The effectiveness of teacher evaluation is enhanced when teachers and principals view evaluation in a similar manner. The current process of teacher evaluation, in the selected large urban school district, has been designed to provide a uniform, sequential means of assessing teacher performance. Stages, time lines and evaluation forms have been standardized and distributed. Although the instruments of evaluation have been developed and are utilized system-wide, there appears to be much diversity in the manner in which evaluation is perceived by both principals and teachers. The purpose of this study is to examine the various aspects of teacher evaluation, in this district, from the perspective of both elementary school teachers and principals. The method of accessing this information occurred as a result of collecting and compiling data from survey instruments that were constructed for data collection. The instruments were designed to measure both principals' and teachers' perception relative to six identified areas of teacher evaluation, using a Lickert scale. Specific items for the survey were delineated as a result of reviewing the literature on teacher evaluation, examining the existing measurement instruments utilized by the school system and field testing the items. The two surveys (Teachers' Perceptions of Teacher Evaluation and Principals' Perceptions of Teacher Evaluation) were distributed to a representative sample of elementary teachers and principals within the chosen district. This would include approximately 10 principals and 70 teacher participants. It is expected that there will be a significant difference between teachers' and principals' perceptions of the various aspects of teacher evaluation. It is also expected that areas of non-congruence will be identified in order to provide data that could be utilized in developing staff development programs to address these areas.

Although by reputation and performance an effective school, the staff and principal of Adams School in Northtown, Massachusetts sought and won a state-funded grant for school restructuring. Seeking increased autonomy and "more say," the Massachusetts Carnegie Schools Grant Program was seen as a vehicle to facilitate and legitimize the reform-type activities already in progress at the school. The complexity of the restructuring process soon became apparent. Certain staff referred to as "the doubters" questioned the feasibility of restructuring. Lacking a real transfer of power to the school site confirmed the doubters' skepticism. Encountering numerous obstacles, the complex process of restructuring is seen as more analogous to moving though a maze than following a road map. Major elements of restructuring emerge within this school's model. Grade-level teams coordinated through a central school governance team facilitate shared decision-making and planning by principal, teachers, and parents. Students are also empowered through classroom forums and a student council. Despite the auspices of a state-sponsored grant awarded to a good school with strong leadership, motivated staff, strong parental support, and a proven record of instructional effectiveness, successful restructuring is not assured. Lacking the power to effect radical change, people in this setting were limited to small scale "tinkering" rather than restructuring. A summary of data suggests that: (1) Cultural readiness of the community, school district and school site are critical to successful restructuring. A real transfer of power may not be possible without such readiness. (2) Restructuring involves a redefinition of roles and relationships among people--particularly that between teacher and parent; teacher and principal. (3) The opportunity for developing inter-personal relationships among roles can be a valuable by-product of the training process. (4) Inclusion of all "stakeholders" especially central office personnel, school board members, and less-involved parents is essential for successful restructuring. (5) Models of school restructuring developed within The Massachusetts Carnegie Schools Grant Program may be of limited value. Restructuring as a strategy for improving the effectiveness of less successful schools is not demonstrated within this model.

Mathematics curriculum innovation has been launched in Taiwan recently in order to reflect the changing needs of the 21st century. The underlying assumptions of reform are: a learner-centered approach, emphasis on confluent education, and a problem-solving & reasoning approach. Research has revealed that teachers' beliefs can negatively interact with curriculum reform. On the other hand, some studies document that beliefs have little effect on instructional behavior. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate three questions: (1) what are the teachers' beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics in Taiwanese elementary schools and in what ways are teachers' beliefs congruent with the ongoing trend of reform; (2) what is the general picture of teachers' mathematical instructional practices in Taiwanese elementary schools and in what ways are these instructional practices congruent with the ongoing trend of reform; and (3) what is the relationship between teachers' beliefs and their instructional practices? Basically, this study combines qualitative and quantitative methods in collecting and analyzing data. That is, teacher interviews and questionnaires were administered in order to understand teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics while observational checklists and naturalistic field observations were used to portray instructional behavior. The major findings of this study are: (1) Elementary school teachers' beliefs tend to hold with the traditional absorption learning theory and seem incongruent with the undergoing curriculum reform. (2) The instructional practices tend to reflect a traditional teacher-centered classroom and also seem incongruent with the launched reform. (3) Teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning play a vital role in shaping their instructional behavior; the situational constraints merely play a minor role. In light of the above findings, some implications such as teacher education were drawn to broaden teachers' beliefs.

