Several years ago intermediaries in Boston were challenged to build a continuum of training around a shared set of competencies for those who work with young people ages five to twenty-two during the out-of-school-time hours. After receiving a few small planning grants, local intermediaries teamed up with large youth-serving organizations to…

In November 2000, the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis, Indiana, issued a request for grant proposals from public school districts in Marion County, Indiana. It called for school districts to develop innovative, systemic, and transforming approaches to preparing students to thrive in an increasingly competitive, high-tech, global society. The…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe a qualitative study of a four-year, state-wide portfolio evaluation system for new principals. The State of Ohio (USA) was one of five states that participated in a field test of the Portfolio Assessment for School Leaders designed by the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) and the…

In this article, the author invites students to reflect on the characteristics of their own teachers. The author contends that this reflection can be a methodological process and model toward a better understanding of what identifies teachers as professionals. To "constructively reflect" on teacher professionalism, it is imperative that…

Maximum academic achievement for gifted and talented students can only be accomplished when teachers are given the tools, support, and training needed to strengthen instructional skills and develop knowledge of the social and emotional needs of the students they serve. Providing meaningful professional development to develop or enhance these…

Practice-based or experiential learning has come to be dominated by mentalist models of reflection on experience. The argument here is that these models split mind from body and subject from environment in ways that yield problematic practices. An alternate conception of practice-based learning is offered here, based on the notion of…

Purpose: The paper seeks to show the contextualisation of call centres as a work-specific ethnographically and culturally based community, which, in turn, influences pedagogical practices through the encoding and decoding of cultural texts in relation to two logics: cost-efficiency and customer-orientation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper…

Teacher attrition and teacher burnout are among the most serious problems facing urban schools today. With teachers under constant siege, under resourced, and often under prepared, the revolving door of urban teaching has left schools, and therefore children, in a constant state of flux. These dehumanizing and de-intellectualized conditions of…

This paper reports on a project that aimed to assist the induction of three women teachers into the practice of mathematics teaching. In their first year of teaching the three teachers were located in schools at great distances from the normal support structures for the teachers. Further, the schools consisted of student populations with wide…

For more than a decade the health education profession has used the seven responsibilities, outlined from the 1978-1988 Role Delineation Project, as the foundation for credentialing, curricular structure in professional preparation programs, and continuing education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which the seven…

Over the past decade, a large body of literature has emerged on professional development, teacher learning, and teacher change. The research literature contains a mix of large- and small-scale studies, including intensive case studies of classroom teaching, evaluations of programs designed to improve teaching and learning, and surveys of teachers…

This article presents the results on the effects of professional development in context by examining how much average change over time there is in different dimensions of teaching practice. In particular, three years of data on teaching practice are used to describe trends and differences across teachers and schools in the three broad aspects of…

If one "googles" the term "professional development" on the Web, he/she gets definitions such as "the development of skills both tangential and essential to one's current occupation." Digging a little deeper does not yield a common definition, just distinctions among education, training, and credentialing. Despite the…

The In-service Training Department of the Ministry of National Education is responsible for the teachers' in-service training at the preschool, primary and secondary education levels in Turkey. Important developments in in-service training have occurred since 1960: the foundation of the In-service Training Department. In 2000, 4292 in-service…

The use of technology in the educational setting can provide support for professional development early in a teacher's career. The purpose of this qualitative exploratory study was to examine the use of an electronic discussion board in a field-based block of courses as a place where 17 preservice teachers could share experiences and ideas. The…