Reviews the strategies and flaws involved in schools of education providing "teacher warranties." Describes a more productive model for ensuring teacher quality through the development of a symbiotic relationship between professional educational training schools, their communities, and public schools. (MD)

At the Northview Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas, the position of Assisting Teacher was developed to help teachers handle their work load. The position is filled by an experienced teacher who teaches half time and assists at the building level, with individual teachers, and in professional growth and development the rest of the time.…

Teachers at a Calgery, Alberta, high school are pooling their talents and expertise within peer support groups to aid one another's professional growth. Evaluation of the program's pilot year indicated enthusiasm for collegial support groups. (MLF)

Offers a supervision plan designed to help identify teaching deficiencies, assist in planning and managing improvement, and create situations promoting dialogue beween principals and teachers. The plan involves yearly goal setting, pre- and postobservation conferences, and an informal observation process. (MLH)

Presents report summaries of the regional convocations of the Physics Teaching Resource Agent Group. Includes notes from the Northeast, North Central, Mid-Atlantic, Northwest, South Central, Southeast, and Western regions. Provides an overview of common problems and concerns and highlights successes and suggestions. (ML)

The Report of the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession is discussed with emphasis on the proposal to create a national professional standards board, so that board certification examinations would be administered by the profession. (MT)

Describes the experiences of an elementary school teacher as she researches a topic and simultaneously begins to understand her own learning processes. (SRT)

Tips to help geography educators successfully use slides with their lectures are provided. They include such suggestions as know your equipment, change slides often, consider the psychophysics of the viewer, don't take pictures from a moving car, show only one thing at a time, and never be arty. (RM)

Defines mastery teaching; discusses two of its basic principles, indicating how they can be used to provide answers to the major criticisms of the approach; and examines the distinctive features of several applications of the mastery teaching model. (FL)

Describes the regular and voluntary meetings of a group of teachers. Touches on the meeting format, the support function of the group, and the kinds of issues discussed in the meetings. (HTH)

Article presented a model designed to facilitate teacher self-improvement and followed it through the research, development and implementation stages. (Author/RK)

In recent years, different researchers and research agencies, teacher associations, national education organizations, and the U.S. Department of Education have published lists of the characteristics of "effective professional development." This study analyzed 13 of the better known of these lists to determine if they were derived through similar…

School districts use a variety of professional development initiatives, many of them successfully. However, many teachers either endure the initiatives and return to their old ways after the initiatives are over, or they close their doors and ignore them altogether. Consequently, sustaining or growing the results of these initiatives is…

This study investigated whether National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)-certified teachers in Tennessee were exceptionally effective in bringing about objectively measured student achievement gains. Tennessee has over 40 NBPTS-certified teachers, 16 of whom teach in grades 3-8 and have value-added teacher reports in the state…

This digest in Spanish examines peer review, focusing on how these types of reviews can improve teacher competence. Peer review is often linked to peer assistance, which helps new and veteran teachers improve their knowledge and skills. In peer-review programs, consulting teachers conduct formal evaluations and recommend whether the participating…