A model of the dynamics of educational change links teaching style (on a continuum from didactic to interactive) with basis of authority (from formal to organic). The model is used to analyze educational decentralization in Mexico, examining four strategies: school "technical councils," inservice teacher education about reform…

This article provides an overview of standards that have been developed for special educators, shares the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee program standards, discusses the ways in which they are used in teacher preparation, and suggests ways in which practicing teachers could use these or similar standards for ongoing professional development.…

Describes "Concept to Classroom", a series of free, online workshops developed by channel Thirteen/WNET New York and Disney Learning Partnerships to help teachers explore issues in education including multiple intelligences, constructivism, academic standards, cooperative and collaborative learning, assessment, curriculum redesign,…

"Technology in the Curriculum: A Telecourse for K-12 Educators" was a graduate course emphasizing the integration of technology in the K-12 curriculum. This collaborative effort between a university and school districts required no campus visits by participants. The article describes experiences with the course, offering insights into distance…

Describes an investigation into the type of listening test that might serve as an assessment instrument of English language teachers as part of a teacher certification test--the Hong Kong English Language Benchmark Test. Highlights a case study where groups of preservice and inservice English language teachers were administered audio and video…

Describes the Hawaii Partnership for Standards-Based School Health Education, which includes various state agencies, a university, local businesses, and the American Cancer Society, highlighting: the development of the standards; the history of the partnership; partnership activities to date; concurrent supporting efforts; future plans; and…

Idaho secondary students learn the scientific method through outdoor environmental projects related to water quality monitoring. A program trains teachers to design project-based learning and provides extensive followup support. Five-day summer workshops immerse teachers in the types of projects they will orchestrate with their own students.…

Examines preservice teacher education and professional development in Ireland, presenting a case study of graduates from one Irish college of education during their first 10 years of teaching elementary school and noting participants' involvement in professional development and graduate studies. Participants had no formal induction programs,…

A study investigated the effects of a 2-week summer institute that taught kindergarten and first-grade teachers (n=44) about learning disabilities and effective instruction, stressing the importance of explicit instruction in phonological and orthographic awareness. First-graders taught by trained teachers outperformed controls on phonological…

This study investigated the effectiveness of Project RIME, a project designed to support teachers in integrating more explicit instruction for children at-risk for reading failure into their curricula. Although the 11 teachers became more positive and knowledgeable toward using explicit instruction, their orientation toward implicit and…

Proposes a curriculum for teacher learning over time, examining the fit between conventional teacher education, induction, professional development, and the challenges of learning to teach in reform-minded ways. The paper examines: central tasks of teacher preparation, induction, and development; how well conventional arrangements address these…

South Africa and Namibia, two countries building young democracies, face the task of transforming their public education systems to support the values articulated in their new constitutions. This article describes a project designed to incorporate these values into schools. A group of 50 Namibian teachers, who were enrolled in the author's…

Many U.S. students speak nonstandard forms of English, yet dialect issues are slighted in teacher education programs and literacy courses. In this study, classroom teachers who spoke Standard American English (SE) were familiarized with seven syntactic features characterizing African American English (AAE). Three approaches to instruction based on…

One of the major problems facing education today is the inadequate mathematics' preparation of pre-college students and their teachers. Most colleges and universities have well established programs for students planning to teach mathematics at the secondary schools; however, in many institutions pre-secondary mathematics has been addressed only…

Since biology is one of the most dynamic research fields within the natural sciences, the gap between the accumulated knowledge in biology and the knowledge that is taught in schools, increases rapidly with time. Our long-term objective is to develop means to bridge between the dynamics of biological discoveries and the biology teachers and…