Education Commons^™

Looking For Another Assessment Tool That Activates The Principles Of Aal (Assessment As Learning)? Look No Further Than The Ratpd!, Mark Minott

Essays in Education

Frequently discussed in the literature on assessment are the ideas of assessment of learning (AoL), assessment for learning (AfL) and assessment as learning (AaL). This paper draws the readers’ attention to the idea of AaL, an assessment strategy entitled the Reflective Approach to Teaching Practicum Debriefing (RATPD) and answers the question, “To what extent is the Reflective Approach to Teaching Practicum Debriefing (RATPD) strategy an assessment as Learning (AaL) activity?” By discussing and connecting AaL and RATPD, the main conclusion was, enacting the RATPD is engaging in an actual AaL activity. Therefore, through this paper, readers are introduced to another …

Generation And Digital Citizenship Among Doctoral Students: Another Debunking Of The Digital Native Myth, Jenna K. Ladd, Rebecca R. Simataa, Danilo Lj. Bojić

Essays in Education

Internet and digital technologies are integrated into nearly every aspect of contemporary life, and digital citizenship skills are necessary for professional and personal success. Previous research has described the digital citizenship of undergraduate and K-12 students, but there is little literature describing the digital citizenship among doctoral students. Doctoral program cohorts often include students born in 1984 or before and those born in 1985 or after. Students born after 1985 are frequently assumed to be “digital natives” with advanced technology skills, although there is little evidence to validate the digital natives vs. digital immigrant theory. The present study seeks to …

Preparing Educators To Coach For Equity: Title Ix And The Power Of A Coach, Rebekah Dimick Eastman

Essays in Education

This piece takes a look at Title IX history and policy and the potential impact that teacher educators can have on the athletic landscape, especially as it pertains to girls. History of Title IX and athletics is reviewed. The current situation is reviewed, showing a stagnation of growth of girls’ and women’s sports. New data, collated from coaching directories, is shared and clearly shows a need for improvement in gender representation in coaching. Finally, a path forward to recruit and prepare coaches to coach for gender equity is given.

Revisioning The K-12 Teacher Tenure Process, David Wolff

Essays in Education

Earning tenure is monumental in the professional journey of most educators. However, the most common means of earning tenure is through an evaluation process that is likely primarily based on a supervisor’s series of classroom observations. This article proposes a holistic approach when envisioning the K-12 evaluation process that mirrors one used by institutions of higher education, the Professional Development Plan (PDP).

Book Review: Teaching With A Social, Emotional, And Cultural Lens, Shauna Mayer

Essays in Education

Successful teachers are continually looking for ways to improve student achievement. Nancy Markowitz and Suzanne Bouffard write about how the incorporation of teaching through a social, emotional, and cultural lens allows students to be successful inside the classroom. The authors provide several tips, tools, and research-based strategies that align with the Anchor Competencies Framework. The book prepares new teachers, and provides new insights for current and veteran teachers.

Leadership And Instructional Coaching: A Synthesis Of Approaches And Practices That Promote Change, Katie L. Perkins

Essays in Education

The aim of this educational essay is to provide a literature-based synthesis of the leadership approaches and practices of instructional coaches that best support teacher development. The essay is grounded in transformational leadership theory (Bass & Avolio, 1990) and synthesizes three main constructs for effective instructional coaching. These constructs include: andragogical practices (Knowles, 2015), the ethics of care (Beck, 1994), and organizational change (Burke, 2014). Incorporating these leadership practices may encourage effective teacher-coach relationships, promote teacher development and retention, and ultimately increase student success.

Utilizing Counter Narratives To Develop Culturally Sustaining, Critically Conscious Preservice Teacher Practitioners, David Wolff

Essays in Education

The content areas that get most attention in an elementary classroom include mathematics and English/Language Arts (ELA), and little time is devoted to other content areas like social studies. Preservice elementary teachers can learn to maximize instructional time by integrating social studies content in the ELA block. Using counternarratives, preservice teachers can learn to use children’s literature to teach multiple perspectives to the dominant narrative in the textbooks. This article shares strategies to present counternarratives and examples of children’s literature that can be used in an elementary classroom.

Book Review: Paradoxes Of The Public School By James Schul, George Morrow

Essays in Education

Preparing teachers is critical to the health of American schools, communities, and our working democracy. This textbook introduces future teachers to the rich and complex world of the public-school educator. Using fourteen social, pedagogical, and political paradoxes the book reveals the historical events, personalities, and theories which have crafted today’s schools as well as the many issues surrounding the daily life of the teacher. This book engages future teachers in their critical role as meaningful players in the social context of an evolving world.

