Study examined the extent to which commitment to teaching related to students' professional orientations, including motives for entering teaching, perceptions about appropriate teacher behavior, and personal and social values. A factor analysis revealed three underlying orientations: a sense of calling, a service ethic, and perceived legitimacy of…

Study investigated teacher preferences for certain modes of helping students (enactive attainment, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and anxiety reduction). Preservice and inservice teachers read six scenarios of students with learning difficulties and ranked helping responses. Overall, they preferred verbal persuasion; they tended to…

Researchers measured the constructs of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for college students' learning, examining self-assessed motivation, composite ACT score, and grade point average (GPA). Extrinsic motivation more strongly (though negatively) predicted GPA. There was a significant positive relationship between GPA and intrinsic motivation.…

Study investigated the extent to which predominantly white teachers in predominantly African-American schools made consistent curricular and instructional decisions reflecting educational value orientations. The Values Orientation Inventory examined teachers' priorities for learning. Most teachers considered the social reconstruction value…

Researchers studied the impact of the Madeline Hunter school improvement approach, following students of teachers who had or had not completed development workshops and received coaching and feedback. There were significant teacher-perceived gains in implementation; student achievement scores rose but were not solely attributable to the Hunter…

Study investigated attrition at a nonselective magnet elementary school over 5 years, examining 11 variables which might influence students' withdrawal. Data analysis indicated the school proportionally retained students of varying backgrounds and abilities while serving a diverse urban population, fostering equal educational opportunities. (SM)

Matthew Arnold (1822-88) believed no branch of knowledge was important enough to stress at school while excluding others. He recommended including sciences in a broad curriculum. Arnold believed the broad-ranging curricula in certain European countries effectively encouraged a modernity which England, with its one-sided studies, could not emulate.…

Effects of an applicant's information management strategy while responding to a job application item requesting illegal candidate information and moderating effects of applicant sex and position were studied for 12 hypothetical school job applicants with 108 graduate student raters. The interactions of strategy, sex, and position have important…

The relationship between compensatory and noncompensatory information integration and the intensity of the halo effect in performance rating was studied. Seventy University of British Columbia (Canada) students rated 27 teacher profiles. That the way performance information is mentally integrated affects the intensity of halo error was supported.…

Twenty-six laws or guidelines, distilled from the present author's experience in university administration, are presented as guides for personnel selection and management. The guidelines discussed relate to instructional effectiveness and administrative efficiency. (SLD)

Methods of teacher evaluation in public school districts in Ohio were studied in a 272-district sample. Comparison of data with seven theoretical models from the literature on teacher evaluation indicates that 84 percent of responding districts use a traditional Trait Model (teaching in terms of traits) to evaluate the teacher. (SLD)

The proposition that teacher perceptions of the fairness of their workloads are related to varying levels of commitment, job satisfaction, and morale was studied for 472 high school teachers. Results from the mail survey support the proposition. Implications for administrative practice are discussed. (SLD)

A study of differences among 29 secondary school teachers rated by 501 secondary school students, other teachers, and administrators as master teachers or rated as not-so-masterful found no significant differences in teacher locus of control, pupil control ideology, and self-concept but did find differences in personality factors. (SLD)

"Context-Related Characteristics of Expert Science Teaching" is one of the projects funded through the Center for Research on Educational Accountability and Teacher Evaluation (CREATE). This description of the project's data collection and field implementation provides an update on research on the science teacher as facilitator of learning. (SLD)

A collegial model of teacher evaluation in which peer teachers engage in examining goals and their achievement is proposed to replace the traditional deficit model of teacher evaluation in which principals judge teachers' faults. Implementation of a collegial model will be time consuming but ultimately worthwhile. (SLD)