Education Commons^™

Effective Middle School Teaching: Factors That Promote And Maintain It, Judith Ann Smith

Dissertations and Theses

The past thirty years has seen the middle school as an organization come of age and with it a renewed emphasis on meeting the needs of the early adolescent student. Although many current studies have addressed middle school issues, one of the most significant was the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development's Turning Points: Preparing Youth for the 21st Century (1989). It claimed that the middle school is the "last best chance" to turn young lives toward a meaningful future and, in order to do so, schools must be staffed with "expert" teachers.

Once one knows what an "expert" teacher is, …