Education Commons^™

“There’S Nothing Wrong With Fun”: Unpacking The Tensions And Challenges Of Human Centered Design For Learning With Pre-Service Teachers, Zoe Falls, Justin Olmanson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Research into practices of making within formalized education has primarily focused on K12 settings, inservice teachers in professional development, and pre-service teachers facilitating a maker experience for K12 students. Less is known about the professionalizing impact making and human centered design can have on pre-service teachers, especially in relation to how or if the experience deepens their understanding of content, pedagogy and human centered design. This study traces a group of pre-service social science teachers’ development of a meme generator to support learning history. By studying their process from inception to conclusion, we found students were less inclined to engage …

Course Portfolio For Math 407 Mathematics For High School Teaching: Refining Conceptual Understanding In A Mathematics Course For Pre-Service Teachers, Alexandra Seceleanu

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

My intention in this portfolio is to present my approach to teaching an upper-level mathematics course for pre-service secondary level mathematics teachers. Several teaching strategies are discussed in the context of designing a coherent approach to this course, which emphasizes the need for conceptual reasoning above all other goals. These strategies are evaluated and assessed in connection to the learning outcomes using samples of student work from the course.

Also presented are samples of course materials that were used to lead students through an organized discussion of the relevant concepts. These materials convey some basic mathematical knowledge and therefore may …

Urban Immersion: Changing Pre-Service Teachers' Perceptions Of Urban Schools, Connie Schaffer, Deborah Gleich-Bope, Cindy B. Copich

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

This research investigated the impact of an Urban Immersion (UI) program which partnered urban schools with a university’s teacher preparation program. The UI program provided experiences for pre-service teachers by completely immersing them, along with their university instructors, in urban schools where they worked and learned alongside K-12 teachers and students. Data collected from pre- and post-experience surveys provide statistically significant evidence that the UI program reshaped the perceptions of pre-service teachers regarding urban schools and also increased their confidence and interest in teaching in an urban setting. The success of traditional field experiences is indecisive (Mason, 1999; Sleeter, 2001); …

Culturally Proficient Teachers, Lori R. Piowlski

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Action needs to be taken by teacher preparation programs to prepare culturally proficient educators who are able to deliver equitable instruction and inspire all students to strive for greatness if the achievement gap is to be closed. Existing literature mainly describes the importance and urgency to prepare future teachers for the changing demographics with classrooms across the United States. There is not significant literature on how it is being done. Therefore the purpose of this qualitative study was to discover how university teacher education programs are preparing teachers to be culturally proficient. A cross-reference of data collected from Adequate Yearly …

Embracing Messy Play: Using Documentation To Illustrate A Partnership Of Community, Teachers, And Nature Education., Jennifer Leeper Miller, Erin Hamel

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The perfect companion to nature is messy play. Allowing children (and pre-service teachers) the opportunity to touch, prod, splash, toss, and experience the natural world through their senses is a must. Teachers created opportunities for children to wonder, engage and marvel in the natural world through hands on experiences; using mud day to spark interactions and inquiry among children, families, teachers and mud.

Exploring The Complexities Of Learning Motivation In Pre-Service Teacher Education Students: A Grounded Theory Approach, Kristin K. Grosskopf

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This qualitative, grounded-theory study investigated learning motivation differences among three achievement groupings of undergraduate students enrolled in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nine students participated in in-depth interviews that explored their reasons for pursuing their degree, their learning experiences in a university setting, their perceptions about meaningful learning experiences, and the nature of factors that both enhance and challenge their learning motivation. Participant responses conveyed strategies and conditions that were coded and analyzed, and a theoretical model was developed describing causal conditions that underlie students’ motivation to learn, phenomena that arose from those …