Education Commons^™

Razor Wire Cuts Both Ways: Teaching Inside A Juvenile Institution, Betty B. Ragland

Doctoral Dissertations

The researcher is an educator working in a juvenile correctional facility. In this study she invited 12 of her colleagues as co-researchers to explore their shared practice and to foster change in the workplace culture. Each participant engaged in a phenomenological interview designed to elicit perceptions of teaching in a correctional institution. The researcher then facilitated group sessions in a collaborative learning effort to construct shared meaning of their joint practice. Follow-up interviews, as well as thematic and language analysis of data obtained from audiotaping and transcribing interviews and group sessions, suggest changes in participants' perceptions of their practice and …

Mapping A Journey To Change: Teachers And Facilitator Learning Together, Lorna B. Williams

Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes the perceptions of workshop participants’ experience and their perceptions of their facilitator in four workshops held in three separate settings where we worked together to collaboratively construct knowledge. The purpose of the study was to learn about my practice through critically reflecting on how my personal history, experiences, practical theory and assumptions influenced my role as facilitator and to learn about my practice through the reflected gaze of workshop participants. Data were derived from three sets of daily journals from three workshops and from one focus group interview. I separated the quotes from each workshop into two …

The Experience Of Participants In An Online Collaborative Learning Environment, Gina Phipps Roberts

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the experience of participants in an online collaborative learning environment, including the experience of the technical facilitator. The study was conducted from an action research perspective using Peters' (1997, 2002) DATA-DATA model and a qualitative case study methodology.

Data were collected through participant interviews, document analysis, and participant observation. The inductive analysis model of Hatch (2002) was employed to reveal five themes that describe participants' experience of the online collaborative learning environment: establishing a comfortable environment, perceptions of other participants, participating in collaborative learning, making sense of the experience, and learning outcomes.

The experience of the participants …