This paper reports the results of the final stage of a 30 month study of knowledge use in staff-initiated inservice workshops. In earlier stages of this study, knowledge acquisition, use, and impact correlated with multiple sets of participant, workshop, school, and community characteristics. Based on those results, a refined model was developed…

Continuing training--"staff development" or "inservice education"--now seems integral to improving the quality of teaching and administration in our schools. Hard evidence of the effectiveness of staff is generally lacking. This paper offers profiles which include a short description, advantages and disadvantages, unknown elements, and costs, of…

The Ways to Improve Schools and Education (WISE) Project made an exploratory study of local school-business collaborative efforts to develop human resources and enrich the quality of education in the community. The focus of the study was on private sector voluntary efforts to help schools become more effective through staff development/inservice…

Two papers are included here, one presenting an overview of inservice education and the second presenting data on the attitudes of teachers toward inservice education in Texas. Specific concepts that have guided inservice education are focused on as well as (1) the many trends that have influenced it, (2) the objectives of the inservice programs,…

NYEC EDNet Tool is designed to help educators and practitioners gather information to improve schools or education programs through self-assessment. It is designed for people working with vulnerable youth in alternative and traditional education programs and schools. The self-assessment requires a concerted effort over a period of time and the…

Discussion of systematic faculty evaluation for performance and career development looks at government policy changes in the United Kingdom and compares two institutional programs. The City University of Hong Kong views the faculty performance plan/appraisal as its contribution to the institution; the University of Glasgow (Scotland) treats the…

Three South Carolina school districts and a university formed a partnership to train, mentor, and support 24 special education teacher leaders as they developed and practiced new leadership skills. The article describes the selection and training of teachers, reviewing the first year's activities and presenting observations from program…

An elementary school staff development program was designed to reduce disparity in educational achievement across race and sex. Researchers compared achievement test scores, attitudes, perceptions of teacher practices, and grade retention for students of teachers who did and did not complete the program. Results showed the program had few positive…

As part of a larger project aimed at promoting science and literacy for culturally and linguistically diverse elementary students, this study has two objectives: (a) to describe teachers' initial beliefs and practices about inquiry-based science and (b) to examine the impact of the professional development intervention (primarily through…

With less than 10 percent of St. Louis Public Schools' students reaching the "proficient" level in the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP), the district felt some changes needed to be made, and quickly. Accordingly, the district turned to the eMINTS (enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies; www.emints.org) program…

Recent science and teacher education reports continue to stress the need for radical changes in the way teachers are prepared to teach science to diverse learners. In response, a three-year intervention project was developed to help teachers in culturally diverse schools transform their science teaching practices using learning technologies. Many…

A professional development initiative in writing provided a context in which teachers could be researchers their own knowledge about writing, writing assessment and writing instruction. Through close attention to student writing samples, and debate in ascertaining writing levels using the English Exemplars, teachers articulated growing confidence…

Online courses, credentials, and degree programs in early childhood education have become a significant way to deliver teacher education and professional development. Online students have many choices and can access training and courses with few, if any, limitations of times and distance. Much has been written about how to design and deliver…

The research literature on educational technology has identified a number of important contextual factors that influence how technology is used in educational settings. For six years, the Education Development Center (EDC) has used a variety of methods to investigate the multiple ways in which the Intel Teach to the Future Essentials professional…

Using national and state standards to guide a math program is just a start. It still must be decided how to apply the standards in the curriculum, determine when students should learn different content, and decide which programs and textbooks will help make math come alive in the classroom. That's where this new ASCD resource comes in. This book…