The purpose of this article is to offer an analysis of factors related to providing support and guidance to beginning special educators and to recommend directions for research, practice, and policy. The authors summarize the empirical studies pertaining to induction for special educators. They also describe key features of effective programs, summarize state-level policy initiatives and offer recommendations.

The review examines ways in which the mentors of trainee teachers can use research as a means of questioning, understanding and improving their own practices. The first part presents an overview of empirical and theoretical research into mentoring relationships. The second part presents four ways in which mentors might engage with the literature.

This study investigates the similarities and differences in the perception of the good teacher among a wide population, focusing on two aspects – ethnicity and gender. The research investigated whether the ethno-cultural or the gender component better explains the differences in the perceptions of these qualities and whether interaction exists between the two components. The research indicated that perception of the qualities of a good teacher is culturally dependent. The ethno-cultural origin of the group was dominant in explaining differences in attitudes towards the qualities of the good teacher and not the gender group.

The article addresses the effects of the intervention on pre-service teachers’ awarenessof the complexity of teaching. The authors designed one semester-long intervention course for pre-service teachers, based on an Internet site, including video-recorded authentic classroom literature teaching situations, transcripts of these lessons and diverse tasks. An analysis of the data revealed the pre-service teachers’ learning processes as they unfolded along the course: growing awareness of the complexity of classroom teaching, ability to base the analysis of the episodes on theories, and the initial construction of a cognitive lens to view classroom processes holistically.

The paper illustrates the University of Florida's efforts to understand the ways that prospective teacher education can be linked to individual school improvement efforts. It explains how teacher educators and their school-based partners collaboratively craft their professional development school work with prospective and practicing teachers to target school improvement and teacher learning. The authors illustrate four models for engaging in inquiry-oriented school improvement and outline the factors that underlie their design.

The research literature implied unwarranted benefits arose from using miniature ‘handheld’ computers (PDAs) in the classroom setting. Focusing closely upon one exemplar UK government-commissioned research study, this article attempts to illustrate how such technological rhetoric is created and sustained. It also attempts to illustrate how dominant technological claims can be interrogated from a perspective that represents teachers’ interests.

Based on the German Didaktik tradition and classroom interaction, an approach for the analysis of pedagogical authority is proposed providing an analytical tool for examining and understanding its constitutive elements and explaining its construction. It posits the existence of three types of interaction or relation from which pedagogical authority emanates: pedagogical interaction, deontic interaction and didactic interaction. Data collected from four teachers’ interviews in Finnish comprehensive schools.

In this article, the authors present a series of guidelines intended to assist teacher educators in the development of alternative route (AR) programs. These guidelines, presented within the context of best practices in teacher education, relate directly to what is known about the characteristics of successful AR programs as well as the participants who access these programs.

This paper focuses on the development of the Collaboration Self-Assessment Tool (CSAT). The identification and practice of specific collaboration skills needed in a student teaching experience are emphasized. . The paper uses a case-study approach to describe how the tool can be used to enhance collaboration between a cooperating teacher and a teacher candidate.

The Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act mandates that every student with an Individualized Education Program be considered for assistive technology (AT). As a result, future special educators need to have the knowledge and skills regarding AT. In this article, the authors carried out a national study of 160 special education teacher preparation programs using archival document analysis on the current practice of AT course delivery for the preparation of special educators.

This study investigates a small Canadian school's initial attempt at promoting a “learning community” approach. The study also compares it to the ideals of collaborative teamwork set out by recent scholarship.