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Full-Text Articles in Education

Mindfulness As An Emotional Well-Being Tool For Beginning Teachers, Brittany Crumley Dec 2023

Mindfulness As An Emotional Well-Being Tool For Beginning Teachers, Brittany Crumley

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Today’s early educators are responsible for providing a stimulating learning environment to facilitate student academic outcomes, in addition to providing a positive emotional climate to support student social-emotional functioning. Early childhood educators engage with various physical and emotional stressors throughout the workday (e.g., disruptive behaviors, standardized assessment), and to be effective, they must be able to cope with their own emotional reactivity. Teacher experiences of work stress may lead to decreased performance, burnout, and poor student outcomes, creating serious concerns for the education environment. One transferable strategy to help teachers’ emotional well-being is mindfulness self-care (e.g., breathing practices), which can …


The Emotional Impact Of Teaching In A High Poverty School On First-Year, Early Childhood Teachers In Rural South Carolina: A Photo Elicitation Study, Kimberly Jedlicka Dec 2014

The Emotional Impact Of Teaching In A High Poverty School On First-Year, Early Childhood Teachers In Rural South Carolina: A Photo Elicitation Study, Kimberly Jedlicka

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The purpose of this research study was to understand the emotional impact of teaching in a high poverty school on first-year, early childhood teachers in rural South Carolina. The research also explored the extent to which these emotions either empowered or constrained the teachers in their work. The study used photo-elicitation with interviews to generate data. Participants in this study took photographs that represented emotional experiences, wrote captions and discussed their images in an interview session. The data analysis focused on honoring the participants' voices and included first and second cycle coding strategies. In Vivo coding and Emotion coding were …


Exploring The Potential Of Using Explicit Reflective Instruction Through Contextualized And Decontextualized Approaches To Teach First-Grade African American Girls The Practices Of Science, Gayle A. Buck, Valarie L. Akerson, Cassie F. Quigley, Ingrid S. Weiland Jan 2014

Exploring The Potential Of Using Explicit Reflective Instruction Through Contextualized And Decontextualized Approaches To Teach First-Grade African American Girls The Practices Of Science, Gayle A. Buck, Valarie L. Akerson, Cassie F. Quigley, Ingrid S. Weiland

Publications

Contemporary science education policy documents call for curriculum and pedagogy that lead to students’ active engagement, over multiple years of school, in scientific practices. This participatory action research study answered the question, “How can we successfully put twenty-three first-grade African American girls attending a gender school in an impoverished school district on the path to learning the practices of scientists”. The Young Children’s Views of Science (YCVOS) (Lederman, 2009) was used to interview these first-graders pre-, mid- and post-instruction during an instructional unit designed in response to many of the pedagogical strategies research has demonstrated to be effective in other …


Centering The Voices Of South Carolina's Early Care And Education Teachers: A Multi-Case Study Examining How They Select And Are Informed By Professional Development, Lenna Young Dec 2010

Centering The Voices Of South Carolina's Early Care And Education Teachers: A Multi-Case Study Examining How They Select And Are Informed By Professional Development, Lenna Young

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The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the existing literature focused on quality early care and education (ECE). Specifically, this study examines two main research questions: (1) How do teachers in South Carolina licensed, privately-funded ECE programs select professional development opportunities and (2) How does participating in professional development inform their practices? These questions are particularly significant in light of the minimal requirements for teachers to enter the ECE field in South Carolina. Due to the low entry requirements for ECE teachers, professional development can play a key role in transforming minimally qualified individuals into teachers who care …