The California Mentor Teacher Program is one of many efforts to improve teacher supply and quality, provide professional support, and offer alternative motivators and reward systems. This paper explores teacher leadership issues offered by this program. Using data from a 1985 joint study of the mentor initiative (by California State Department of…

The Holmes Group is a national organization of some 90 research universities that addresses the low quality of teacher preparation. Its goals are to reform teacher education and teaching itself by promoting intellectually sound programs, recognizing teacher differences, revising standards, connecting education programs with schools, and improving…

"Transformational Professional Learning" is a periodically published e-newsletter designed to influence what educational leaders think, say, and do to improve teaching and learning by promoting deep understanding of important issues, the transformation of beliefs and assumptions, and a stream of powerful goal-focused actions. There are two…

To explore several categories of variables strongly associated with professional satisfaction and dissatisfaction in American middle schools, responses of 540 out of 900 targeted middle school teachers to two open-ended questions were analysed. (The two survey items were drawn from the Status of the U.S. American Middle School Teacher…

This book advances the premise that teachers, in addition to students, must be viewed as customers of the school. Teachers' jobs and work environments must therefore be redesigned for maximum professional growth and development. Unless teachers are supported in developing a quality work environment, efforts to improve schools will be marginally…

For a variety of reasons, including overemphasis on professional autonomy, many classroom teachers experience disillusionment and feelings of isolation. This paper explores teaching clinics as a way to break down barriers and foster dialogue among teachers. The Schenley High School Teacher Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a teaching…

Underlying barriers to adjunct faculty forming effective communities are time and distance; they spend little time on campus, and there is distance, physically and psychologically, from their peers. There can be no hope of challenging and changing the system without the organizing and focusing of energies. Lessons can be learned from big business.…

This study was designed to compare the psychosocial environments of different types of schools (primary, high schools, district schools, and secondary colleges). The Moos's Work Environment Scale (WES) was administered to teachers from government and non-government schools in Tasmania. The WES focused on the dimensions of involvement, work…

Without governors' support, the emerging teaching reform agenda will go nowhere. States should eschew their "deja vu" attitudes and embrace quality of education as a major determinant of state and national economic survival. The governors' action agenda includes 10 recommendations addressing teacher education and standards, work…

In 1986, a study was conducted of the level of job satisfaction among full-time faculty in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD). Questionnaires were distributed to 1,000 randomly selected full-time faculty in the nine colleges in the LACCD. A total of 439 surveys were returned, for a 43.9% response rate. Study findings included the…

This paper examines the stressors that contribute to burnout occurring among community college faculty and the methods that can be used for alleviating its development. Contributors of burnout stressors are discussed from both the societal and system levels as well as those stemming from gender, ethnicity, and length of service. In addition,…

This essay reviews quality of work life as a management technique and argues that quality-of-work-life programs, conceptualized multidimensionally, offer a unique mechanism for improving working conditions in schools and within districts. A brief analysis of major management ideologies concludes that some techniques advocated under the label of…

The call for greater diversity among college faculty and administrators is a prominent feature in the literature of higher education and especially of community colleges. For faculty members and administrators who may be the only, or the first, or even the token minority within their division, it is important to resolve what being the "only…

The promotion of employee assistance programs (EAP) in higher education is considered in 24 chapters, with an emphasis on enhancing resources and the academic environment for faculty and staff. Seven topical areas are addressed: history of EAP; characteristics of higher education; alcoholism and other risks in the academic life-style; EAP models…

This book presents an assessment of collective bargaining in education. During the 1970's, while student enrollment declined, organizations representing public school teachers grew. Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers more than doubled their membership. Teacher contracts have expanded to include areas…