One hang-up in educational personnel de-velopment has been caused by the pressure to establish standards in finite guise.There is no need to spell out why professionals and the public seek such specificity and certainty. However, it should be emphasized that attempts through the years to establish and meet such standards have slowed progress toward preparation programs and state standards that are related directly to professional role expectations, relevant tasks, and essential competencies.Establishing and applying standards for truly professional roles based upon performance criteria presupposes departures from traditional and risk-free approaches to program design. Decisions about program prerequisites and course sequences can no longer be made beforehand by disinterested authorities, by normative surveys, or by applying &dquo;principles of education&dquo; out of context. Expertness in decision making (making judgments) is developmental, individual, and continuous. This means that those who are teacher trainers or curriculum designers have the responsibility for creating relevant and legitimate alternative learning experiences for students. At the same time, students (trainees) have the responsibility for choosing from these alternatives (or creating others) and experiencing the consequences of each choice. An individualized performance approach for the training of a person in a democracy requires that the act of choosing be a sacred right of the individual. The good society (or set of institutions) keeps alternatives for choosing open and real.If preparation for performance in professional roles is continuous and if the individual is the key element in the process, then we should not expect less preservice assistance from colleges and uniDr. Allen is assistant superintendent for teacher education and certification, and Drs. Cady and Drummond are associates for teacher education,
Florida's intense attention to principal competencies has caused many people in management development to question and rethink their understanding of what competencies are and how they are acquired. The authors share their knowledge and beliefs about these competencies in this article.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.