This article reports the findings of a review of the international research literature on mentoring beginning teachers. Research identifies a range of potential benefits and costs associated with mentoring. It suggests that the key to maximizing the former and minimizing the latter lies in the realization of a number of conditions for successful mentoring, such as the effective selection and preparation of mentors.

Teacher professional development variously supports ongoing skill development, new knowledge, and systems change. In New Zealand, the implementation of major assessment reforms in senior secondary schools provided opportunity to investigate teacher professional development as a function of the particular stage of an educational reform. Multi-method data sources revealed a positive relationship between professional satisfaction and teacher involvement in setting priorities for the professional development.

This study looks at how student teachers learn to teach during school-based teacher education. It explores the changes that occurred in the practical theories of the student teachers and how the student teachers made these modifications. The study's findings show that all student teachers developed broad, well-structured practical theories that focused on pupils' learning processes. Their learning processes displayed considerable individual variation.

The present study aimed to examine pre-service and in-service teachers' metacognitive knowledge about the frequency, efficacy, and facility of applying different problem-solving strategies in different kind of problems. This study based on the methodology presented in the research of Antonietti, A., Ignazi, S., & Perego, P. (2000).A sample of 338 in-service teachers (172) and pre-service teachers (166) participated in the study. The results are in accordance with Antonietti, A., Ignazi, S., & Perego, P. (2000). Metacognitive knowledge about problem-solving methods.

The usage of portfolio methods to document professional development in teaching is increasing in Germany, but despite its proliferation, the issue of how the effects of portfolio methods can be determined has received little attention. In this two-part study, the attitudes of both pre-service teachers and teacher educators toward portfolio are investigated and an attempt is made to identify the effects of portfolio on the competences and attitudes of the pre-service teachers. Results suggest that the efficiency of the portfolio method depends both on personal competences and on the framing within the training program.

This paper reports how a teacher–researcher partnership examined a biology teacher's existing pedagogical practices. Furthermore, the paper attempted, through a task design innovation, to create the circumstances under which more interactive and emergent assessment for learning practices could flourish in her classroom. This work involved the use of digital video playback technology as the trigger or catalyst for reflection on concrete experiences by the teacher and her students to occur. Results suggest that the digital video innovation brought about changes in student–teacher interactions in science practical work and assisted the teacher in reflecting on her professional learning.

This paper examines the characteristics of the thinking skill the authors call “melioration” i.e., the competence to borrow a concept from a field of knowledge supposedly far removed from his or her domain, and adapt it to a pressing challenge in an area of personal knowledge or interest. This paper relates melioration to existing theories of intelligence, taking the position that human cognitive/intellectual functioning is in part the ability to learn or think in the framework of familiar systemic concepts, and in part the ability to learn or think with new systemic concepts that are then available for future application.