The emergence of reflectivity in teacher education is discussed. Four forms of action (describing, informing, confronting, and reconstructing) are suggested to uncover the forces that inhibit and constrain teachers and teacher educators in their efforts to implement critical reflection in their curricula. (IAH)

Ultimately, student progress depends on teacher quality and motivation, the resources and support that teachers receive, and students' own efforts. Uninspired teachers should watch more innovative colleagues and accept their constructive suggestions. Nurturing a pedagogical culture of collaboration should lie at the heart of efforts to improve…

Teachers more often speak of professionalism in terms of environmental conditions than in terms of standards and dispositions. In 1989, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards devised a certification process that recognizes teachers for subject area expertise and for demonstrating what they know about students in early childhood or…

Discusses three classroom climates that are often encountered in teaching about inequality and social stratification: resistance, paralysis, and rage. Describes resistance as denying the existence or importance of inequality. Defines paralysis as classes that see little chance of overcoming inequality. Suggests that the enraged class is unable to…

Whether organized around subject matter, teaching methods, school improvement, or restructuring efforts, successful networks share common features, such as focus, variety, and opportunities for discourse and leadership. Networks can also present nagging problems concerned with quality, application, stability, overextension, ownership, expanding…

Uses contingency theory to examine workplace conditions making high school teaching nonroutine; investigate whether organic management forms arise when teachers' work becomes nonroutine; and investigate whether such management forms have potential for enhancing teacher effectiveness by promoting job-related learning. There is little evidence that…

A checklist for school boards is based on interviews with 26 school teachers who were asked what gift they would give their fellow teachers. Almost all the presents the teachers cited involved conditions that would make the teachers better professionals and their students more successful. (MLF)

Improving teachers' professional status involves identifying salient professional characteristics. The paper compares teaching with other professions. Teachers belong to a group of craft professions different from elite expert professions. Teacher education must produce skilled practitioners with a consciousness of craft to guide their work. (SM)

A teacher educator's experience as a first-grade teacher helped her understand the desperation that is driving good teachers into other professions. She experienced autocratic scheduling requirements, humiliating permission and attendance verification procedures for inservice training, constant daily interruptions, inflexible custodial rules, and…

Study investigated the impact of background variables on dimensions of burnout and stress for elementary, intermediate, secondary, and university educators. The Teacher Stress Survey indicated gender, age, and student type were most salient. Their influence varied with teaching level and specific burnout factors. Organizational administration…

A Phi Delta Kappa survey during 1988-89 asked principals to rate the effectiveness of nine educational reform measures. Principals believed teachers reacted most positively to improved working conditions, more school autonomy, and restrictions on extracurricular activities for nonachieving students. Principals also believed that improving…

Using Hirschman's conception of exit (turnover) and voice (militancy) as employee responses to objectionable working conditions, this article examines the degree to which teacher job satisfaction and stress symptomology and two hypothesized antecedents (role conflict and ambiguity) are likely to have the same effect on voicing and exiting…

Explores the reasons why it appears that there is no one best method for teaching language, focusing on different teaching contexts, the validity of various methods, and the notion of good and bad methods and teachers' sense of plausibility. (Author/CB)

Reports findings of two surveys of a total of 657 Polish secondary teachers. Examines degree of job satisfaction and its relationship to teaching conditions, teacher role, and educational environment. Discusses the effect of a 60 percent teacher pay raise that was granted between the 2 surveys. (SV)

Examines the homophobic harassment of lesbian teachers working in government high schools in Sydney (Australia). The experiences of six lesbian teachers show that harassment based on sexual orientation is often an invisible issue in schools, as is homosexuality in general. Recommendations are made for teaching about homosexual tolerance. (SLD)