Learning disabilities are present in 10 percent of the population, and the condition is defined as, "A disorder in basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or use mathematical calculations". In this…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 requires states to assess student achievement in reading and mathematics for students in grades three through eight and holds local school districts accountable for student assessment results. NCLB also stresses the importance of implementing educational programs that are research-based and insists that…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 10th Annual Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, held in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, 12-15 June 2012. The overall goal of the 10th BCES conference is to facilitate discussion of different perspectives on international education providing a forum for scientific debate and constructive…

Mexico's Carrera Magisterial (CM) is one of the pioneer teacher incentive programs in the world. It was instituted in 1992 and designed jointly by the federal education authorities, state authorities, and the teachers' union as a horizontal promotion system that rewards teachers with salary bonuses on the basis of their performance. Teacher…

This report introduces the New Mexico Public Education Department's executive staff and 2006 annual report. Areas reported include: (1) Academic Rigor and Accountability; (2) Closing the Achievement Gap; (3) School Readiness; (4) Quality Teachers; (5) Parent and Community Involvement; (6) Investing in 21st Century Classrooms; (7) Building College…

The Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) principles were first developed in May 2001 by the Center for Improving Teacher Quality at the Council for Chief State School Officers. These principles were developed as standards for licensing teachers who work with students with disabilities. Both of the program…

The introduction of the collaborative partnership model in initial teacher education at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology has paved the way for activities and components in its professional training that closely relate to the field of practice and meets the need to attain the more "here-and-now"-oriented objectives of…

How happy are you about teaching science? Building on similar work from the Leverhulme Primary Project and the Primary Horizons, the authors pursued this question with 303 head teachers, science coordinators, and class teachers across England in a recent questionnaire survey. The findings point to very real progress being made in many areas of…

Major reform is occurring across our nation in delivering services to students with disabilities in secondary schools. The impetus for such change is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its challenges and implications for the secondary classroom. NCLB requires that all students be taught by a teacher who is highly qualified in the content area…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not adapted physical education (APE) teachers had job-related concerns associated with teaching students with disabilities in an urban public school district. The participants were six experienced, itinerant APE teachers, who taught in urban public schools in a midwestern state in the United…

This research, conducted at a university in South Texas (87% Hispanic), investigated how well pre-service teachers' performance on the Secondary Professional Development Examination for Certification of Educators in Texas (ExCET) can be predicted. The linear regression equation explained 51% of the total variance in the ExCET scores while the…

Although issues of inclusion, diversity and achievement have become a powerful agenda for change in teacher education policy in England, bilingual pupils are still conceptualised in policy terms as a problem. This absence of linguistic integration in English teacher education is in tension with the increasing number of school pupils speaking a…

In 1998, when "Teachers--meeting the challenge of change" was published by the English Department for Education and Skills (DfES), one of the most fundamental reforms of the teaching profession was initiated--performance management. In 2005, all schools became subject to "Light Touch Validation" of their performance management…

Self-efficacy beliefs are defined as context-specific assessments of one's competence to perform specific tasks, influence one's efforts, persistence, and resilience to succeed in a given task. Such beliefs are important determinants when considering agricultural science teachers' subject matter knowledge, teaching comfort levels, and their…

The quality of care in infant and toddler classrooms was compared across inclusive (n=64) and noninclusive classrooms (n=400). Quality was measured using the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ITERS-R). An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis revealed four distinct dimensions of quality within the ITERS-R. Inclusive…