This book helps teachers and staff developers understand how to take charge of teacher professional development via the Internet. The book features five sections with 14 chapters. Section 1, The Internet and Its Essential Tools, includes: (1) What Do I Need to Know About the Internet? (2) Making the Most of Your Electronic Mail, and (3) Accessing…

Teacher mentoring programs are perceived as an effective staff development approach for beginning teachers. By establishing mentoring programs, districts serve two purposes: novice teachers get a strong start in their careers, and experienced classroom teachers serving as mentors receive recognition and incentives. Supporting beginning teachers at…

This monograph describes the Curriculum Inquiry Cycle (CIC), focusing on the first phase. The CIC is a professional development process that supports educators in making curriculum and instruction decisions responsive to state standards, local needs, and student characteristics. The process is designed to improve learning and teaching, with the…

This monograph describes Ohio University College of Education's Entry Year Pilot Project. The College of Education was awarded grant money to create and implement a mentoring program to help entry-year teachers through their first year and through the Praxis III assessment. The project involved beginning teachers, school-level mentors, and…

This paper describes Project ACCESS, in which a state education agency, a university, and a rural school district collaborated to provide support and technical assistance for educators working with autistic students. Teachers attended preservice and inservice programs to receive training in working with autistic students. During the 1989-1990…

In Scotland, vocational education at the professional level takes place in colleges and universities and at the craft and technician level, in further education colleges. Most of the further education/higher education curriculum has been modularized. The following benefits of modularization are claimed: rationalization of resource provision;…

While America's two-year colleges are diverse in function, mission, clientele, and organizational structure, they share a common identity in their commitment to a developmental philosophy. A rarely used, but nonetheless tenable and cost-saving path to development involves exploring strategies which simultaneously contribute to faculty, student,…

Consistent with educational reform efforts and the premise of teacher involvement, a collaborative state-wide effort was initiated by the New Hampshire State Department of Education to provide opportunities for skilled, experienced teachers to mentor new teachers during a 1-year induction period. This paper details the Mascoma Valley Regional…

This study describes significant issues and learnings identified by 26 school faculties engaged in site-based, faculty-led reform initiatives over a 5-year period during participation in the National Education Association's Mastery in Learning (MIL) Project. A representative sample of MIL sites is utilized to reframe issues and learnings into…

Teacher knowledge and development from the teacher perspective were studied. Teachers wrote their own stories using collaborative autobiography (writing individual stories in groups). This report documents the evolution of the research methodology in discerning the personal, individual, similar, common, and collective as researchers moved from…

The guiding principles of this handbook are that student evaluation should be an integral part of good teaching practice and be treated as an ongoing and comprehensive process that is pervaded by careful planning and systematic implementation. Evaluation is considered to be a critical element that influences teacher decision making and guides…

California Assembly Bill (AB) 1725 was passed to improve the operation of the state's community colleges with respect to finance, governance, affirmative action, employment policies, instructional technique, and accountability, providing a $5 million fund for staff development. To assess the effects of AB 1725 on the quantity and quality of…

Chapman College (California) developed a Freshman Seminar Program which provides a rigorous, integrative intellectual experience for students in the first semester of college study. The program's aims were to provide students with a common learning experience, to provide a basic foundation in history, geography, literature and other fields; to…

A planning and discussion committee was formed at the University of Arkansas (Little Rock) to evaluate the role that faculty teaching assessment might take in a planned liberal arts teaching excellence project. The committee leader attended an Assessment Strategies Workshop conducted by Trudy Banta at the University of Tennessee. The committee…

An ongoing study evaluated the effectiveness of a writing across the curriculum (WAC) program at a small liberal arts college. Fifty-five out of 99 full-time faculty responded to a survey seeking to compare WAC faculty who had voluntarily participated in at least a 3-day workshop to faculty not involved in the WAC program. Pre- and post-workshop…