Reviewing the research, Feiman-Nemser identifies distinct shifts in thinking about teacher induction over the last 50 years. Early advocates viewed induction as a temporary bridge designed to provide support to beginning teachers and ease their entry into teaching. Next came an induction model that combines support with ongoing mentoring and…

Digital learners are hungry to use technology in school. And many schools are responding by delivering cutting-edge equipment to all teachers and students and infusing this technology into instruction. This is all well and good. But as evaluators with the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, the authors have observed several major…

Amid budget cuts in U.S. public schools, the spotlight is on how to make less effective teachers more effective--fast. The authors describe virtual coaching--in which a coach interacts electronically with a teacher as a lesson unfolds--as a promising way to help teachers with weak teaching skills. Virtual coaching uses online and mobile technology…

Digital tools, such as blogs and wikis, now make it easy for educators to embrace continual learning. Thousands of accomplished educators are now writing blogs in which they reflect on instruction, challenge assumptions, question policies, offer advice, design solutions, and learn together. All this collective knowledge is readily available for…

The Carroll (Texas) Independent School District's performance-based technology program aims to motivate all employees to learn new technological skills and teach them to students. Combining cash bonuses with personal satisfaction, the program rewards professional growth, involves adult learners in their own planning, and correlates individual…

Describes a social-constructivist model of professional development arising from a collaboration between Southwest Texas State University's education department and New Braunfels (Texas) Independent School District. Teachers learn technology integration techniques from an instructionally strong "first-generation" of teachers trained at a…

A New Zealand survey found that elementary and secondary teachers were concerned about four key technology management issues: planning, access, technical support, and professional development. Teachers recommended that principals have a clear, democratically constructed policy on the place of educational technologies in the school curriculum,…

The Results-Based Education Model is an outcomes-based program that unifies instruction, learning, and assessment while building in the greatest possible margin of student success. Delivery is via thematic, integrated, performance-based instructional units. This article explains how R-BEM transformed an impoverished school district in South Bronx,…