The purposes of this study were threefold: (1) to test the assumption that a curriculum study produces change in a school faculty in conservatism-radicalism, in anxiety, in leadership behavior, and in attitude toward the curriculum study; (2) to investigate the relationships between effects of a curriculum study on conservatism-radicalism, anxiety, leadership behavior, attitude toward the curriculum study and age, sex, and years of teaching experience of the teachers; and (3) to create a model from which replications can be made by Texas Education Service Centers.

The purpose of this study was to test a teacher inservice training model which was designed to increase the number and use of hands-on science activities, increase the number of times teachers teach science, and improve students' perceptions of science.

Este estudo foi realizado com os enfermeiros de um hospital universitário da cidade de São Paulo e teve como objetivo conhecer a percepção sobre a avaliação da aprendizagem nos treinamentos desenvolvidos. Para a coleta de dados utilizamos um instrumento contendo a pergunta: qual a sua percepção sobre a avaliação da aprendizagem nos programas de treinamento e desenvolvimento? Os discursos obtidos foram categorizados, segundo o referencial de Bardin, na modalidade análise de conteúdo, numa perspectiva qualitativa. Os resultados mostram que para esses sujeitos, a avaliação da aprendizagem se configura para o ponto que denominamos de avaliação do processo ensino-aprendizagem como um ato processual e permanente, para rever e refletir o passado para se construir o futuro no presente. É através da avaliação que iremos adequar os métodos didáticos às diferentes necessidades individuais, propiciando uma aprendizagem mais satisfatória e que leve a um crescimento integral. Esse processo mostra alguns fatores que dificultam ou impedem a avaliação como o fator tempo, despreparo do avaliador, sentimentos de medo, resignação e ansiedade. Referem-se também quanto à metodologia desenvolvida que inicia no diagnóstico das necessidades de treinamento indo até à questão de aquisição, retenção e transferência do aprendizado a curto e longo prazo. E que o aprendizado se faz nos planos afetivos, motor e cognitivo, sendo a pessoa o agente determinante das mudanças da realidade na qual esta inserida. / This study was made by a group of nurses from a University Hospital located in São Paulo city. The objective is to know the perception of learning valuation in developed trainings. The assessment was gathered by a tool containing a question: What is your perception on learning valuation in the training and developing programs? The answers obtained were set in categories according to BARDIN\'s analysis contents in a qualitative perspective. The results show that to these people, the learning valuation converges to the point we denominate valuation of the teaching-learning process as a processual and permanent act. This act leads us to review and ponderate on the past and build the future in the present. It\'s through the valuation that we can adequate pedagogic methods to the individual different necessities, then after provide a more satisfactory learning taking to a fully development. Such process shows some factors that make more difficult and restrain the valuation as a time factor, unprepared valuators, fear, resignation and anxiety. It also refers to methodology developed, which starts at the diagnostic of training needs and goes up to the acquisition question, retention and transferring of learning for short and long term. And also that learning acts on affective, motor and cognitive levels, being the person the determinant agent responsible for the changes of reality in which this person is involved.

