Current studies suggest that school districts may not be hiring the most promising graduates of teacher training programs. The first chapter of this publication reviews this research and proposes three possible explanations for the hiring failures: the complexity of the teaching function, insufficient attention to hiring, and inadequate selection…

Perspectives concerning search committees for college faculty and administrators are considered. Most of the existing literature on college and university search committees deals with general presidential and, to a lesser extent, with administrative searches. Search committees are a fairly recent phenomenon in higher education, and their growth is…

This dissertation summary discusses a study to determine the instructional competencies required by teachers of mainstreaming educational programs for handicapped secondary students. It also sought to establish the preferred staff development strategies and to identify the appropriate educators to conduct the retraining activities. Questionnaires…

This document examines legal issues in the negligent hiring and retention of North Carolina Department of Public Instruction school employees. There are no statutes that relate specifically to negligent hiring or retention; it is a judicially created area of law. This document centers around employees who cause injury to school children, but the…

Hiring the faculty best suited to meet the changing demands of the 1990s is one of the most important tasks facing the administrative and faculty leadership at community colleges. In an effort to fill a significant number of faculty positions at Montgomery College (MC), a new college in Texas, the college has purposefully defined the challenges it…

Community colleges have traditionally been regarded as the only segment of higher education that truly focuses on teaching and learning with instructional innovation embedded as a core institutional value. However, some colleges have lost their early innovative spirit, while others are constrained by limited economic resources and have become…

Current issues in teacher recruitment and employment are addressed in this collection of fifteen articles, many of them written by career planning office directors. The focus is on unemployed beginning teachers, with articles on using placement services, preparing a resume, and advice on interview procedures. Other topics include: "What Does it…

This issue of Forum, a journal designed to permit California community college faculty to share ideas, contains six articles focusing on issues related to the enactment of Assembly Bill 1725 (AB 1725). The first article, "Your Father's Oldsmobile: The Uses of Tradition in Core Programs," by John McFarland, analyzes the development of…

School boards can improve their schools if they focus on four factors that educational research says most strongly influence school effectiveness. The four factors are (1) the time students spend on the subject matter each day, (2) textbooks, (3) teachers and their teaching methods, and (4) principals' support to help teachers achieve…

Efforts to train graduate student instructors (GSIs) at the University of California, Berkeley, are considered in this newsletter issue. Administrative changes and ways to improve GSI selection, training, and evaluation are considered, along with: proposed changes in graduate student teaching titles, grants to help faculty and departments…

Part of a 13-volume series designed to help Lutheran communities assess the feasibility of starting a Lutheran elementary school and to assist ongoing schools in current operation, this handbook focuses on personnel policies for Lutheran elementary schools. Its purpose is to help members of the board of education clarify their expectations of…

This brief uses a regional approach to address issues related to teacher quality and supply. It discusses some of the factors and prospects that might inform the regional perspective, focusing on raising the ceiling by working as a region on teacher quality, viewing teacher quality as the key to reaching goals for student achievement, and…

A one-page introduction is followed by three pages containing summaries of three journal articles and two documents on teacher selection. Mary Cihak Jensen argues that final selection decisions should be based on multiple information sources, since teaching requires proficiency in many interrelated skills. Superintendent Richard J. Caliendo…

Problems of "steady state" institutions and techniques of management that have implications for Monash University, Australia are considered. The term "steady state" is used to indicate a lack of additional funds being injected into the system to promote growth and/or development. A trend toward public accountability in higher…

This journal contains the following articles: "Teachers' Perceptions of the Supports and Resources Needed to Prepare English Language Learners for the Future" (Douglas Fisher); "Exploring the Learning Styles of Russian-Speaking Students of English as a Second Language" (Ann C. Wintergerst and Andrea DeCapua); "New Voices…