This study focused on the impact of a new observation tool for principals to utilize and the effects it has on improving teachers' instruction and influencing best practices. The action research project explored the impact and influence that a well-developed observation tool could possess to help address areas of need; essentially, focusing on how…

In this study, a two-dimensional model of mentor teacher roles in mentoring dialogues, entitled MERID, is explored empirically. Data regarding five aspects of mentoring dialogues were collected, using a sample of 20 transcriptions of mentoring dialogues, in which 112 topics were discussed and 440 mentor teacher utterances emerged. Correlations…

This study investigated the strategies for enhancing quality assurance in business teacher education programme in Nigerian universities. Two research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. This study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised 129 Business Education lecturers in state and federal…

This paper presents detailed qualitative evidence from a case study of teachers in five Chinese schools in one city. It explicitly seeks to show how developments in government policy towards education have altered the management of teacher labour inside schools as well as the teacher labour process as expressed by the teachers themselves in…

Like high-stakes student assessment, high-stakes teacher evaluation threatens to be an occasional event that is disconnected from day-to-day teaching and learning, producing results that do not help teachers improve their performance and placing teachers in a passive role as recipients of external judgment. For several years, the authors have…

This article reports a self-study that analyzes my developing pedagogy as a beginning teacher educator and supervisor of practicum field placements. The data consist of my journal entries describing experiences teaching and supervising a group of teacher candidates both at the university and in their host schools. Qualitative techniques of content…

This case study will investigate teachers' and administrators' perceptions of the relationship between mini observations and teacher performance to understand what effect, if any, a system of mini observations has on teacher performance, and if mini observations influences a teacher's pedagogical practice differently than a…

Video analysis affords the observer the opportunity to capture and analyze videos of teaching practices, so that the observer can review, analyze, and synthesize specific examples of teaching in authentic classroom settings. The student teaching experience is the prime opportunity during the personnel preparation program in which student teachers…

The Department of Education is moving to change accountability for teacher preparation institutions to include surveys of the graduates and their supervising principal following paid employment. This study describes one of a number of quantitative studies that examine the validity and usefulness of such follow-up surveys. Using multiple years of…

This research explores six language teacher educators' professional experiences in Hong Kong. Drawing on the data from their narrative frames, the study identified some distinct roles in the participants' professional lives, including teacher, supervisor, learner, researcher, scholar, and change agent. While some of the roles were satisfying and…

Classroom observation is a crucial aspect of any system of teacher evaluation. No matter how skilled a teacher is in other aspects of teaching--such as careful planning, working well with colleagues, and communicating with parents--if classroom practice is deficient, that individual cannot be considered a good teacher. Classroom observations can…

As many states and districts rethink teacher supervision and evaluation, the team at the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has analyzed thousands of lesson videotapes and studied the shortcomings of current practices. The tentative conclusion: Teachers should be evaluated on three…

The following vignette relates Becky Overholt's experience during a formal observation by her principal. At the time, Becky had a master's degree in curriculum, was a sixth-grade language arts teacher, and had 20 years of teaching experience. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Postgraduate supervision does not only require academic and research skills from the supervisors--they may also assume a variety of roles to support the postgraduate student from novice to experienced researcher. The role of supervisors in the supervisory process, as well as the views of a purposeful selection of lecturers on the role is the focus…

As nationwide school enrollments are projected to increase slowly over the next decade, it is predicted that there will be a greater increase among students identified for special education services. As a result, the employment of paraprofessionals who aid these students is expected to grow by ten percent between 2008 and 2018 (Bureau of Labor…