Teacher attrition has become a very serious problem in the United States in recent years. Studies have shown that many talented, new teachers are leaving the profession early in their careers due to feelings of isolation. In response to the alarming turnover rate, school districts have adopted mentoring programs which have been successful at…

Current recommendations for achieving high-quality professional development for teachers include the creation of a professional learning community. Key to the success of this approach, however, is the role of the peer mentor or coach. This study examined the experiences and perceptions of 31 professional development coaches in order to highlight…

The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, we argue that the rationalistic assumptions on which dominant conceptions of the coaching process rest are rather unrealistic. We therefore hold that they have relatively limited potential either for a theoretical understanding of coaching or for guiding practitioners. Second, we tentatively offer the…

Corporate culture is a complex phenomenon in foreign companies located in the People's Republic of China. For the management team of an international enterprise, it is a challenging task to manage cultural differences. Education and training provided to local managers might be one of the important solutions. Therefore, this study explores the…

This study examined the influence of mentor's status (supervisor vs. non-supervisor) and gender similarity (homogeneous vs. diversified) of mentor-protege dyads on protege's perception of mentoring functions and outcomes. We collected and analyzed data from 217 mentor-protege dyads comprised of working professionals from a variety of industries.…

The current investigation was designed to examine faculty perceptions and practices of mentoring in the faculty-TA (teaching assistant) relationship. A survey of faculty members at a large Midwestern research institution revealed that most faculty members considered themselves to be, or wished to be, mentors to their teaching assistants. The…

This article reviews the emerging literature on developmental relationships and proposes a typology of relationships. Developmental relationships are defined as either formal or informal relationships where an individual takes an active interest in and initiates actions to advance the development of another. The authors focus on five dimensions of…

Create a school environment that ensures improvement ideas are more likely to succeed by using the guidelines and strategies from this book. After the authors present the foundational principles of group decision-making in a collaborative school, they explain the functions that are key to a dynamic school that embraces change and improvement: (1)…

A community rehabilitation program (CRP) that focuses on employment services for people who are deaf or hard of hearing can best provide a full range of customized services by working collaboratively with other local agencies. Pooling resources, whether financial or staffing, is an efficient way for collaborative agencies to assist both employers…

Three leadership styles are frequently discussed in the literature today: transactional, transformational, and most recently--transcendental. Managers may be able to put transactional, transformational, and transcendental leadership style theories into practice without inventing a new set of processes and procedures to achieve individual follower…

"Real inclusion" of kinds with special needs occurs everywhere, inside the classroom as well as outside. This is a fairly basic principle, however, it is not always easy to achieve. In this article, the author describes how her family have had to "fight" for inclusive education and shares some amazing moments of inclusion with…

This article will draw on an investigation of teachers' research in a small-scale project involving 19 schools in the North West region of England. The teachers engaged in the research were funded by a government initiative, the Best Practice Research Scholarships Programme, and were mentored and tutored by university staff. The sample is very…

This article presents a reflexive look at a year-long mentoring experience between a university researcher and two third-grade teachers in a lower socioeconomic school. The challenges and rewards of mentoring the teachers in areas of their choice--writing workshop, constructivism, interactive learning methods, and management of cooperative…

The advent of user-friendly email programs and web browsers created possibilities for widespread use of e-mentoring programs. In this review of the research, we presented the history of e-mentoring programs and defined e-mentoring and structured e-mentoring programs, focusing on large-scale e-mentoring programs that addressed issues of social…

Beginning teachers face enormous challenges in their first year of teaching. High attrition rates of teachers within the first five years attest to the difficulties inherent in commencing professional life as a teacher. This paper describes the design of a Web site developed to overcome many of the problems of professional isolation encountered by…