Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, even though these proxies correlate only weakly with student performance. This paper examines the attrition and mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality using value-added measures of teacher…

Across the nation, teachers are leaving the profession, causing severe teacher shortages in some areas (Jackson, 1999). A survey of 117 school systems in North indicated that 12,610 teachers out of a total of 90,307 teachers, or 13.9% employed during the 2000-2001 school year, left the profession (Ingersoll, 2002). North Carolina middle school…

It's not every day that scientific researchers need to defend themselves against charges of destroying humanity. And yet a group of several dozen physicists associated with the Large Hadron Collider may be getting pretty good at it--and, at the same time, actively engaging in public education and debate in ways that university scientists have…

Schools and districts routinely recruit, retain, and support highly qualified teachers to ensure that students receive the best learning opportunities. However, even if one's school employs highly qualified full-time teachers, it is important to acknowledge that substitute teachers also have a significant impact on the education of students. One…

Thomas Guskey, keynote speaker at the 2008 Phi Delta Kappa Summit on High-Performing Educators, urged attendees to become good leaders so they can lead the changes in education. But he warned that forging this path would take courage, similar to the courage displayed by the student in the photo as he stood before the tanks. The summit began with a…

The purpose of this article was twofold. The first purpose was to test the validity of the Teachers' Sense of Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) in five settings--Canada, Cyprus, Korea, Singapore, and the United States. The second purpose was, by extension, to establish the importance of the teacher self-efficacy construct across diverse teaching…

When we tend to analyze the living conditions of teachers, system arrangement and identity identification can be considered a significant method for analysis. In reality, there appears a phenomenon of overlapping identification in the identity identification of teachers in China, which leads to plural selections in the identification manners of…

Foreign language teaching in many Asian-Pacific countries in recent decades has shifted toward communicative-focused instruction. However, researchers have reported a gap between policy and practice. To incorporate teachers' voices in adopting the communicative approach in the curriculum, this study explores factors that promote or hinder EFL…

Preschool teachers' job stressors have received increasing attention but have been understudied in the literature. We investigated the impacts of a classroom-based intervention, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), on teachers' perceived job stressors and confidence, as indexed by their perceptions of job control, job resources, job…

This article uses four academics' gendered and cultural responses to life in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand under the new managerialist regime. Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) requires academics to submit evidence-based portfolios every six years to categorise and rank them, with government funding assigned accordingly. When the…

At the 1986 Wyoming Conference on English, a group of graduate students and part-time and tenure-line faculty formulated a statement known as the Wyoming Resolution, a rallying cry to improve composition teachers' pay, benefits, and working conditions. Adopted by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in 1987, the Wyoming…

Teacher attrition, particularly of beginning teachers, is concerning. Extensive research has been conducted on teacher attrition and teacher characteristics; however, less research exists on teacher retention and related teacher belief systems. This study examined the beliefs of a particular subset of teachers--teachers who have stayed in the…

National and state-level policies recognize the critical role that talented teachers play in ensuring that all students learn and in building capacity for instructional excellence in schools. Teachers influence student learning more than any other factor in the school, and the dividends of effective teaching are cumulative (see "Defining the…

Reform advocates and policymakers concerned about the quality and distribution of teachers support proposals of alternative compensation for teachers in hard-to-hire subject areas, hard-to-staff schools, and with special knowledge and skills. The successful implementation of such proposals depends in large part on teacher attitudes. The current…

Our nation is squandering one of its most important resources--our best teachers--and children are paying the price. Current policy initiatives overlook the most obvious, immediate source of improved teaching effectiveness: The great teachers we already have. The top 25 percent of U.S. teachers--more than 800,000 of them--already achieve results…