The practice of teaching a foreign language in primary schools in Italy was first officially provided for by a decree in 1985, but it was only in 1991 that the figure of the Foreign Language (FL) teacher was actually defined. The issue at that stage was how to select and train the prospective L2 teachers, and so in-service courses were organised…

Over the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known: teachers make the greatest difference to student achievement. With new statistical and analytical methods used by a wide range of researchers, evidence has been mounting that teacher quality can account for a large share of variance in student test…

The paper reports on the Montana Education Stakeholders Conference for National Board Certification (Helena, Montana, May 5, 1995), which met to discuss the impact of National Board Certification on Montana education. The content of the meeting is outlined, including summaries of presentations on the National Board for Professional Teaching…

Relates the experience of a college professor who spent two months as a student teacher in an eighth-grade language arts classroom in an urban public school. Discusses middle school teaching verses college teaching, coming to know the students, discipline, student testing, accountability, teaching writing, the failure of teacher-training programs,…