Education Commons^™

Practical Pragmatics: A Workshop To Learn Strategies For Teaching Pragmatic Awareness To Adult English Language Leaners, Sara G. Ziogas

Master's Projects and Capstones

The lack of teacher training and textbook teaching materials for developing pragmatic awareness in ESL (English as a second language) and EFL (English as a foreign language) classrooms has led to a gap in the development of students’ communicative competence in English as a second or foreign language. The purpose of this project is to provide an opportunity for teachers, who may be unaware of how to recognize their own first language pragmatic competence, to learn how to reverse-engineer their innate knowledge and then use those strategies to create practical, teachable lessons for their students to gain pragmatic awareness in …

Preparing Teachers In English Language Arts: Mentor Teachers Speak, Lindsay J. Jeffers

Dissertations

This narrative inquiry case study brings the voices of mentor teachers into the discourse of English language arts teacher preparation. In a series of interviews, mentor teachers discuss the challenges faced by student teachers, the pedagogical content knowledge needed to teach secondary ELA, and the relationship between secondary schools and universities.

The first theme explores the challenges that are faced by student teachers. Mentor teachers spoke about the difficulty of making the transition from student to secondary teacher and learning how to put theory into practice in their classrooms. They also considered the challenge of student teachers engaging diverse groups …

Exploring Teacher Assessment Literacy Through The Process Of Training Teachers To Write Assessment Items, Heather Peltier Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the process and impact of assessment training content and delivery mode on the quality of assessment items developed by the teachers in a two-year assessment development project. Teacher characteristics were examined as potential moderating factors. Four types of delivery mode were employed in the project: synchronous online, asynchronous online, in-person workshop, and blended (a combination of online and in-person training). The quality of assessment items developed by participating teachers was measured via: 1) item acceptance rate, 2) number of item reviews (as an indicator of how many times accepted items were rejected …

Teachers Exploring Mobile Device Integration: A Case Study Of Secondary Teachers’ Responses To Ipads In The Classroom, Joshua Myers, Steven Lesky

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This qualitative study seeks to understand and resolve the difficulties that teachers encounter when integrating mobile devices in classrooms. To address the issue of teacher receptiveness, three undergraduate researchers collaborated with an education professor in spring 2012 to complete a qualitative study with a two-fold purpose: 1) to investigate how two secondary teachers in an independent school responded when adopting a class set of iPads throughout one school cycle (six school days); and 2) to elucidate what a school could do better to support teachers who are piloting mobile device integration. Although previous studies have commonly focused on the impact …

Teaching Stories: Inclusion/Exclusion And Disability Studies, Linda Ware, Natalie Hatz

Occasional Paper Series

This research considers the journey of a public school teacher (Natalie) in partnership with her former undergraduate professor (Linda) to teach disability studies to her colleagues and to her fifth grade students. Our research involved multiple components and contexts that we characterize as “Teaching Stories” to consider disability, diversity, and exclusion across settings.

Effects Of Electronic Feedback On Increasing Positive Interactions Among Pre-School Teachers And Their Students, Kathryn Gorton

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of e-mail specific performance feedback (ESPF) on increasing the quantity and quality of pre-school teacher behavior specific praise (BSP) using a multiple probe design across 4 general education pre-school classrooms which included students with and without disabilities. Researchers also wanted to examine the effects of the teacher’s BSP on student’s task engagement during class activities. Results indicated a functional relation between ESPF and increasing the quantity and quality of BSP statements. Results also indicated that increased quantity and quality of BSP statements increased average task engagement across all student participants.