A construção da educação permanente em saúde ultrapassa a existência de uma política de indução, pois essa prática educativa é parte constitutiva do trabalho em todas as dimensões que o compõe: a política, a organização e o cuidado. Ela ocorre no campo da micropolítica do encontro e, por isso, no campo das relações do trabalho vivo em ato. Objetivos: conhecer o processo de educação permanente em saúde no município de Sorocaba, na perspectiva dos profissionais; construir um plano de ações para avaliação de necessidades educativas, na lógica da educação permanente em saúde e planejar uma intervenção educativa, a partir da avaliação de necessidades. Metodologia: Adotamos a pesquisa-ação, considerada uma pesquisa social de cunho qualitativo e por sua coerência com os pressupostos da educação permanente em saúde. A primeira etapa do estudo contemplou 17 entrevistas, pautadas em questões norteadoras, com sete gestores e dez profissionais de saúde, incluindo médicos, dentistas, enfermeiros, técnicos de enfermagem e agentes comunitários de saúde, que atuam nos serviços de saúde do município; os relatos foram submetidos à analise de discurso do sujeito coletivo. A segunda etapa foi desenvolvida a partir de cinco encontros de grupo focal que tiveram a participação de seis técnicos de enfermagem e cinco enfermeiros que atuam na atenção primária à saúde do município. Resultados: Os principais resultados apontam que a percepção de educação permanente em saúde diverge entre os gestores e os trabalhadores; o movimento de educação permanente está acontecendo no município, embora, sem a legitimação necessária para o seu reconhecimento, entretanto, o cenário atual favorece a sua ampliação. Existem desafios para consecução da educação permanente, tais como a necessidade de superar a coexistência de paradigmas educativos contraditórios e de mobilizar potências nas pessoas envolvidas. O plano de ações para avaliação de necessidades educativas foi construído com base na experiência vivida no grupo focal e ancorado nas bases teóricas da educação permanente e obteve avaliação inicial favorável. O planejamento da ação educativa, elaborado pelos integrantes do grupo focal, apresentou como tema a Comunicação prejudicada no ambiente de trabalho, selecionado como prioridade dentre as necessidades. Esta ação envolve gestores, trabalhadores e usuários e consiste em estratégias de baixo custo, aplicáveis em diversos cenários e pautadas em ações simples e potencialmente capazes de qualificar as relações no cotidiano de trabalho. Considerações Finais: A educação permanente é uma prática possível no campo estudado, visto que seus princípios e objetivos têm acontecido de maneira informal e porque encontra, na atual organização administrativa, espaço formal de reconhecimento. Para concretizar esta prática, é preciso, daqui para frente, superar a contradição dos paradigmas coexistentes e avançar nos movimentos de sensibilização para valorização e legitimação do espaço do trabalho como um espaço de educação. O tema Comunicação, escolhido para a ação educativa, é significativo em um cenário de construção de educação dialógica. Este trabalho terá continuidade com a realização da ação ora proposta / The construction of permanent health education goes beyond the existence of an induction policy, as this educational practice is an integral part of the work in all dimensions that compose it: politics, organization and care. It occurs in the field of micro policy of meeting and therefore in the field of live work relationship in action. Objectives: know the process of permanent health education in the city of Sorocaba, from the professionals perspective; build a form of assessment of educational needs in health work subsidized by the premises of permanent health education and plan an educational intervention from the necessities evaluation. Methodology: We adopted the research-action, considered a social research with qualitative approach and also for its consistency with the assumptions of permanent health education. The first stage of the study included 17 interviews based in guided questions with 07 managers and 10 health professionals, including doctors, dentists, nurses, nurse technicians and community health workers who work in the municipal health services; the reports were submitted to discourse analysis of the collective subject. The second stage was developed from 05 focus group meetings that had the participations of six nursing technicians and five nurses who work over the primary attention of municipal health. Results: The main results show that the perception of permanent health education diverges between the managers and the workers; the continuing education action is happening in the city, although without the necessary legitimation for its recognition, on this way, the current scenario favors its expansion. Among the challenges is highlighted the necessity to overcome the coexistence of contradictory educational paradigms and to mobilize the potential in the involved people. The research of educational necessities model was built based on the experience lived in this study, in the results found and grounded on the theorical bases of permanent education. Among the emerged diagnostics, the intervention priority was focused on the Communication, including managers, employees and users. The educational proposal, drawn up by members of the focused group, consists of low cost strategies, applicable in various scenarios and guided by simple actions and potentially able to qualify the daily work relationships. Final Thoughts: The permanent education is a possible practice in the studied field since its principles and objectives has happened informally and thus it founds in the current administrative organization formal space of recognition; it is necessary now to proceed in the mobilization movements, aware the people involved and to overcome the contradiction of coexisting paradigms. The evaluation model of educational needs has shown successful in its application and had favorable initial evaluation. Communication the theme chosen for the educational action is significantly in a dialogical education building scenario that supports the permanent health education. This work will have continuity with the implementation and evaluation of this proposal

The need for inservice training of teachers has increased as the nature of schooling changes, and underlying philosophies, structures and theories undergo revision. An understanding of how teachers perceive inservice courses may assist in designing inservice programs which best meet the needs of education systems, schools and individual teachers. This study examined teachers' perceptions of inservice as it affects them in their schools, and their acceptance of different content and structures of inservice models. It also examined different groups within the teacher sample, to establish whether differences in gender, the area of teaching they are involved in, their years of teaching experience, or the number of inservice courses they attend affect their perceptions. The subjects for the study were a group of Kindergarten to Year 12 teachers from randomly sampled schools in the Western Region of New South Wales Department of School Education. The survey was completed by 304 respondents and a randomly selected sub-sample participated in a semi-structured interview. Results of the study shows generally that teachers do value the impact of inservice courses, both in the classroom and on their own sense of professional development, and that they have preferences for particular content and models of inservice courses.

