This report discusses literacy coaching as one strategy for professional development, describing how three San Francisco Bay Area school districts use literacy coaching, highlighting the benefits of using literacy coaching, and offering recommendations to districts and states. The report describes why the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative and…

This digest examines considerations and strategies for selecting and retaining teacher mentors, suggesting that the degree to which mentors are meaningfully engaged in the mentoring process may have a significant impact on a program's success. Strategies for recruiting mentors range from opportunistic appointment to promoting self-nomination to…

This paper reviews the literature on teaching conditions, stress variables, and demands placed upon teachers, focusing on the situation in Belgium. Researchers examined whether and how teachers in Flemish elementary schools experienced intense, stressful, and negative working conditions, focusing on which forms of stressors and negative conditions…

This paper describes an effort to coordinate teaching in two college classes--an Introduction to Sociology class and a Writing II class--to focus on issues of entitlement, such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. The tandem effort was designed to encourage students to explore the subjects more deeply than would have been likely in…

Teachers can be sources of energy, creativity, and expertise in their own growth. This provides powerful learning opportunities and lessens dependence on outside experts. Principals can help by encouraging teachers to select areas for informal study and specialization, providing opportunities for teachers to present case histories of special-needs…

This article offers a framework for planning teams to use to implement inclusive education. Four planning dimensions (action planning, management, evaluation, and reflection) are discussed, including specific considerations for classroom teams. An example of one school's efforts toward developing an effective inclusion program is provided. (DB)

Self-study research is a mode of scholarly inquiry in which teachers examine their beliefs and actions as educators and explore pedagogical questions. A three-phase model of collaborative self-study research is offered as a framework for university faculty to engage in self-study for the purpose of improving teaching and creating new knowledge.…

Describes the University of Georgia's Deans' Forum, a group of approximately 30 faculty members who have engaged in collaborative work on issues of teacher education for over 4 years. Discusses its design, activities, and impact, and elements necessary to sustain it. (EV)

One Pennsylvania school district requires that new teachers spend an additional 15 contractual days each year during their first 5 years of teaching in a comprehensive New Teacher Academy. They are also mentored during their first year. During those 15 days, teachers participate in workshops, personal choice staff development, graduate course…

Examined cooperating classroom teachers' perspectives regarding the professional block of a secondary education program. Data collection involved surveys assessing their perceptions of the importance of the program's standards and interviews regarding program strengths and weaknesses and college-school collaboration. Results indicated that…

Schools cannot produce students as continuous learners and effective collaborators without teachers who possess those same characteristics. Learning organizations thrive on attention to staff orientation, curricular and/or interdisciplinary teams, peer observation, study groups, action research, school improvement task forces, professional…

Presents a conversation involving two teachers and a professor who worked together to design and implement classroom reform. Reveals the participants' thoughts on the benefits of collaboration, and demonstrates how this sort of partnership can enable significant classroom change. (RS)

Presents a story of the collaboration of two educators who developed communities of learners in their own classroom contexts. Describes the experiences shared as they reflected, revised, and struggled to improve their own practice. Discusses their continual struggle with ways to fully engage all students in the community-building process. (SG)

Identifies research problems that arise in analysis of audio and video records of teachers' collaborative work, presenting a segment of interaction from a work group of teachers engaged in jointly planning a 9th-grade English course and using excerpts to illustrate the system of analysis. The paper concludes with a conceptual scheme for…

Proposes a vision of future education influenced by the uniqueness of Asian culture, the building of an Asia-Pacific network of teachers, and ways to effectively utilize the potential of digital society, all from the basis of Asian culture and tradition. (Contains five references.) (AUTHOR)