In 2007, the state of Mississippi conducted a web-based survey of all school-based licensed educators in which they were asked to share their perceptions of the state of teacher working conditions in Mississippi. This report of the Mississippi Teacher Working Conditions Survey, Project CLEAR Voice (Cultivate Learning Environments to Accelerate…

This study examined the effects of teacher characteristics, school conditions, teacher efficacy, external support, and remuneration on music educators' risk for attrition and migration. Data from the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey--a comprehensive, nationally representative survey of teachers, principals, and schools conducted by the…

The purpose of the forum was to establish an agenda for action, supporting steps that individuals, institutions, organizations, and governments can take together in working to reform and revitalize science and technology education at all levels. This report contains the comments of some 50 speakers and attempts to capture the essence of the wide…

Many of the schools in regional and inland areas of Australia find it difficult to attract and maintain quality and experienced staff, as do some of the more difficult to teach in schools in urban areas. To help overcome these problems Tasmania has instituted a transfer policy for state school teachers, as had other Australian state systems.…

Paradoxically, although major forces in society are pushing for improvement in the American educational system, many teachers experience job overload, isolation, and increasing despair. This book is the first in a trilogy designed to help teachers and principals fight for fundamentally positive changes that will benefit themselves and their…

Nearly three-fourths of public school teachers are women, yet the majority of the 132 people who sat on the 6 major school reform panels of the 80s were non-teachers and men. Women in education are, as President Bush would have said, "out of the loop," because positions of power belong to men. This book examines the status of K-12 teaching in the…

Education and teaching have changed in significant ways over the last decade. Since the late 1980s the Commonwealth of Australia has encouraged the development of "multi-skilled workers"; however, Alvin Toffler (1990) points out that changes in technology would create a deskilled work force with overly specialized, noninterchangeable…

Findings of a study that examined the working conditions that teachers face in an urban school district in the southern United States are presented in this paper. A survey mailed to 1,329 teachers in 15 secondary and 68 elementary schools produced an approximate 50 percent response rate per school. Interviews were also conducted with the union…

This dissertation examines factors associated with the successful recruitment and retention of black teachers. A literature review and a pilot study were used to identify 10 factors salient to teacher recruitment and retention. Those 10 factors were incorporated into a survey administered to 116 black first-year teachers and 116 white first-year…

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…

Part-time instructors make up an increasingly large percentage of college faculty. In English departments, part-time instructors take on the least prestigious and most demanding work--the teaching of writing--for low wages and without job security or professional recognition. This unfair treatment stems from the belief that the study and teaching…

Author discusses reasons for higher status enjoyed by law and medicine compared to social work and education, and reasons for females, nonwhites and people of lower class backgrounds being underrepresented in first two fields. Compares attitudes and aptitudes of students in four professions and preparation in theory and practice received. (SE)

In the study reported here, it is argued that recent policies implemented to improve the quality of the teaching profession by altering career structures are not likely to affect positively teachers' practices, teachers' work conditions, students' learning, or traditional school organizational patterns. Analyses of four teacher career structures…

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the opinions toward teaching as a career of high school seniors who scored in the top 15 percent nationally on college admission tests. Responses to a survey questionnaire were received from 629 students (a 16 percent response). Open-ended questions sought opinions on what is attractive about a teaching…

A major lesson of the past decade's education reform measures and school improvement efforts is that educational change of almost any stripe is a problem of the smallest unit. It is a problem that turns on the incentives, attitudes, abilities, and responses of those ultimately responsible for seeing that initiatives for improvement translate into…