One purpose of this study was to determine those elements of effective teaching which were held in common by researchers in the field of teacher effectiveness. A review of the work of sixteen research studies and reviews of studies from 1984 to 1990 clearly identified clarity of instruction, task orientation, use of varied and appropriate instructional strategies, positive teacher-student interaction, appropriate and timely feedback and evaluation, and monitoring student behavior as producing higher student achievement and more desirable student attitude and conduct. Assignment of homework, having high expectations for students, and using a range of questioning techniques were identified by only. 38% of the research studies, but were so strongly identified that these elements were also included in the study.The second phase of the study involved contacting school districts in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio which contained schools that had been honored as effective schools by the United States Department of Education School Recognition Program and districts identified by a table of random numbers which contained no schools which had been so honored. Teacher evaluation instruments and instructions to evaluators were requested from each district. Ninety-three usable replies were received. The evaluation instruments and instructions to evaluators were analyzed to ascertain whether the identified elements of effective teaching were included in the documents.The following conclusions were drawn:1. Professional literature does identify elements of effective teaching which have been frequently supported by research.2. Identified elements of effective teaching which produce higher student achievement and more desirable student attitude and conduct do appear on evaluation instruments and instructions to evaluators in the midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.3. Sufficient evidence does not exist to conclude that the identified elements of effective teaching appear more often in evaluation instruments and instructions to evaluators in school districts which have school designated as effective schools than from comparable school districts which have not achieved such designation. / Department of Educational Leadership

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The investigation of expertise in teaching has followed the lead of research in domains other than education in that it has focused on the cognitive processes that define expertise. This study has shifted the focus to the actual classroom teaching, comparing expert, novice, and postulant (those without pedagogical training) teachers. Each of six teachers (two experts, two novices, and two postulants) taught the same unfamiliar lesson to the same group of students, in the same classroom. These half hour lessons were videotaped. Two aspects make this study unique. First, the teaching situation was controlled to the extent that each teacher taught the same lesson to the same students. This was done to try to separate expertise from the experience gained from teaching a familiar lesson to students known to the teacher. The second aspect pertains to the method of analysis. Instead of viewing these tapes from just one perspective, four perspectives were used. Observers knowledgeable in the areas of subject matter knowledge and delivery, connoisseurship and criticism, nonverbal communication, and teacher evaluation instrumentation viewed each of the six tapes and analyzed what they saw from their individual perspectives. These analyses were then content analyzed by the author. Results and discussion were first analyzed for each perspective separately, comparing the three groups of teachers for similarities and differences. This was followed by a discussion of similarities and differences among the four perspectives, particularly focusing on the interplay of the four perspectives within the three groups of teachers. A key point made was the diversity of information provided by each perspective and the unique insights provided from the use of all four.

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The purposes of this descriptive investigation were (l) to construct a reliable instrument for assessing attitudes toward teaching of high school teachers, and (2) to determine if there was a difference in attitudes toward teaching between those high school teachers who were and those who were not involved in a career ladder/merit pay pilot program. Frederick Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory served as the theoretical basis for the investigation. Analysis of work motivation indicates that motivation factors may be classified in two categories, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation emanates from needs within the individual. Intrinsic motivators include the following: achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement and growth possibilities. Extrinsic motivators include the following: organizational policies, salary, working conditions, status, job security, effects on personal life, and interpersonal relations. / Ed. D.

Enhancing the cultural diversity of faculty has emerged as a prominent issue in the 1990's. While Black, Hispanic, and American Indians have made incremental gains in terms of their representation in majority institutions, they remain clustered in the lower ranks of the faculty and generally take longer to achieve tenure. Efforts to increase the representation of minority faculty have focused on intensified recruitment, with less attention paid to further career development once a minority individual has achieved faculty status. The research presented herein explores the evaluation, promotion and tenure process of a Research I university to determine the structural and ideological barriers to minority faculty advancement. The research focuses on concepts of merit, excellence, and quality that form the cornerstones to evaluation standards, and the values, attitudes and behavioral expectations that underlie those standards. Using critical theory as the conceptual framework that drives the inquiry, the findings indicate that the pervasive ideology of merit, being universalistic in nature, does not easily accommodate diversity and trivializes racial, class, and gender issues while perpetuating a system of structured inequality.

The problem of this study was to analyze the utilization of teacher competency testing in the eleven states that originally enacted legislation requiring teacher competency testing. A questionnaire was developed, validated, pretested, and finally submitted to state and local superintendents in eleven states. Thirty-three questionnaires were returned representing 75 percent of the questionnaires mailed. Responses were reported in percentage tables. An analysis of variance program was conducted on all data to determine whether the perceptions of the state and local superintendents were significantly different on each question. An analysis of the findings of this study led to the following conclusions. 1. The benefits of teacher testing to state agencies, schools of education, school districts, and society outweigh the disadvantages of increased budgets and larger educational bureaucracies and the possibility of teacher shortages. 2. Teacher competency testing procedures are used primarily for entrance to and graduation from teacher education programs and for certification purposes. 3. Characteristics of a comprehensive teacher competency testing program include a written assessment of acquired knowledge, procedures for evaluating an applicant during student teaching, a probationary period prior to permanent certification, additional training or assistance for teachers, and provisions for retaking of failed examinations. 4. Evidence indicates that although state-created tests are desirable, locally-created and nationally-developed tests are utilized in testing programs. 5. Legal problems will be encountered by testing programs in the areas of minority discrimination and cutoff scores, and political opposition from teacher organizations will continue.