Background: The provision of professional development (PD) for teachers in schools is now a major concern of most national government and teaching organisations. To provide quality PD for teachers, we must understand the aspirations, needs and interests of teachers, as they are key factors in the complex world of teaching and learning. Therefore…

This article outlines the results of an issues-based study conducted over a 12-month period that investigated how the systematic inclusion of teachers within the design, operationalization and implementation of an online curriculum development project in Florida led simultaneously to teachers' own professionalizing in areas of education they were…

The purpose of the study reported in this chapter was to determine if senior evaluation consultants experienced stages of growth in their practice similar to the small business development stages described by Bruce and Scott, to identify the stimuli that led to those changes, to determine what the consultants learned from these incidents, and to…

The literature on classroom discourse has too long constructed the classroom as a place of one teacher and many pupils. This paper challenges this view by investigating classroom discourse in two-teacher classrooms. Specifically, it presents a case study of an English as an additional language teacher and geography teacher working together in the…

Teachers must gauge students' understandings and confusions. Yet most research about teacher thinking neglects teachers' ideas about confusion and students' perspectives about their interactions with their teacher when they are confused. This study examines two high school English teachers' and six of their students' thinking about confusion,…

This study took place at a newly formed charter school serving 150 students in a large metropolitan city in the southwest. Students were mostly Hispanic (98%), and all were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected in interviews with 45 sixth- (n = 28), seventh- (n = 10), and eighth- (n = 7) grade…

This paper reports research on: the major educational ideas that have shaped New Zealand's educational policies and influenced the content and form of teacher training and early childhood education; the educational ideas that have influenced teachers and former teachers; and how teachers have reacted to the major changes that policymakers have…

Research planned to improve understanding of conative educational processes and outcomes is described. Over the past year, literature reviews have been conducted aimed at defining categories of assessment of student persistence, freedom from distraction, engagement, and other school-and-work related attitudes and motivations, both as learning…

This workbook is designed to help high school students and adults identify their skills and interests, explore occupations, prepare resumes and other materials, and conduct a job search. (Although developed with references to Alaskan services and the Alaskan labor market, the materials are suitable to job seekers in any state.) The workbook is…

This study compared the academic performance and classroom behavior of Hmong-refugee first and second graders to those of classmates from other ethnic backgrounds. Two cohorts of children and families from six inner-city Saint Paul (Minnesota) elementary schools participated in this ongoing longitudinal study, for a total of 528 children entering…

This paper places Kentucky's accountability program in the national context, and then describes how educators in four rural Kentucky school districts reacted to the program in the initial years of its implementation. The information is drawn from a qualitative study of the implementation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) in these four…

This study focused on the student teacher's process of becoming a teacher with emphasis on reflective development during training; the kind of development that occurred in student teachers when the reflection ability was consciously promoted; the existence of any differences in reflective ability between the different year courses (1-3) and…

This paper reports on the feedback obtained from Ohio public school teachers who supervised the Creating Active and Reflective Educators (CARE) program students, initially called the Teacher Education for Civic Responsibility (TECR) program, during its first 4 years, from 1989-1993. The first group of 11 students were accepted into TECR in 1989;…

This document is based on transcripts of recorded informal interviews with: (1) selected senior professors in the library schools at Warsaw, Krakow, and Wroclaw (Poland); (2) the director and a member of the Books and Readers Institute of the National Polish Libraries; and (3) a group of Polish librarians and students in the field. The report…

This report on Phase IV, of a four-phase study, provided for the development of evaluation templates and instruments to be used by the California Department of Education to facilitate systematic assessment of state funded educational technology programs and projects. These assessment documents comprised the major data collection sources for the…