A conceptual framework composed of eight categories of mentoring activities that address five domains of beginning teachers' concerns was developed based on the reported activities of 150 teachers who were lead mentors. The study suggests that experienced teachers possess an extensive repertoire of helping strategies and that, with opportunities for collaboration, teachers can develop and shape complex mentoring roles that meet beginning teachers' needs. Conditions that influence mentoring relationships include school context factors and mentor and beginning teacher characteristics. Mentoring programs thus should not attempt to rigidly specify mentoring roles. With support, experienced teachers can provide assistance tailored to the circumstances of beginning teachers in individual schools.

The theme of teacher as reflective practitioner has become an important rallying point in current efforts to reform teaching. Wildman and Niles discuss the rhetoric of reform and balance it against the realities of promoting teacher reflection. The authors caution that reform efforts will fail if crucial conditions for reflection are disregarded. ncreasingly, the model of teacht ing as a technical process is being t challenged, and a very different image of the teacher is emerging.Teachers need to be more reflective and in control of their own professional lives; they need improved working conditions that foster a professional life more conducive to collaboration and deliberation than to strict accommodation to rules and procedures. The arguments for more teacher autonomy and decision-making power, at least in the abstract, seem unassailable. We are told that such autonomy and power are good for the profession (Apple and Teitelbaum

This article gives a critique of current practice in the field of learning disabilities and examines several popular approaches to remediating educationally handicapped children. Various rationales underlying these approaches are analyzed in relation to recent research findings, with particular emphasis given to perceptual deficit models of learning disability. It is concluded that there is no foundation for many assumptions underlying assessment and treatment practices which pervade the field of learning disabilities. Suggestions are made for initiating change.

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