Education Commons^™

Grassroots Professional Learning : The Homegrown And Human Dimensions Of Teacher Learning, Heather A. Frank Matteo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This qualitative study was prompted by the current climate of teacher accountability and educational reform efforts focused on teacher quality and effectiveness in the U.S. Initiatives, at both the national and state levels, reflect top-down professional development policies that tend to prioritize one-size-fits-all approaches to teacher development and ultimately serve to deprofessionalize teachers. As a result, little attention has been paid to understanding teachers’ professional learning in a grassroots sense. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how a group of elementary school teachers of literacy engaged collectively in grassroots professional learning in the context of top-down professional …

Hidden In Plain Sight : Knowledge Broker Teachers And Professional Development, Margaret M. Jusinski

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This qualitative study was prompted by initiatives that addressed the need for teachers to engage in professional development that enables them to be 21st century ready. Recommendations put forth by government and business have stressed that professional development foster connected teaching and create networked educators by emphasizing peer-topeer collaboration and sharing. Despite this focus, little attention has been paid to the role that regular teachers play in becoming professional developers for their colleagues. My study investigated how four K-12 teachers, that I termed “knowledge broker teachers,” created new pathways for informal, teacher professional development in their schools.

Extending on the …

Which Middle School Model Works Best? Evidence From The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Brian V. Carolan, Christopher C. Weiss, Jamaal Matthews

Department of Educational Foundations Scholarship and Creative Works

There are few areas of school organization that reflect more dissatisfaction than how to structure the education of adolescents in the middle grades. This study uses multilevel models on nationally representative data provided by the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to investigate the relationship between schools’ middle-level grade span and students’ math achievement. Classroom quality was considered as an explanation for any relationships between grade span and achievement. Also examined was whether gender and family structure moderated this relationship. Results indicate that there is no generalizable relationship between grade span configuration and math achievement, but that measures of classroom quality predicted …