Outlines the purposes of three predominant kinds of master's degree programs for teachers in the United States: the Master of Arts in Teaching, traditional master's programs, and practitioners' master's programs that are designed to meet the professional development needs of experienced, committed classroom teachers. The paper discusses issues…

Traces the progression of professional development via formal degree programs from preservice through doctoral study. Interviews with doctoral students highlighted their motivation for undertaking doctoral studies and perceptions of the impact of doctoral studies on professional development and opportunities. Students recognized the benefits of…

Reviews teacher professional development in the United States and Japan, discussing similarities and differences. Faced with increasingly diverse and rapidly changing societies, both counties recognize flaws in their current systems and want to reform teacher education by finding ways of revitalizing professional development. The paper notes that…

Examined a process for unifying two teacher self-efficacy scales, providing a common metric for communicating and comparing results. Data from 118 education students indicated that items from the two scales defined a unidimensional construct. Correlations between person measures from the two scales demonstrated their strengths for measuring…

Investigates the implementation of a project for fostering information and communication technology (ICT)-based integrated learning environments in Hong Kong schools. Overall, effective ICT integration requires substantial thinking about curricular practice and appropriate teacher training. ICT must provide students with varied experiences and…

This year-long study exposed preservice elementary teachers in Fiji to pedagogy based on a constructivist view of learning in order to improve their content knowledge and provide them with greater confidence to teach science. Qualitative and quantitative analysis indicated that the constructivist-based teaching approach led to improved learning,…

Addresses how teaching quality and student performance can be promoted, offering a blueprint for teacher evaluation, applicable to both regular and special education, based on differentiated supervision and evaluation as well as metacognitive reflection. The paper discusses the pitfalls of misusing teacher evaluation criteria and explains how…

India has established district institutes of education and training (DIETs) to improve the quality of elementary education. These institutions use of the Lab Area approach, which focuses on innovative ideas and experiments related to elementary education and teacher development. Studies show that this approach has a positive impact. This paper…

This quantitative study used the Learning/Adoption Trajectory model of technology adoption as a scaffold to investigate whether a faculty adoption level of instructional technology in the College of Education (COE) at a large midwestern university in the US can be predicted by the faculty members' responses to questionnaire items in four areas:…

The purpose of this study was to determine if modeling by university professors and practicum and cooperating teachers was related to preservice teachers' perceptions of their computer technology skills and if preservice teachers' use of technology in academic and other settings was related to those perceptions. Seventy-nine preservice teacher…

This study compared student learning outcomes and student perceptions of and satisfaction with the learning process between two sections of the same class--a web-based section and a traditional face-to-face (f2f) section. Using a quasi-experimental design, students were randomly assigned to the two course sections. Group equivalency was…

Teacher educators have a dual responsibility. They must not only deliver the content of their courses but also model the pedagogical beliefs and instructional strategies they espouse. Perhaps no area more explicitly demonstrates the difference between "talking the talk" and "walking the walk" than the integration of technology into teacher…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the ways elementary teachers use computer technology for instructional purposes and the factors that influence their use of computers. The population consisted of recent graduates from the elementary teacher preparation program at a mid-Atlantic university. Data were gathered using a survey…

Much of preservice teacher education at the undergraduate level is based on indirect links between those preparing to teach and those who spend their days in schools. This article describes two kinds of direct links based in the culminating courses required for state certification to teach at the secondary level through an undergraduate teacher…

The classroom computer is no longer confined to a box on the desk. Mobile handheld computing devices have evolved into powerful and affordable learning tools. Handheld technologies are changing the way people access and work with information. The use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs or handhelds) has been an evolving part of the business world…