This paper examines the morale of beginning secondary science teachers who attended one of three types of teacher preparation programs: (1) traditional undergraduate, (2) post-baccalaureate certification, or (3) alternative route to certification. One-hundred one secondary science teachers (grades 7-12) who were completing their second year in a…

This article provides portraits of two women on professional journeys to become bilingual teachers. Stacie Thao was born in Thailand. Nancy Aguilar was born in California, and spent some of her childhood in Mexico. Stacie's first language is Hmong, while Nancy's is Spanish. Each learned English in school, and each helped their immigrant parents…

This article describes a metaphorical imaging activity used in World Educational Links (WEL), a graduate teacher certification program, to help future social justice educators explore their relationship with society and their sense of interconnectedness and empowerment to effect change. The author investigates possibilities inherent in the…

Econometric studies suggest that student achievement may be improved if high-performing teachers are substituted for low-performing teachers. Drawing upon a recent study linking teacher performance on licensure exams with gains in student achievement, an analysis was conducted to determine the cost-effectiveness of requiring teacher applicants to…

In 1998, the California legislature passed Senate Bill SB 2042 which replaced the previous teacher certification legislation. The new law required that all elementary and secondary teacher certification programs in the State of California align their programs with new teaching standards. These standards included Teacher Performance Expectations…

In this article, we will discuss research-based teacher education as an organizing theme of teacher education. We will report the results of two surveys in which students expressed their attitudes towards the research-based approach and their experiences of research-based teacher education. The construct validity of the inventory was tested using…

The purpose of this research was to determine whether particular biographic and academic characteristics would predict whether an applicant would matriculate into and successfully complete an online secondary teacher certification program. Results of statistical analyses conducted on 170 applicants over the past three years affirm the importance…

In the United States in 2011, more than one in four people were going to school. This included many types of people--children going to nursery school and elementary school, young adults attending high school and college, and adults taking classes to obtain a degree or diploma. What is known about these people--their age and sex, where they live,…

By analyzing data from the Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors empirically test four of the core assumptions embedded in current arguments for expanding alternative teacher certification (AC): AC attracts experienced candidates from fields outside of education; AC attracts top-quality, well-trained teachers; AC disproportionately trains…

This article reports on a Louisiana study which suggests that new teachers can be as effective as, or sometimes more effective than, their experienced colleagues. Experts say the study, the first of its kind to come out of a state that has implemented a multi-pronged approach to improving its teacher training, shows that it is possible for states…

In the years since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, university technology transfer success has been measured primarily by traditional metrics such as numbers of patents filed, revenue obtained from licensed patents and numbers of start-up companies founded to commercialize university intellectual property. Intellectual property (IP)…

Fewer than 25% of all states across the United States (18 total) currently require oral proficiency exams for initial foreign language teacher licensure. Of those 18 states, 8 require oral proficiency testing for all world languages certification, 5 for non-Roman based language certification only, and 5 for alternative certification only. The…

The purpose of this content analysis study was to examine how reading comprehension was addressed in professional literacy texts used with preservice teachers at five universities in Texas. The universities for the study were selected based on the number of teachers graduating with their initial EC-4 teaching certificate between September 1, 2007…

Over the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known: teachers make the greatest difference to student achievement. With new statistical and analytical methods used by a wide range of researchers, evidence has been mounting that teacher quality can account for a large share of variance in student test…

The graduate of the Bricklayer apprenticeship training is a journeyperson who will be able to: (1) responsibly do all work tasks expected of a journeyperson; (2) supervise, train and coach apprentices; (3) produce a better quality product than the minimum acceptable by industry standard; (4) use and maintain tools and equipment to the standards of…