The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, founded in 1987, serves as a clearinghouse for National Board Teacher Certification whereby individuals must demonstrate competence and professional teaching excellence through a two-part process. Accordingly, this particular advanced level of teacher certification has perpetuated the…

In this article, we examine how the federal, state, and district policy environments affect the decisions and work of principals and teachers. Specifically, we examine principal and teacher perceptions of policies and practices focused on: (1) increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers; (2) recruiting qualified teachers; (3) distributing…

While much has been written about the process of employee selection in other occupations, there has been little discussion on the process and tools of teacher selection and why it occurs as it does. To understand this question, we conduct an extensive literature review in which we compare teacher hiring with hiring in other occupations. We also…

Increasingly school leaders are being challenged to take a more instructionally focused role in their schools. This paper tracks the leadership challenges through a change process involving an assistant principal and a group of teachers, supported by a consultant, through four phases of an action research project. During the project the…

This article provides a critical analysis of the teacher leadership literature. It considers teacher leadership within the context of contemporary leadership theory, focusing particularly upon distributed leadership. The article explores different interpretations and definitions of the term "teacher leadership" and considers the implications for…

Although teacher learning and collaboration are repeatedly linked to school improvement, surprisingly little is known about the facet of collaboration involving the dissemination or sharing of teacher knowledge; that is, what teachers share, why and with whom they share it, or how and when they share what they have learned. This article describes…

Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) refers to the collective perception that teachers in a given school make an educational difference to their students over and above the educational impact of their homes and communities. Significant positive relationships were found between CTE and student achievement on the grade 8 math, writing, and English…

Collective teacher efficacy refers to teacher perceptions that they constitute an effective instructional team, capable of bringing about learning in students. Previous research demonstrates that a school staff with a strong sense of collective efficacy is likely to generate high student achievement. This study of 2,170 teachers in 141 elementary…

The current paper reports the findings of a study that sought to identify Israeli prospective teachers' perspectives about educational leadership in relation to "masculine" and "feminine" leadership orientations. The first purpose of the study was to expose prospective elementary teachers' conceptions about the "ideal" principal. The second was to…

A national random sample of senior high school principals evaluated the paper credentials of hypothetical teacher candidates varying both in national origin (Asian, Hispanic, or Native American) and in chronological age (control condition, 29 years old, or 49 years old) for a focal teacher position either in their building (proximal) or in their…

The paper examines the perceptions of future and current primary school teachers in Greece regarding the effectiveness of their school leaders. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through questionnaires completed by 126 future and 94 current teachers. According to the findings, future teachers were less positive than their current…

The main goal of the present study was to investigate the perceptions of Cypriot teachers on the management of small primary schools. From the wide range of issues identified in the literature, seven areas were chosen for examination: management and leadership; teachers in small schools; advice and support; pupils in small schools; curriculum and…