This paper traces the origins of professional development schools (PDSs), describes their characteristics, examines a network of PDSs, considers the place of PDSs in developing the teaching profession, addresses problems and concerns associated with developing and sustaining PDSs, and draws implications for teacher preparation and the teaching…

The network of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories is funded by the United States Department of Education to serve particular geographic regions of the country and its territories and to conduct research and development in partnership with state and local educators. The Labs' central focus is on linking the knowledge from both research and…

This report presents the Prichard Committee recommendations on professional development of Kentucky teachers. They are based on the results of a steering committee of Kentucky educators and are being implemented in a Pew Charitable Trusts project. The overall finding was that for school reform to succeed in Kentucky, greatly enhanced professional…

This paper discusses the challenges facing teacher education programs to produce highly sensitive student teachers who are motivated to reflect on their own work, to develop during the preservice process and later as teachers within the professional frame of reference, and to capture a coherent picture of the course of professional development.…

These five papers are from a symposium on high involvement work teams that was facilitated by Catherine M. Sleezer at the 1995 Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD) conference. "An Empirical Study of Employee Involvement in Designing and Managing Reward Systems" (William M. Kahnweiler) reports on a study of 300 organizations that…

This study was conducted to survey undergraduates majoring in education and teachers in the field regarding reasons for becoming a teacher and to determine levels of variance in response between these two groups. In the Spring of 1994, a survey instrument containing 10 reasons for becoming a teacher was pilot tested with 110 teachers and 152…

This handbook is the result of more than 2 years' deliberations by The Commission on the Restructuring of the American High School. The Commission emerged from a partnership of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The report focuses on revitalizing education…

The topic for this paper developed as a result of observations made during the course of a joint Internet pilot project with K-12 teachers and administrators in the city of Saskatoon (Canada); the project was designed to determine the amount of professional development time the participants needed to become functional Internet users and to explore…

This report discusses a 2-year evaluation of the California Early Childhood Mentor Teacher Program (CECMTP), in which experienced child care teachers serve as mentors, using their classroom as a practicum environment to train student teachers. The evaluation assessed the extent to which CECMTP goals were met by answering the following three…

The teacher education program at William Woods University (WWU) in central Missouri has developed five partnership projects that have served as the impetus for the gradual restructuring of the university's education program into a more holistic, interdisciplinary experience for the preservice teacher. This restructuring effort has blended…

This annotated bibliography presents descriptions of sources related to the construction, use, and scoring of portfolios for assessment. Both student and professional staff portfolios are considered, as are theoretical issues and practical examples of portfolio use. Articles cover all grade levels and many subject matter areas. There are two…

New digital technologies will allow long-standing missions of learned societies to be performed in new ways. Modern learned societies are national networks of scholars and educators with professional interests in a single field or discipline. This document discusses functions of learned societies including: identity (formal recognition for one's…

In 1992 and 1995, Iowa received statewide Star Schools grants to demonstrate the use of fiber-optic technology to provide live, two-way, full-motion interactive instruction which allows greater levels of interactivity than previous forms of distance instruction. The grant allowed the state to equip over 100 fully interactive video classrooms in…

This document is a resource for distance education research in Iowa, including information on developing, implementing, and administering distance education systems. This second edition contains the original 16 research papers published previously, as well as 8 additional, more recent research studies. The first section describes distance…

A study critically evaluated the administrative practices and organizational structure of the Turkish secondary vocational education system from the perspectives of school administrators, teachers, and industry managers. The study population included 14 vocational high schools and 12 companies that hired graduates of these schools in 4 relatively…