DELIA STAFFORD - DEVELOPING GREAT TEACHERS

This investigation sought to determine if there was a difference in the development of effective urban teacher characteristics after completing a traditional internship experience or a Professional Development School internship experience. The Urban Teacher Selection Interview was used to assess 10 characteristics including persistence, value of children's learning, putting ideas into practice, approach to at-risk students, professional/personal orientation to students, the bureaucracy, fallibility, teacher success, student success, and planning and organization. Assessments were completed before and after subjects participated in urban internships. Pre- and posttest scores were compared using descriptive statistics and a paired-samples t test. Results communicated no significant difference between pre- and posttest scores when student interns completed a traditional or Professional Development School internship experience. This suggests that although the internship experience is often viewed as the capstone experience of teacher preparation programs, short-term experiences do not adequately prepare teacher candidates for urban school teaching.Haberman Educational Foundation, Inc.Since the death of Dr.Haberman, Delia has been running the Foundation by writing articles, doing conferences, doing speeches and in-service, and answering all questions about doc’s great research and concepts.