The extensive body of research and knowledge on adult learners, has rarely been applied to teachers, themselves. Teachers, like adult learners everywhere, bring an assortment of experiences, needs, wishes, and fears to the learning process. Drawing on Kolb's learning styles and Blanchard's situational leadership model, the growth of instructors…

Grounded in personal experiences of classroom teachers, this book discusses broad ideas concerning thinking and teaching of complex-level thinking, and the pragmatic realities of teaching thinking in the regular classroom. The book notes that creating the "thoughtful" classroom is akin to a journey of change from one style to another style of…

This paper presents an approach to the evaluation of college faculty teaching which stresses input from students, colleagues, the department head, and the faculty member under review. Evaluation guidelines suggest that evaluation criteria and the measurement process, as well as the instruments used for measuring teacher performance, be jointly…

This booklet is designed to introduce secondary educators to a three-part training session that was developed to make Texas teachers more aware of the subtle gender-biased behaviors that can emerge during interactions between teachers and students in three typical settings: a teacher advising a student for upcoming registration, a rehearsal for a…

This empirical study was conducted to explore both the influence of assessment on teachers' classroom practice during an assessment driven educational reform, and the principle underlying assessment driven instruction, i.e., "what you test is what you get." Factors targeted at the level of assessment were performance-based or objective…

Considerable study has been focused on relationships between learning styles and other characteristics and conditions, such as teaching styles, achievement, student age, and student gender. In 1991, a study was conducted on two campuses of a comprehensive community college in the southeast to measure the effect on course grades of the relationship…

The past decade has been a productive era for classroom research. Recent investigations have yielded useful concepts for thinking about classrooms and about facilitating achievement. Research findings and concepts provide a way of considering classroom instruction, but they are not rules for classroom behavior. Some teachers believe (and behave…

Problems in the second language classroom that hinder students from speaking the language freely and creatively arise from three sources: the teacher, the student, and the material. Problems involving the teacher include the common lack of an overall and inclusive definition of the course goal, the role and dysfunction of teacher "authority" in…

One of a series of six portraits of high school literature classrooms, this paper gives a detailed, evocative characterization of how one "master teacher" introduced, undertook, and guided the study of literature, focusing in particular on how the teacher interacted with students in the context of discussion of a literary work in class.…

Relevant research literature does not generally support the notion that class size is a significant variable in learner achievement. This, if true, may be the result of various factors. Although teachers believe that they alter their teaching strategies for different class sizes, this may not be the case. More likely is the possibility that…

In this study, different educator groups had to rank a total of 112 behaviors that had previously been judged to be important to the performance of first-year teachers. Focus was on determining which behaviors are important in the assessment of beginning teachers' performance and whether or not such assessment should be differentiated according to…

Based in the belief that many preschool programs have an orientation toward a developmental philosophy yet are not developmentally appropriate in program practices, this discussion contrasts developmentally and psychometrically oriented approaches, reviews literature on program design and children's needs, and provides guidelines in the areas of…

Multiple demands and pressures on teachers have increased instructor burnout, a state characterized by boredom, depression, envy, and physical and emotional fatigue. In response to the high incidence of burnout, teachers and professors may use a job diversification approach similar to one used in industry to combat boredom and monotony.…

Sixty-eight kindergarten teachers (from a town in Austria) who had previously labeled selected students in their classes as either aggressive or socially competent completed a questionnaire and were observed in their classroom interactions. The questionnaire yielded biographical and sociographical data of the teachers, assessed teacher attitudes,…

The Invitational Teaching Observation Instrument was developed to extend effective teaching through self-assessment and clinical supervision. Based on the theories of Invitational Education, this test analyzed both personal and professional dimensions of teaching. Items reflected research on effective teaching and were cross-validated with two…