Interactions With Highly Qualified Teachers, Charlotte J. Boling, Jill T. White

Essays in Education

Two faculty members walked to class on a Thursday evening. As they walked, they talked about the content of their respective courses. By the time the faculty members reached their classrooms, an action research project had evolved. The focus of the project wastwofold: 1) to increase the awareness of teacher education candidates of the responsibilities of classroom teachers and 2) to apply the research and/or theory the veteran teachers had acquired in their master’s culmination class. This article provides an overview of the events which developed as a result of the interactions between the practicing teachers and the pre-service teachers …

Using Constructivist Teaching To Shift The Paradigm For Pre-Service Philosophy Of Education Statements, John A. Huss

Essays in Education

This article examines what the author perceives as a need to fortify the quality of philosophy of education statements submitted by pre-service teaching candidates. Because the educational philosophy is frequently viewed as “artificial,” it fails to provide a systematic, meaningful, and articulate guideline for new teachers whose underlying beliefs ultimately dominate and shape their instructional practices. Paramount is a return to the underlying premise that a teacher’s philosophy of education is, foremost, personal and reflective. Candidates must share in the decision-making process and be engaged in their own construction of a philosophy of education. Otherwise, teachers in training find it …

Multicultural Teacher Education: Toward A Culturally Responsible Pedagogy, Hui-Min Chou

Essays in Education

While the student population in the United States becomes culturally diverse, it is imperative to provide an empowering and equitable education for all students in the United States. Within the context of teacher preparation, one of the highest priorities is to help prospective teachers acquire the attitudes knowledge, skills, and dispositions to work effectively with culturally diverse students. Schools, colleges, and departments of education must assume the responsibility of preparing all teachers, regardless of race, to teach in culturally diverse classrooms. While most teacher education programs acknowledge the importance of an increasing diversity among school pupils, reviews of the literature …

The Socio-Economic Implications Of Teachers Supply Patterns On The Teaching Profession In Nigeria, S. V. Kobiowu

Essays in Education

Various scholars and researches have identified a number of traditions guiding the development of teacher education programmes. These include “the academic” tradition, “the social efficiency” tradition, “the developmentalist” tradition, otherwise referred to as the “personalist” or “humanist” tradition, and “the social reconstructionist” tradition. Education is the pivot of development in all countries, (Nigeria is no exception), and the availability of well-trained and highly qualified teachers is central to the supply of human capital needed to promote qualitative education. The training of teachers in Nigeria, which started in 1859 with the establishment of “The Training Institute”, at Abeokuta, has metamorphosed into …

Educational Change And Challenges: Constructivist, Collaborative Ideals In Teacher Preparation, Miguel Licona, Timothy G. Cashman

Essays in Education

The following study details the collaboration of a university’s secondary education faculty on the United States and Mexico border. Calls for improved test scores, better preparation and retention of teachers, and improved graduation rates of teacher candidates were imminent concerns. The faculty responded to these demands by developing an integrated teacher preparation program based on shared activities, readings, technology, electronic journals, and shared epistemological values. The context for the reform efforts included a consideration for learning theory. Furthermore, secondary education faculty facilitated constructivist, collaborative pedagogies as integral to teacher preparation. A new focus was placed on learner-centered praxis rather than …

Student Teachers’ Experiences With Math Education, Joakim Samuelsson

Essays in Education

Student teachers who are studying to teach math in early elementary school in Sweden today have studied less math in secondary school than student teachers in the late 1980´s and the 1990´s. To be able to address the problems of this new group of students, we need to understand and analyze their experiences. The instruments of inquiry were students’ letters about their experiences in school math. The starting point of the analysis was to find the student teachers’ experiences of certain subtopics aspects of school math. In the second step, relationships between different aspects of school math were identified. These …

Nontraditional Alternative Teacher Certification Programs: Their Purpose, Design And Participants, Phyllis K. Adcock, Marc Mahlios

Essays in Education

When the subject of nontraditional alternative teacher certification programs is discussed among teacher educators, there seems to be a wariness due to the way in which nontraditional alternative teacher certification has been managed in the past. However, current research seems to bear out that quality nontraditional alternative certification programs are not only helping with teacher shortages, but are producing quality teachers who know how students learn and are effective in their roles as teachers (Ducharme & Ducharme, 1998).

Redesigning A Master’S For Teachers Program, Cathy Stockton

Essays in Education

This paper describes the process that one college of education used to redesign the master’s for teachers program. Post-baccalaureate programs were redesigned to incorporate requirements of No Child Left Behind, school improvement, empirical based researched practices, and student achievement. All redesigned courses reflect an increased emphasis on field experiences.

