined the training needs of Adult Basic Education (ABE)/English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers in Maryland. To assess the training needs of these teachers, researchers administered questionnaires to teachers and administrators throughout the state and conducted an additional informal needs assessment through on-site…

Teachers and administrators often note that preservice programs do not prepare future teachers adequately to teach reading. Several Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have addressed this problem. In 1997, the Georgia Professional Standards Review Commission began examining reading certification requirements and found that most teacher…

This report examines research on teacher certification, reviewing every published study or paper, and many unpublished dissertations, cited by prominent advocates of teacher certification. It reveals shortcomings found in the research upon which teacher certification advocates rest their claims, suggesting that the teacher certification process is…

This study was designed to examine the relationship between preservice teachers' perceived body sizes and confidence in their ability to teach. One hundred two participants completed a questionnaire that included 1) providing height and weight information, 2) completing The Teaching Anxiety Scale (TCHAS), 3) selecting body images best representing…

The author of this study used content analysis as the methodology by which to examine student evaluations of community college faculty. The study sought to answer three questions: (1) What is the nature of faculty evaluation of teaching effectiveness in the community colleges of Virginia and Maryland? (2) What is the nature of the student forms…

The state of Maryland views learning to teach as a developmental process in which there is continuous engagement with research, best practice, and expert opinion. This publication identifies 10 performance-based standards for the career-long development of teachers and teacher candidates. Learning to teach is viewed as a continuous learning cycle…