The purpose of this study is to create in the Bilingual Puerto Rican Teachers an awareness of his/her role as a transmitter of Puerto Rican cultural values. This dissertation proposes the development of a Teaching Handbook which teachers can use to amplify his/her knowledge of his/her own culture and which can serve those teachers that are not Puerto Rican as a learning/teaching guide. The investigator conducted a review of literature which includes: (a) aspects of the culture learned through literature; (b) aspects of the culture not necessarily found in literary sources and is acquired. The investigator presented the results from the findings of the present study that reveal that the majority of Puerto Rican teachers in the United States come here for different reasons. Later they became teachers in different parts of Western Massachusetts. Each one of the teachers agreed that they are and should be transmitters of the culture. Other findings were the fact that some students had problems or cultural shocks in the new country. For example: language, climate, foods and in high school a greater problem communicating with other students and teachers. Those parents that were interviewed agreed that they came to this country to help their children in receiving a better education. Another of the parental worries of those parents that were interviewed, was that their children's adaptation to the new school system was difficult. The parents were concerned that the education of their children should include the Puerto Rican culture. They saw it as something that they could learn in the schools via the teacher. The investigator introduces a model for a handbook to serve as an outline for the transmission of cultural knowledge to Puerto Rican teachers and non-Puerto Rican teachers and the students they teach. It was concluded from the study that through the proposed cultural workshops, bilingual teachers will be able to acquire a wider knowledge of Puerto Rican culture. Through the handbook s/he will get a clearer idea of the possible way in which s/he can communicate this knowledge to his/her Puerto Rican students.

Thirteen low-skilled sixth graders enrolled in 4 classes in 3 different schools were identified using a combination of teachers' rankings and skill test scores. The thirteen were interviewed both individually and in small groups, and were observed over two contiguous units of their physical education class. Use of the Brophy-Good Dyadic Interaction recording instrument was interspersed throughout the study. All low-skilled students experienced physical education classes as humiliating, frustrating, embarrassing, and barely tolerable. They were subjected to continuous criticism and harassment by their peers--abuse which their teachers did not challenge or act to limit. Success was largely attributed to previous experience and luck. It was rarely attributed to instruction and practice. Failure was attributed to inability or lack of effort. Students devised a number of behaviors to reduce continued failure, from announcing failure in advance, to avoiding the learning task. The professional rhetoric of "providing a positive learning environment for all" and "having fun in physical education class" must be re-examined in light of this study.

Numerous national reform reports have been written about the quality of teacher education. Improving the skills of beginning teachers has been a major area of concern to educators and legislators. In order to address the issues of improving teacher training, teacher performance and teacher retention, mentor teacher programs have been developed. Since beginning teachers have much to learn about the teaching/learning process, becoming a fully competent teacher can be facilitated during the early stages of professional development by a mentor teacher. Principals have played a critical part in this process. However, there is an absence of literature on their role in the induction of beginning teachers. The purposes of this study were to determine the impact the principal makes in sharing, advancing, and encouraging teacher leadership; as well as, to determine what mentor teachers felt were effective leadership strategies employed by their principals as teachers assumed a leadership role in their schools. The mentor teachers and principals of the sixteen schools who participated in a pilot mentor teacher program in a large urban district in Massachusetts were the subjects of this study. Fourteen principals and twenty-one mentor teachers completed questionnaires. In order to gain additional data and insights beyond the questionnaire responses, interviews were conducted with three of the fourteen principals. The researcher concluded: the pilot mentor teacher program functioned in isolation within many of the participating schools; principals were supportive of the concept that shared leadership can successfully contribute to enhanced training and preparation for new teachers; and mentor teachers did not positively view the contributions of their principals to the program. The support and involvement of the principal and a school climate conducive to schoolwide sharing and learning are important to the success of a mentor teacher program. Continued documentation of the effect of mentor teacher programs and the role of the principal will be essential as experienced teachers help new teachers improve the practice of teaching.

This study addressed two questions: (a) In what ways do elementary school teachers describe the interaction of their personal lives and teaching careers over time, and (b) what aspects of their job structure do elementary school teachers identify as affecting their personal-life/career interactions. Eighteen experienced elementary school teachers (a physical education specialist, a specialist from another subject area, and a classroom teacher from each of six different schools) participated in two sixty-minute interviews. To aid in reflection, participants completed two graphic assignments (a "rainbow" of life roles and a teaching timeline) prior to the initial interview. In the first session, they were asked to tell the stories of their lives and careers. During the second interview, they were asked to respond to a series of open-ended questions, designed to clarify and extend information from the first interview. Audio-tapes of the interviews were transcribed, the data were unitized, and categories were developed to reflect the content of each unit. Using the categories, themes were identified which displayed aspects of life/career interaction which were shared by all teachers, which differentiated among the three groups of teachers, or which were unique to particular groups. The most salient personal-life/career interaction themes drawn from all teachers included: (a) work spillover, (b) limited financial resources, (c) increased understanding of children through parenting, (d) changes in teaching due to personal growth, (e) valuing time with family, and (f) job security. Themes common to all specialists included: (a) career choice based on attraction to subject matter as well as to teaching, (b) valuing the opportunities to teach all students in the school and to teach each student over the course of several years, (c) frustration with class scheduling, and (d) lack of collegial respect for their educational contributions. Physical educators were also frustrated by physical elements such as weather and facilities, as well by having to cope with the poor teaching of colleagues. Themes unique to classroom teachers included (a) pressure to produce good test scores, (b) frustration with short-lived educational reforms, and (c) the large amounts of time spent grading papers. These data offer new perspectives on elementary school teaching and provide support for specific changes in preservice education, inservice education, and elementary school structure.