In February 2003, all private and public universities in the state of Louisiana received a mandate to redesign all master’s for teachers programs. The redesign committees were to include P-12 administrators, teachers, community representatives, current teacher professionals and representatives from other colleges in the process. The redesigned post-baccalaureate education program had …

Innovating Professional Development Standards: A Shift To Utilize Communities Of Practice, Teresa Foulger

Essays in Education

This paper is a report on the findings of an action research study that explored a non-traditional professional development process involving five elementary teachers and a professional developer working as a collaborative community. The interactions within the group focused on the creation and teaching of a three week thematic unit across grade levels and classrooms. Although technology integration was the proposed new learning, instructional strategies and innovative ways to collaborate were also explored. Qualitative data analysis indicated that when professional developers pay close attention to the social nuances and emotional needs of participants, communities of teachers coming together for a …

School Psychologists Walking The Talk In Authentic Teacher Preparation Programs, Mindy Sloan

Essays in Education

Knowledge and skills bases once confined to school psychologists are now considered critical to the functioning of effective teachers (CEC, 2003, NCATE, 2003, Wilson, S. M., Floden, R. E., & Ferrini-Mundy, 2001). This paper uses three assumptions to argue for the inclusion of doctoral level school psychologists in teacher preparation programs. The first assumption acknowledges school psychology’s tradition of consultation with teachers (Bardon, 1990, Brown & Pryzwansky, 2002, Conoley & Conoley, 1992). Second, interdisciplinary teamwork is critical to effective educational planning (National Association of School Psychologists, 2003a, 2003b). Rather than merely informing future teachers that they will collaborate with other …

Maximizing The Student Teaching Experience: Cooperating Teachers Share Strategies For Success, Donna R. Sanderson

Essays in Education

This article critically examines the results of a survey completed by fifty-seven cooperating teachers from nine different school districts in the greater Philadelphia area. All of the cooperating teachers had welcomed elementary education student teachers into their classrooms. Strategies used to help alleviate student teachers’ fears and concerns related to their student teaching experience are shared and explored. Findings suggest that teachers use a multitude of strategies to calm their student teachers and set them up for a successful student teaching semester. Cooperating teachers detailed the tasks needed to be accomplished BEFORE the beginning of the student teaching semester to …

A Journey Into Cooperative Learning With Teacher Education Students, Mary Ransdell, Deborah A. Moberly

Essays in Education

The focus of this article is the journey two professors took during their implementation of cooperative learning with their teacher education students. It is the opinion of the authors that cooperative learning is a viable, yet underused, teaching and learning tool. Prospective teachers best internalize this methodology when they themselves are active participants in the techniques. The authors offer personal experience to assist in the readers’ understanding.

Talking About Listening: Urban Teacher Responses To Empathetic Listening Training, Jennifer Borek

Essays in Education

Teachers in urban school districts need to learn better listening skills. The high-stakes world of parental involvement, especially with parents who have not had good school experiences themselves, necessitates that faculty and administration be able to listen with clarity and calm. Emergency-licensed teacher education students at a major urban institution of higher education were trained in empathetic listening, practiced these skills, and then were asked to use these skills in the field. While most believed they did not need the skill when they first heard of it, all discovered its complexity and utility during the course of the semester.

“Been There---Ah, Haven’T Tried It That Way”: A Professional Effort To Differentiate Instruction, Donna M. Sobel

Essays in Education

It goes without saying that the most critical component of preparing educators lies in their ability to competently teach. Differentiation provides a framework to develop classrooms where realities of genuine student variance can be addressed with curricular realities. The author describes a professional development project that differentiated a series of teacher workshops that were designed to increase teachers’ perceived competency to differentiate instruction. The purpose here is to describe a collaboratively created and implemented professional development program designed to train staff in ways to differentiate instruction for all learners. Sample training activities, along with perceptions from participants and suggestions for …

Missing In Action: Research On The Accountability Of Multicultural, Inclusive Teacher Education, Sheryl V. Taylor, Donna M. Sobel

Essays in Education

While a substantial amount of research has been conducted on the effects of various teacher education programs to prepare teachers for multicultural, multilingual, inclusive classrooms, very little of it examines the impact of multicultural, inclusive teacher education on how pre- and inservice teachers actually teach children in the classroom. Few researchers have followed teachers into the classroom to find out if or what “carry over” exists from multicultural teacher education (Sleeter, 2001). Even if teachers show growth through their course work and learning experiences in multicultural education, what evidence is there that they are or are becoming strong teachers in …