The goal is to provide highly qualified teachers to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse pool of students. The question is how to do that. Although there have been a number of variations in the path to a career in teaching, only a few paths typically exist at any point in time. The traditional route finds high school graduates attending four…

This article presents reflections and guidance concerning assessment literacy in teacher education. Previous inadequacies in teacher training in educational assessment highlight the need for teachers to be assessment literate. Assessment literacy consists of an individual's understanding of the fundamental assessment concepts and procedures deemed…

A "personalized" staff development project conducted by the University of Georgia's Department of Professional Laboratory Experiences and local schools used the Teacher Performance Assessment Instruments (TPAI) to assess beginning teachers' latent competencies and indicate potential areas of improvement. Both the TPAI and the staff…

Expectations, often idealistic, of beginning teachers are listed and described in the areas of the teaching experience, classroom activities, teacher concerns, teacher preparation, teacher-parent-student relationships, teacher evaluations, professional status, workload, teacher administrator relationship, support services, and school organization.…

Discusses the connection of service learning competencies to nationally recognized beginning teacher standards, such as Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), providing two examples of strategies that various teacher education programs have used to infuse service learning pedagogy into courses while addressing INTASC…

Findings from Project CREDIT (Certification Renewal Experiences Designed to Improve Teaching) indicate that a multiple support system combining mentors, peers, and university personnel can reduce some complications of first-year teachers. This intern program for 20 first-year Indiana teachers extends teacher education into the first year of…

Ten suggestions for weaving information on gifted students into various preservice experiences include: a unit in other education courses, a guest lecture in colleagues' classes, a course project, guided reflections in observation and/or field experiences, short course for credit, independent study, workshops, local conference presentations,…