The purpose of this study was to evaluate music teacher professional development (PD) practice and policy in the United States between 1993 and 2012. Using data from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) spanning these 20 years, I examined music teacher PD participation by topic, intensity, relevance, and format; music…

Background: Professional development offerings assist K-12 educators in addressing new and evolving classroom dynamics, circumstances, and situations. With the emerging demands of an increasingly science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-infused society, teachers are challenged to provide high-quality service and equitable…

This effort: 1) establishes an autonomy definition uniquely tailored for teaching, 2) validates a nationally generalizable teacher autonomy construct, 3) demonstrates that the model describes and explains the autonomy levels of particular teacher groups, and 4) verifies the construct can represent teacher autonomy in other empirical models. The…

This report is the second part of a three-phase research study of teacher professional learning opportunities in the United States. In the first report, "Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the United States and Abroad" (Wei, Darling-Hammond, Richardson, Andree, & Orphanos,…

Background/Context: Recent research has demonstrated the potential for teacher professional development to enhance teacher learning, improve instruction, and increase student achievement. Nevertheless, research examining the relationship between state and local policies and teachers' participation in professional development is sparse. This…

Policy shapes practice, and the increasingly important realm of professional development is no exception. In order to identify effective professional development policies and strategies, a Stanford University research team examined the policy frameworks supporting high levels of professional development activity in four states. The…

This report is the third of a three-phase research study of teacher professional learning opportunities in the United States. In this third phase of the research, the authors conducted case studies of four professionally active states to get a deeper look at the policy frameworks that support professional development in those states. These…

Data were collected on the demographic characteristics, educational backgrounds, and perceptions/attitudes of the approximately 1,429 business and marketing education teachers who were among the subsample of 3,538 vocational teachers and total sample of 56,051 public school teachers who participated in the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey.…

This study examined differences in nine factors between a group of the highest-performing needs high schools (HPHN) and a group of the lowest performing high-needs (LPHN) high schools using teacher responses from a national dataset. The factors are: (1) shared mission and goals; (2) professional development; (3) collaboration among teachers (4)…

This booklet provides snapshots of teachers' work lives, using information obtained from previous Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS). The SASS is a set of integrated questionnaires that collect information nationwide about schools and the staff who work in them. A wide variety of schools complete the surveys. The SASS Teacher Questionnaire asks…