Across the educational systems of the world, few issues have received more attention in recent years than the problem of ensuring that elementary and secondary-school classrooms are all staffed with adequately qualified teachers. The objective of this report is to present the results from a collaborative, comparative study, that examined the preparation and qualifications of elementary and secondary teachers in six nations and one autonomous region: China, Hong Kong , Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. Unlike other recent cross-national teacher studies, this project adopted a relatively specific focus on one key issue linked to the performance and quality of teachers--the qualifications and preparation of teachers. The objective of the study was to compare how each system itself defines teacher qualifications and standards and then to address the question: how well are the different educational systems succeeding in ensuring all students are taught by qualified teachers? The study addressed this overarching issue by examining comparative data from each of the seven educational systems on three specific research questions: (1) What are the preparation requirements and standards to become a teacher?; (2) What are the levels of qualifications of the current teaching force?; and (3) What proportions of teachers are not qualified in the subjects they teach? The report is organized into the following chapters: (1) A Comparative Study of Teacher Preparation and Qualifications in Six Nations (Richard M. Ingersoll); (2) The Qualifications of the Teaching Force in China (Ding Gang and Sun Meilu); (3) The Qualifications of the Teaching Force in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Kwok Chan Lai); (4) The Qualifications of the Teaching Force in Japan (Hidenori Fujita with Walter Putnam Dawson); (5) The Quality and Qualifications of the Teaching Force in the Republic of Korea (Ee-gyeong Kim); (6) The Qualifications of the Teaching Force: Data from Singapore (Steven K. S. Tan and Angela F. L. Wong with S. Gopinathan, Kim Chuan Goh, Isabella Y. F. Wong, and Kong Hong Ong); (7) The Qualifications of the Teaching Force in Thailand (Pruet Siribanpitak and Siriporn Boonyananta); and (8) The Preparation and Qualifications of the Teaching Force in the United States (Richard M. Ingersoll). (Contains 55 tables and 6 figures.) [Individual chapters contain references.]