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Professional development

2013

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Education

Teacher Needs For Educating Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders In The General Education Classroom, Kim Finch, Robert Watson, Cynthia Macgregor, Natalie Precise Dec 2013

Teacher Needs For Educating Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders In The General Education Classroom, Kim Finch, Robert Watson, Cynthia Macgregor, Natalie Precise

The Journal of Special Education Apprenticeship

The purpose of this study was to gather information on experiences of general education teachers concerning inclusion practices for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). In this case study third, fourth, and fifth grade general education teachers in a rural Southwest Missouri school district provided the data source to keep a narrowed focus on the needs of education teachers for inclusion. The sample accounted for 16 elementary education teachers. Surveys were sent to all third, fourth, and fifth grade general education teachers in the district. Perceptions of general education teachers on proper inclusion training were identified as necessary for the …


Student And Teacher Attitudes Toward Giftedness In A Two Laboratory School Environment: A Case For Conducting A Needs Assessment, Jennifer Riedl Cross, Tracy Cross, Andrea D. Frazier Oct 2013

Student And Teacher Attitudes Toward Giftedness In A Two Laboratory School Environment: A Case For Conducting A Needs Assessment, Jennifer Riedl Cross, Tracy Cross, Andrea D. Frazier

NALS Journal

Providing effective professional development in laboratory schools around topics that can be divisive, such as preparing a school environment for expansion of gifted education services, can be quite difficult. However, doing so based on data collected through a needs assessment can be invaluable to the planning process. As part of a needs assessment in preparation to enroll 100 new gifted students, students and teachers (N=171) from a unique setting in which a residential school for gifted high school students is housed within a laboratory school were surveyed using F. Gagné and L. Nadeau’s (1991) Opinions about the Gifted …


Critical Democracy Audits. A Response To "Teacher, Researcher, And Accountability Discourses: Creating Space For Democratic Science Teaching Practices In Middle Schools", Kathleen Greene Oct 2013

Critical Democracy Audits. A Response To "Teacher, Researcher, And Accountability Discourses: Creating Space For Democratic Science Teaching Practices In Middle Schools", Kathleen Greene

Democracy and Education

Educators frequently claim that the projects in which they are involved are democratic. However, considering the multiple and often conflicting notions of democracy and democratic education, are there any shared understandings of what either of those notions means? Does the claim that a project is democratic carry with it any shared assumptions, commitments, or obligations? In this response, I extend the conversation started by the authors of that article by proposing a critical democracy audit of their education project, and I offer a preliminary collection of questions, developed from recent literature on democratic education, that might be considered for use …


The Journey To Becoming Teaching Professionals In Rural South Africa And Zimbabwe., Tabitha G. Mukeredzi Oct 2013

The Journey To Becoming Teaching Professionals In Rural South Africa And Zimbabwe., Tabitha G. Mukeredzi

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

There seems to be consensus on what constitutes effective professional development although the gap between rhetoric and practice remains wide. Knowing what professional development looks like is insufficient, what is critical is to get it engrained in school structures. The study explored professional development practices of twelve professionally unqualified practicing teachers in rural South Africa and Zimbabwe secondary schools. Drawing on models of professional development, analysis of qualitative interview data suggests that classroom teaching practice, in-school meetings and school-to-school subject cluster and association meetings are effective for teacher professional growth. The paper illustrates that if teacher professional development is to …


Exploring Identity-Based Challenges To English Teachers’ Professional Growth, Heather C. Camp Sep 2013

Exploring Identity-Based Challenges To English Teachers’ Professional Growth, Heather C. Camp

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study explores identity-based challenges that can hinder secondary English teachers enrolled in Master’s degree programs from experiencing professional growth. It illustrates how identity conflicts can prevent teachers from integrating a disciplinary identity into their professional sense-of-self, thereby limiting the benefits they might gain from graduate coursework. In particular, the study suggests that dissonance between discourse norms and values, concerns about community allegiances, and assumptions about language, difficulty, and power can impede teachers from appropriating disciplinary discourse and hinder them from combining it with more familiar discourses that circulate in schools and shape teachers’ identities.


Career Development In Language Education Programs, Saad Fathy Shawer, Saad Ali Alkahtani Jun 2013

Career Development In Language Education Programs, Saad Fathy Shawer, Saad Ali Alkahtani

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study assesses the influence of a two-year language program evaluation on program directors and faculty career development. The study makes use of mixed-paradigms (positivism and qualitative interpretive), mixed-strategies (survey research and qualitative evaluation), one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a post-hoc test of multiple comparisons (Scheffe). The findings indicate that imposed program evaluation experiences help faculty members advance their career skills in terms of course planning, classroom teaching, learning assessment, classroom research, and coping with career pressure. The findings also indicate significant improvement in program director academic and administrative career skills. Moreover, the findings did not show inter-program differences …


Policies And Practices Of Professional Development In China: What Do Early Childhood Teachers Think?, Karen Liang Guo, Yan Yong Jun 2013

Policies And Practices Of Professional Development In China: What Do Early Childhood Teachers Think?, Karen Liang Guo, Yan Yong

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper focuses on early childhood teachers’ professional development in China. It reports a study which aims to elicit twelve in-service early childhood teachers’ perspectives of the values and issues of professional development policies and the learning opportunities they experienced. Two themes arising from the study are addressed, namely the teachers’ positive responses to the government aspirations for enhancing teaching in early childhood education, and the complexities of the organizational and role structures of the early childhood community in ChangChun where the study took place. An important aspect of the teachers’ perspectives of their professional development, which connects up to …


Hard Times: Women Scholars And The Dynamics Of Economic Recession, Linda Zionkowski Apr 2013

Hard Times: Women Scholars And The Dynamics Of Economic Recession, Linda Zionkowski

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.


Emerging Critical Literacy In Teachers As Novice Researchers, Jennifer Mitton Kukner Mar 2013

Emerging Critical Literacy In Teachers As Novice Researchers, Jennifer Mitton Kukner

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores the experiences of three teachers as novice researchers as they taught full-time in a university English language school in Turkey. Viewing the participants’ experiences as researchers through a narrative understanding of teacher knowledge and a critical literacy lens enhanced their critical cognisance of their positioning as women instructors in a higher education setting. Their research experiences were shaped not only by their classroom concerns but also by expectations and larger social narratives that lived beyond their classroom doors. This study focuses specifically upon English language teachers and acknowledges the intersection of gender roles and contextual constraints as …


Professional Development Strategies That Promote Science Inquiry Teaching And Learning, Steven Kerlin Jan 2013

Professional Development Strategies That Promote Science Inquiry Teaching And Learning, Steven Kerlin

Kentucky Journal of Excellence in College Teaching and Learning

The recently released Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012) calls for science education to addresses weaknesses in current science education of unorganized learning progressions, a focus on a breadth of discrete facts, and a lack of experiences in how science is actually done. Teacher professional development in inquiry science teaching and learning is one way to address these current issues in science education effectively. Higher education faculty have been one of the major groups of providers of teacher professional development programs. Many of these professional development programs have been delivered in short-term workshops and traditionally focused on …