Nearly two decades of research has taught some powerful lessons about how to design and implement meaningful and effective professional development for teachers. This newsletter examines the characteristics of high-quality professional development and offers some suggestions for improving its impact and effectiveness. For reform efforts centered…

Project IMAGES (Improving Management of Adults/Guiding and Educating Staff) was conducted throughout Pennsylvania to provide two three-hour training sessions for the special needs of both experienced and inexperienced staff of adult basic education programs. Instruction was given in the counseling areas of age variance management and the…

Drawing on evidence from literature on professional development of teachers in Australia, this document discusses the essential aspects of inservice education and provides a checklist, with illustrative applications, by which to design and evaluate inservice education proposals. The checklist is based on four sets of assumptions relating to…

The book contains seven author contributed chapters on issues concerning inservice and staff development in special education. Major themes of the papers include the importance of participant involvement in the planning process, the importance of gaining support at the onset by district and building administrators, and the need for carefully…

This chapter on designing and implementing effective staff development programs is taken from a guide to instruction and services for students with disabilities. The chapter focuses on assessment of staff development needs and identification of priorities for training. Staff development options are discussed in terms of formats (such as workshops,…

Designed for use by adult basic education (ABE) teachers and directors, this publication presents a general overview of the major areas incorporated into the Oklahoma ABE program. Contents include a schematic diagram of ABE administration; ABE philosophy; state and federal guidelines; map of percentages of population 25 years and over with less…

This guide to effective staff development planning draws extensively on the literature to discuss the concepts crucial at each stage of the planning process. An introductory section reviews the characteristics of adult learners (including what they want to learn and how they prefer to learn it), touching on adult development, learning and…

This book offers new practices for raising student achievement as it advocates for responsible changes in the policies, structures, and operations of schools, providing a perspective to help educators face the challenges of professional learning on a personal level. Its 11 sections focus on: (1) "Introduction: Essential Questions about…

This guide begins with a rationale for teaching applied academics courses. The next section contains a summary of the following important factors in the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) effort: characteristics of high performance workplaces, lessons offered by high performance schools, guidelines for restructured…

A project was conducted to provide staff development workshops about adults with learning problems to agencies throughout Pennsylvania. Workshops and accompanying guides on nine topics ranging from understanding learning differences, problems, and disabilities to alternative instructional techniques were developed. Workshops were conducted…

Based on an earlier study of approaches to training English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) and adult basic education (ABE) instructors, the current report draws implications and makes recommendations for delivering effective staff development. The five implications are that: (1) ABE and ESL teachers, volunteer instructors, and trainers will attend…

Designed to assist adult basic education (ABE) teachers and administrators in coping with learning disabled adults, Project BEST (Better Educational Services through Testing) centered on training selected Kansas adult educators in the use of a prescriptive-diagnostic tool for evaluating adults, on providing these teachers with the most current…

This document on inservice training and staff development is one in a series of four developed to provide a comprehensive overview of the scope of training practices relating to adult learning. Directed toward educators designing and conducting training programs and toward trainers of trainers, these contributions by adult educators and…

The Equipped for the Future (EFF) framework describes adult performance along these four dimensions: structure of the knowledge-base; fluency of performance; independence of performance; and range of conditions for performance. When completed it will include a developmental sequence of descriptions of learner performance for each EFF standard;…

This book, which is the product of a national survey of all further education colleges and local education authorities in England and Wales, explains how adult educators can create learning opportunities for adults with mental health difficulties. The chapter topics are as follows: setting the scene; labels applied to people with mental health…