Reviews of professional literature identify characteristics of effective staff development programs and inservice activities. Purposes for staff development include: pedagogical growth and understanding and discovery of self as well as cognitive, theoretical, professional, and career development. (DF)

This study assessed the effectiveness of the Alliance Summer Geography Institute's model in promoting teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Teacher surveys and evaluations of subsequent inservices indicated the institute enhanced both types of knowledge. Resulting inservices allowed teachers to pass knowledge along to a…

Describes a two-year, collaborative, university-school district teacher induction program in which beginning teachers' classroom performance was assessed using a behavioral observation instrument. Participants made significant gains, with first-year gains resulting from improvements in classroom organization and second-year gains related to…

Teacher educators can exploit a variety of types of teacher narratives to help develop new and veteran teachers. This paper explains the significance of the second self and details five narrative forms (the narratives of social criticism, apprenticeship, reflective practice, journey, and hope). A final section describes how to use narratives of…

Describes the PEERS (Promoting Educational Excellence Regionally and Statewide) academy, a series of two-week professional development workshops to model best practices in K-12 science and mathematics teaching and to encourage more constructivist teaching approaches. Participants completed program evaluations and a followup study involving…

Describes the development of a program fostering prospective and practicing elementary school teachers' research on their science-teaching practices, discussing the science-education community's recognition of the importance of teacher research, examining beliefs underlying development of the program, describing the program's setting, summarizing…

Describes a partnership among English-education faculty members and secondary English teachers, arguing that a multisite, discipline-based professional-development faculty provides an alternative for secondary-level Professional Development School principles-in-action. The paper discusses reform, departmentalization of high school and college…

Evaluated a professional development program for helping middle school teachers respond to changes resulting from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Curriculum Standards. Surveys indicated that teachers who completed the two graduate courses combining content and pedagogy had a large increase in their understanding of and beliefs in…

Describes a study of a staff development project in multicultural education involving teachers from two contiguous school districts, highlighting structural constraints to change. Interviews and observations indicated staff development for multicultural education should be part of a whole-school reorganization rather than a separate activity to…

Discusses the effect of inservice and preservice education emphasizing the educational needs of limited-English- proficient students, examining a study of the effects of English language proficiency on teachers' assessment of students' understanding. Results indicated that despite inservice education, teachers did not accommodate students' needs…