Within the period of each student teaching experience a series of transfers takes place in which responsibility for decision-making in instruction and classroom management is shifted from the cooperating teacher to the student teacher and culminates with the assumption of the role of teacher by the student teacher. The purpose of this study was to investigate the transfer of instruction and classroom control and the degrees of freedom allowing the student teacher to make decisions during the preservice clinical experience. Six categories were used as a framework to discipline the collection of the data: Time Sequence, Readiness, Formal Communication--Conferences, Informal Communication--Cues and Signs, Degrees of Freedom and Proximity, and Legal and Moral Responsibilities. The methodology involved three phases of investigation: oral interviews, classroom observations, and questionnaires. The population in Phases 1 and 2 consisted of ten matched pairs of cooperating teachers and student teachers who were interviewed and observed. In Phase 3 nine cooperating teachers and eight student teachers comprised a different, non-matched population who responded to two types of questionnaires. All participants were from elementary preservice clinical experiences in western Massachusetts. Collected data from the three phases were qualitatively analyzed to identify significant factors relative to the transfer of control. Cooperating teachers and student teachers had no personal explicit time sequence to grant or receive the transfer of control but believed an implicit pattern existed. Student teachers had no personal criteria for readiness to assume control but determined it by personal successes in classroom management, lesson ownership, and pupil respect. Cooperating teachers had an implicit pattern for determining readiness based on these factors. Conferencing varied in length and content; reflective thinking and philosophical discussion were not major components. Cues and signs were important indicators of the progress of the transfer of control. Student teachers needed to experience degrees of freedom to make decisions as they assumed control. They believed the cooperating teacher's proximity affected the mode of instruction and limited the degrees of freedom in their instructional and management styles. Legal questions limited the latitude of the student teacher's risk-taking and decision-making potential.

The purposes of this dissertation were to compare the creative thinking of kindergarten students from three different child rearing backgrounds who participated in two curriculum approaches. Another purpose was to identify suggestions for promoting and developing creative thinking in children. The three child rearing styles examined were: democratic, autocratic and overprotective. The two curriculum approaches were: Readiness Activities Oriented Curriculum and the Academic Oriented Curriculum. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking Figural Form A was translated and adapted to suit Thai students (Rungsinan, 1978). The Torrance Tests yielded three measures: fluency, originality and elaboration. The Kindergarten Curriculum Evaluation Form developed by the researcher was used to identify fourteen kindergarten schools that participated in the study. The Questionnaire Concerning Child Rearing Practices was adapted from the questionnaire developed by Thumnut (1979) and revised by Kiattikul (1988). A total of three hundred and seventeen children participated in the study. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance procedures. The following findings emerged from the study: (1) There were no significant differences in fluency, originality and elaboration scores among students from different child rearing backgrounds. (2) The students in the readiness kindergarten programs scored significantly higher on fluency, originality and elaboration than students in the academic kindergartens. (3) The measure of elaboration emerged as a variable which was highly significant and may be of practical significance. In promoting and developing creative thinking in kindergarten students, the researcher suggests the use of brainstorming, webbing and pretending as techniques to help students produce new ideas and form relationships between concepts, to encourage their imagination and to involve students with minimal amounts of direction, exposition and instruction.

Since the 1970's collaborations, partnerships, and networks between schools and universities have been increasing. As Goodlad points out we no longer have to justify the value of school/university partnerships, but it is the descriptions of the processes that are lacking (Goodlad in Sirotnik & Goodlad, 1988). I have studied a partnership among a public elementary school, a university school of education, and two cultural institutions. The focus of the partnership was on the arts as the entry point to broader and deeper approaches to teaching and learning. A review of literature related to school/university partnerships and artists in the schools and the integration of the arts in the curriculum provides a foundation for this study. The case study design using in-depth and informal interviewing and participant observation was developed from a review of the nature of the phenomena to be studied. This inquiry was guided by the question: What factors, circumstances or environments within the partnership process foster the development of all participants as learners? The study examines the planning year and one year of implementation. During the planning year of this study I focused on an overview of the development of the three year art partnership plan and the efforts to lay the foundation for implementation of the plan. A description of the work with artists, university consultant, and the Cultural Education Collaborative's summer institute in the arts serves to show how that foundation was built. During the year of implementation the study focuses on the process of two pilot teachers as they interfaced with the components of the partnership program: the infusion of the arts in the curriculum, modeled by artists in residence, and experiential learning opportunities aided by interns and a consultant from the University School of Education partner. Conclusions drawn from the data indicate that the school community was energized by the involvement of community resources such as artists, consultants, interns et al. when their involvement was relevant to the interests and stated goals of the participants. This school/university (school of education) partnership provided a way for teachers and interns to reflect on their practice at their own pace. When participants come together open to ideas different from their own, and open to experiences new to them, personal and professional growth occurred. The arts were a vehicle for getting in touch with their creative potential. Recommendations for further research are presented.