The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions of former beginning agriscience teachers and to explore the relationships between these perceptions, the characteristics of former beginning agriscience teachers, work satisfaction, work-life balance, and their reasons for leaving the profession. Information was gathered from former secondary agriscience teachers across Texas who left the profession during the 2001-2 through 2005-6 academic years. A survey instrument was created specifically for this study through which information about perceived work satisfaction, work-life balance, effect of work-life on attrition, and demographic characteristics of the former beginning agriscience teachers was gathered. Data were analyzed using descriptive and correlational statistics. For this population, work satisfaction, work-life balance, and teacher attrition were not found to differentiate among demographic and career characteristics: age, gender, ethnicity, employment, salary, teacher training institution, years of experience, agriscience department size, hours on the job, or FFA area association. The results suggested evidence of an inverse relationship between work satisfaction and beginning agriscience teacher attrition as well as an inverse relationship between work-life balance and agriscience teacher attrition. Nearly half of all respondents reported the wanting of balance between professional work and personal life as their chief reason for leaving the profession. Closely following this reason were the placement of students in agriscience classes who did not choose to be in the elective courses and too much time away from family. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents offered the recommendation to set a maximum student enrollment per class period and to decrease the number of class preparations/course sections taught by beginning teachers. Over half of the respondents made the recommendation to share the load of shows and contests equally among teachers and to increase the number of teachers in the agriscience department. To improve the preparation and retention of agriscience teachers, two-thirds of the respondents recommended a salary increase. The recommendation following salary and given by nearly half of respondents was to provide mentor teachers. And, one-third of respondents offered the recommendation for more follow-ups from university teacher trainers.

Faculty development is a means by which institutions can assist faculty in addressing the challenges they face each day in the classroom. Certainly the importance of faculty development is never more evident than within community colleges where access is provided to all students through an open-door admission policy which often produces a more diverse student body creating numerous institutional challenges. Overtime, on many campuses, faculty development practices have come to play a prominent role in attending to these challenges. This study: (a) examined faculty development practices offered in the last three years by Floridas 22 public community colleges and determined if the total number of different practices offered as well as the different types of practices were related to institutional size as measured by the number of full-time faculty (b) assessed and compared the relative perceived value of these practices as viewed by full-time faculty, faculty development practitioners, and academic administrators in these institutions, and (c) assessed and compared the relative perceived value of faculty development practices as viewed by full-time faculty within six different discipline areas. An original web-based questionnaire was used to gather data from the chief academic officers, faculty development practitioners, and full-time faculty at Floridas 22 public community colleges. Chief Academic Officers of 18 of the institutions reported that all 42 faculty development practices included in the survey were offered by at least one institution in the last three years. Results also revealed clearly that on all campuses, many full-time faculty were unaware that these practices were offered. No significant relationship was found between the total number of practices offered and the number of full-time faculty employed by institution. A relationship was noted between institutional size and the cluster of faculty development practices labeled general teaching enhancement practices. The mean perceived value by each respondent group on 42 faculty development practices reported three of six clusters revealed significant differences between fulltime faculty and chief academic officers. The perceived value ratings of faculty across six different discipline groups were observed for each of the six clusters of faculty development practices. Implications for future research were identified.

School Psychologists may be well-suited to provide Professional Learning (PL) to assist schools in meeting increased student standards, responding to demands for accountability, and meeting the needs of a diversifying population. School psychologists possess a depth and breadth of knowledge and skills; and, certain aspects of the school psychologist role (e.g., flexibility in service delivery and scheduling) may enable them to reap the potential benefits of broader impact and preventive focus through PL. Little is known about the PL practices of school psychologists due to a lack of research. This study attempts to fill the research gap by exploring the perceptions and practices of school psychologists as related to providing PL. The research identifies situational and personal variables that might contribute to the likelihood of providing PL as a service. Finally, motivations for provid­ing PL and levels of satisfaction derived from the provision of PL are explored. The survey method for this study consisted of a three stage recursive process in which earlier stages informed modifications to later stages based on feedback. First, interviews informed the construction of an initial survey. The survey was piloted with two consecutive groups and amended to assist with clarification. The final survey was sent to a stratified, random, national sample of practicing school psychologists. Descriptive statistics were used to describe PL practices, the personal and situational variables under investigation, motivations for providing PL and satisfaction derived from PL delivery. Inferential statistics were used to investigate relationships between personal and situational variables and PL delivery.

The purpose of this study is to understand the opportunities for professional learning teachers encounter over the span of their careers. I conduct two qualitative case studies of mid-career teachers from Ontario, Canada to obtain insights into their teacher development experiences over their first eight years in the teaching profession. The analysis of interviews conducted during this period led me to identify four learning opportunities that were significant for the participants: mentoring at the beginning of the career, learning from and with colleagues, mandated collaborative learning, and part-time graduate studies. The teachers highlight the limits and possibilities of these opportunities considering their professional needs and contexts. Drawing on these findings, some practical recommendations for the design and implementation of teacher development programs are suggested.

Diss. Linköping : Univ., 2001.