This book is intended to help catechetical leaders stay abreast of scholarship on Scriptures, students, and informed theology. The themes of its essays vary widely--from the vision of educating for the reign of God to the practicalities of how to constitute a parish committee for catechesis. The 10 essays are divided into 3 parts. Part 1,…

Part-time faculty are critical in providing a sense of the marketplace to guide curriculum improvement. If adjuncts are not given a greater role, market forces will dictate curriculum change, albeit slowly and inefficiently. (SK)

A high school principal explains her strategy for turning around a disorderly, gang-ridden middle school. Her discipline plan's success hinged on developing schoolwide expectations for behavior, developing positive consequences, compiling a list of unacceptable behaviors, and empowering teachers to administer consequences, including contacting…

Evaluates the importance of mutual trust and understanding in the workplace, and presents practices that promote the sense of ownership and the steps necessary to instill an environment in which leadership is everyone's business. (Contains 11 references.) (Author/MLF)

Teaching is a trade that hasn't yet discovered the power of self-transformation and self-rejuvenation. To become empowered, teachers must stop seeing themselves as victims of bureaucrats, citizens, and recalcitrant children. Only by restructuring their jobs from the ground up (by determining to serve children better) can teachers emerge as…

Culls the opinions of reform thinkers, school executives, and teacher union officials to provide an inside look at what teacher empowerment means for the schools. A sidebar summarizes the 1986 Carnegie report's key recommendations and union-led reform initiatives. Another sidebar provides trust-building tips. (MLH)

A teacher's identity is shaped by direct work with individual students, not by paperwork or competitive tasks. Teacher empowerment is grounded in teacher motivation, with emphasis on teacher-student relationships. Empowerment depends on relating new roles and decision-making tasks to classroom work, recognizing teachers for success with difficult…

Scientific management and hierarchical accountability tend to destroy dialogue and issue ideas as orders to be obeyed. Instructional technology packages can actually enslave teachers. The emendation or feedback loop built into all instructional systems should allow educators to alter design in the context of practice and help technologists design…

To determine if governance structures affected perceptions of teacher empowerment, 55 teachers completed the Teacher Perception Survey. Subjects were from two matched Missouri elementary schools with differing organizational structures and administrative philosophies. Unlike the traditional model, an Accelerated School model strongly influenced…

Staff quality is an important school attribute. Strong, determined leadership requires a principal's personal readiness to take issue with underperforming teachers, challenge cynicism and negative elements in the school, and recruit, retain, and develop high-quality, dedicated staff. A collaborative leadership culture emerges from empowering even…

Discusses the changing role of teacher leadership, which extends beyond the classroom, suggesting it is no longer viable for one person to act as the school-level authority and recommending a reconceptualization of teachers' professionalism which acknowledges that teachers can provide intellectual leadership in identifying and solving schoolwide…

Beginning and veteran teachers are experiencing gross professional neglect. Teachers have been passive far too long about their own professionalism. The National Education Association is currently working with seven teacher-preparation institutions to reinvent teacher education and professional development. As Columbus, Ohio's peer-review program…

Investigates teacher empowerment in high schools that had school councils over varying time periods. Participants taught in a state mandating an inclusive school governance process. A School Participant Empowerment Scale measured empowerment over six subscales: decision making, autonomy, self-efficacy, professional growth, status, and impact.…

Presents a model for enhancement of teacher empowerment and self-efficacy in which the school social worker facilitates a teacher peer-coaching program. Tested in a preliminary study in two urban schools, the model led to teachers more often seeking and giving advice and to the identification of systematic (versus child-centered) problems. (Author)

Investigated whether institutional autonomy related to faculty autonomy in Taiwan's higher education system, which has recently implemented policies to enhance institutional autonomy. Faculty surveys conditionally supported the claim that faculty members work within the constraints of regulated autonomy, where individual behaviors are delimited by…