Documented an elementary school that implemented student portfolios as port of a comprehensive school reform effort. Findings indicated that portfolios were an important mechanism through which teachers came to deeper understanding of their professional practices. Teachers began to recognize changes in classroom practice and school-wide…

This article identifies the social, political, and educational influences that have contributed to the popularity of formal teacher induction and mentor programs, noting advantages and disadvantages and offering support for an alternative approach to induction grounded in the conception of teaching as a moral, political, and intellectual…

Identifies issues that need to be addressed in developing effective teacher induction and mentor programs, including providing beginning teachers with reduced teaching loads, multiple opportunities to teach the same content, support from peers and experienced colleagues, and formative evaluation that differs from the summative evaluation of…

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…

Describes a conceptual framework that integrates teacher cognitive, critical, and personal characteristics; the framework serves to guide the development of reflective decision making, showing teacher educators how to form effective teachers. The model's collegial environment encourages efficacy, flexibility, consciousness, and social…

Examined how fifth-year teachers from an innovative preservice program resolved significant issues during their first teaching year. Interviews in their first and fifth years produced case studies that described teachers, contexts, interactions between teachers and contexts, and teacher beliefs and practices, providing important information for…

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 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…

Describes Millersville University's Keystone Project, 1 of 11 Pennsylvania partnerships of school districts and teacher education institutions to create interdisciplinary curriculum projects based on national and state standards. Middle school and university faculty cooperatively planned and implemented the project. Using state and national…

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…

Educational reform networks are well-suited to utilizing new technology and institutional arrangements. They are flexible and innovative and can create collaborative environments and develop agendas that grow and change with their participants. Teacher educators participating in these learning networks help recreate the meaning of scholarship…