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Teachers in the initial stages of their career need support. The quality of their development will depend strongly on the kind of support that is given to them during induction. In this chapter, the author explains how the induction years need to be seen as a distinctive part of the teacher education continuum, building on initial teacher education (ITE) and feeding into continuing professional development (CPD). The University of Malta's Faculty of Education proposed national strategy for induction of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) stresses the need for an effective design of induction programs in terms of the type of activities, the involvement of teacher education institutions and the role of the mentor – all of which can vary, depending on the learning needs of the NQT involved. Such programs will ensure that the support provided creates opportunities to relate back to initial teacher education and to prepare teachers for career-long continuing professional development. The aim of this discussion is to evaluate the current state of professional opportunities available for beginning teachers in Malta, and to discuss an effective approach which facilitates experienced teachers to build their capacities to play a key role, through mentoring, in their new colleagues' professional learning journey.

Policymakers have focused on improving STEM outcomes for US high school students for over 50 years. Much of this focus has centered on improving the quality of STEM teachers, particularly in poor and minority schools. Few, if any, of these efforts have considered the importance of the content knowledge of those providing instructional leadership in schools – namely, principals and assistant principals. This chapter examines the percentage of school leaders with teacher certification in mathematics or science and the degree to which teacher and school leader turnover interrupts the leadership–teacher relationships. The study concludes relatively few school leaders have the content knowledge to provide deep instructional leadership. Moreover, the study finds combined teacher and school leader turnover greatly diminishes the sustained relationships between instructional leaders and teachers, particularly in lower-performing schools.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

In this chapter, a model to understand teachers’ professional identity, appraisals and behaviours in the classroom is presented and illustrated with empirical data. It is argued that the comparison between interpersonal identity standards and interpersonal appraisals of classroom situations results in two types of emotions experienced by teachers. One type of emotion is the direct result of teachers’ interpretations of, and coping with, specific classroom events whereby their emotions are part of the appraisal process of situations and evaluated in the light of their interpersonal role identity standards. The second type of emotion emerges as a result of tensions or dilemmas of prolonged differences between appraisals and identity standards. It is argued that the Teacher Interpersonal Identity Role and Appraisal model is helpful for both researchers and practitioners to better understand, recognise and support beginning (and experienced) teachers with emotions that occur in the classroom, and to help stimulate both their personal as well as professional development.

This chapter describes the development of a teacher leader preparation program that emerged from a partnership between a university and a local high-needs district. Using a sociocultural approach, researchers conducted a needs assessment for teachers in the district. Drawing on this data and extant literature, researchers designed a program aimed at increasing opportunities for distributed leadership. The Beginning Teacher Project is built around five signature features, including targeted professional development, ongoing dialog, turnkey training, instructional decision-making, and community engagement. The chapter traces the development of the program and describes the signature features in detail.

This chapter is a collection of reflections on the broader concept of my “story to live by” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Craig, 2008, 2014) as a beginning English Language Arts teacher. Burrowing deeply into the impact of a single phrase from a conversation with a found mentor at the close of my first year, the chapter explores the journey of sustaining in the profession by examining what is here within discussed as a narrative undercurrent that carries each educator toward his or her “best-loved Self” (Craig, 2013; Schwab, 1954/1978). This concept is introduced, and then reflected upon in correlation with the development of knowledge communities (Olson & Craig, 2001; Craig & Huber, 2007), narrative authority (Olson, 1995), and narrative identity (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; McAdams, Josselson & Lieblich, 2006).

In meditating on the broader narrative, I arrived at the conclusion that the conversation referenced initiated my discovering essential elements of my best-loved Self, and my seeking to actualize them within a forged knowledge community. I moved forward and expanded my knowledge “for,” “in,” and “of” practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998). Through this process, I authored and re-authored myself through conflicts noted across the literature as factors contributing to beginning teacher attrition rates (Craig, 2014; Schaefer, 2013) and preserved my story to live by.

Teaching is increasingly recognised as a complex, demanding career. Teachers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than other professionals. The career is subject to heightened levels of public scrutiny and yet offers only modest rewards in the form of social status and income. Drawing on a typological model of coping styles among a diverse sample of German health professionals, we identified six types of emotional coping (Good health, Sparing, (healthy) Ambitious, (path to) Burnout, Diligent, and Wornout) among a longitudinal sample of 612 Australian primary and secondary teachers. A significant outcome of our study was the empirical differentiation between burned out and wornout teachers. This extends the literature on teacher burnout and offers new directions to the study of ‘at risk’ beginning teachers.

This chapter presents a new approach to teach process costing that uses worksheets to create the information necessary to account for costs. The approach employs a five-column, five-row worksheet that presents weighted-average and FIFO costs per equivalent unit simultaneously. Then, the goal of process costing, accounting for costs, is formally presented in a manner to emphasize its importance. As a result, students are better able to compare and contrast the two process-costing methods.