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 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…

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…

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…

High-stakes standardized testing cannot be considered a reform tool for increasing student achievement. Teaching quality is critical in student achievement. Teachers can become powerful agents in raising students' academic achievement levels, regardless of common barriers (e.g., poverty and bilingualism). The extreme focus on high-stakes testing…

In this article, we consider the efficacy of criticality in cultural context for transformative teacher education. We present data about how a small purposive sample of educators who participated in a culturally based university course found the experience to be pivotal in their personal and professional development. For this article we ask: (a)…