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When The Workplace Is On Campus: Learning To Write For A University Speech Language Clinic, Michelle Cox

Doctoral Dissertations

Much of the literature on academic and workplace writing focuses on the differences between these two writing arenas, leading Dias et al. to describe writing for school and work as "worlds apart." Using insights from activity system theory and rhetorical genre theory, this dissertation project investigates the possibility of middle spaces between academic and workplace writing. Set in a Communication Science and Disorders (CSD) master's program, this qualitative study follows five graduate students as they learn workplace writing in a space that physically bridges academia and the workplace, an on-campus speech-language clinic.

Findings indicate that the genres used in the …

Toward Eco -Citizenship: A Praxis For Empowerment, Penelope S. Morrow

Doctoral Dissertations

My teaching practice and research is about holistic education which assumes that, at some fundamental level, everything is connected. Holistic education is a philosophy, a worldview, that challenges the fragmented, reductionist, mechanistic and nationalistic assumptions of mainstream culture and education. The ultimate goal is to transform the way people look at themselves and their relationships in/to the world from a fragmented to an integrative perspective. This emerging paradigm can also be called ecological, evolutionary, spiritual and global. There is a growing belief that such education is fundamentally spiritual, in its search for wholeness.

Western civilization has been dominated from its …

Mentoring In The Learning Community: Problematic Practices And Outcomes Of Initial Implementation Of Formal Mentoring Programs In Two New Hampshire Public School Districts, Pamela Ann Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study uses a grounded theory methodology to examine how seven teacher mentors in two formalized New Hampshire public school mentoring programs conceptualize their roles and what happens to that conceptualization as they go through their first year of mentoring. The findings suggest that mentors, who have a history of engagement in buddy support, have difficulty shifting their conceptualization of supporting new teachers from the directive practices characteristic of buddy support to the relational practices that characterize "learning-focused" mentoring. Simply having a formal mentoring structure does not ensure such a shift. In fact, a number of major drawbacks to …

An Investigation Of Pre-Service Teachers' And Professional Mathematicians' Perceptions Of Mathematical Proof At The Secondary School Level, David M. Gray

Doctoral Dissertations

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM] states that by the time students graduate high school, they should learn to present "arguments consisting of logically rigorous deductions of conclusions from hypotheses" (NCTM, 2000, p. 56) in "written forms that would be acceptable to professional mathematicians" (NCTM, 2000, p. 58). Research studies indicate, however, that students and teachers have difficulty with many aspects of mathematical proof, including its nature and meaning. In addition, there appears to be a disconnect between school teachers' and university mathematicians' expectations for their respective students regarding mathematical proof. This study examined the perceptions of thirteen …

Exploring Lesson Study As A Form Of Professional Development For Enriching Teacher Knowledge And Classroom Practices, Melissa K. Mitcheltree

Doctoral Dissertations

This study tracked the development of teacher knowledge through a professional development experience called lesson study. Lesson study is a Japanese professional development process in which a group of teachers develop a series of lessons using the following stages: planning lessons, teaching/observing the lessons, reflecting on lessons taught as well as sharing and discussing the lessons with their colleagues (Lewis, 2002). The aim of this study was to explore how the lesson study process influenced teacher knowledge of mathematics content and pedagogical content.

Study participants were four secondary mathematics teachers from a rural high school in the Northeast. All participants …