Richard DuFour, a leading advocate for creating professional learning communities in schools, shares his insights on why teaching has become an "embattled profession" and the steps teachers and school leaders can take to enhance teachers' practice and their working lives. DuFour explains how recent reforms aimed at educators themselves…

In April 2013, "NEJHE" launched its "New Directions for Higher Education" series to examine emerging issues, trends and ideas that have an impact on higher education policies, programs, and practices. In this installment, DiSalvio interviews Adrianna Kezar, professor of higher education at the University of Southern California…

The forum contributors draw on their personal experiences and insights to put forth ideas about contingent faculty's relations with the profession of English studies in general. (Contains 3 notes.)

The best education no doubt comes from a student staying in one school system from elementary to high school. Some students are fortunate to have a consistent education; some are not as fortunate. Continuity in instruction, learner outcomes, emotional stability, and social relationships prevail when students live in one location as long as…

To expect an "easy life" as a professor of special education is to expect what never was nor never will be. But when the playing field is uneven for minorities, or even worse, when it is not even recognized that the playing field is uneven, there is cause for action. For example, Bonner (2004) stated that minority faculty face tremendous…

Research studies have documented a strong link between perennial high rates of beginning teacher attrition and teacher shortages that impact teaching, especially in the major urban areas of the United States. It is widely concluded that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school academic performance is a teacher shortage and the resulting…

"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…

Intrator and Kunzman argue that professional development for teachers follows an orientation similar to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs--and that this orientation needs to be reversed. Maslow posited that people must fulfill subsistence needs such as needs for food and safety before they can pursue higher needs like the need for…

While tenure-track faculty begin their careers with some sense of what they will teach, what they will earn, and how they will be promoted, lecturers are not allowed such assurances. In the early days, lecturers in the English Department at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) taught basic composition courses, four per semester unless they were…

A discussion of how teacher educators must respond to the sociological issues beyond everyday work that affect teachers' attitudes, dispositions, and socialization in the workplace covers: professional and traditional teacher styles; experienced teachers' attitudes of conservatism, presentism, or individualism; job ambiguities and conflicts;…

Disputes the reform agenda of the 1996 conference of the nation's governors in Palisades, New York that focused on high-quality academics, specifically on standards and assessment as the means for change. Believes that by building human capital and promoting teacher learning, a more significant and worthwhile change will occur in the schools. (CMK)

This document, published by WCOTP in 1986 in observance of the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, was jointly prepared by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) and adopted by a special intergovernmental…

The complexity of technology training for teachers can be partially explained in terms of three phenomena: the historical resistance of teachers to use media, the nature of teaching itself, and the life cycle of technological innovations. Factors that influence teachers' use of technology include: accessibility of hardware and software,…

Reports recent research into how English secondary teachers construct and develop notions of professionalism, noting how this is affected by changes in their working lives and recent educational reform. Teacher interviews indicated that local contexts are influential in shaping their sense of professionalism and that this is an important source of…

If we deconstruct the university--and set aside the trendy rhetoric of a multiversity--are we not actually approaching a "strativersity," a hierarchy of teaching that imposes a hierarchy of learning? In this article, the author discusses the ways in which typical contingent working conditions may undermine student learning conditions. Highlighted…