Education Commons^™

You Have To Find That Music That Both Parties Can Dance To: One School District's Experience With Collaborative Conferencing, Janel Marie Seeley

Doctoral Dissertations

In 2011, Tennessee passed the Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act (PECCA), replacing the former mode of collective bargaining between professional educators and school board administrators with a process called collaborative conferencing (CC). The purpose of this study, the first research on the new process, was to investigate the experiences of participants who engaged in CC in one school district. The study also examined participants’ perceived relationship between training and its application to CC. The school district used the newly developed Interest-Based Collaborative Problem Solving and Reflective Practice (IBCPS/RP) model to guide its CC process. This approach is similar to interest …

Reflective Practice, Collaboration, And Stakeholder Communication: Where Does The Field Of Evaluation Stand?, Tiffany Lee Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study provides insight into the state of the field of evaluation regarding practitioners’ understanding and application of reflective practice (RP), one of six essential competencies in program evaluation identified and discussed by Stevahn, King, Ghere, and Minnema (2005). Specifically, the purpose of this study was to determine how professional evaluators view RP, the extent and manner in which they engage in RP behaviors, and how evaluators conceptualize whether RP efforts affect, if at all, the evaluation process. Through a snowball sample, nineteen highly experienced evaluators took part in an hour long interview. These interviews with evaluators who have …

A Story Of Change: Adult Learners’ Experiences Of Questioning Their Beliefs And Assumptions In A Graduate Course In Reflective Practice, Megumu Doi Burress

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the experience of students in a graduate course on the topic of Reflective Practice (RP). A phenomenological method was utilized to frame interviews with eight students discussing challenges to their beliefs and assumptions that arose during the course.

Based on a thematic analysis of the interview data, three major figural themes and one ground theme emerged. The three figural themes indicated that participants experienced changes in their beliefs and assumptions about student-to-student and student-to-teacher relationships and about similarities and differences among their own and others’ belief systems, in addition to their own …

Improving Facilitation Through Levelising: Reflecting In And On Practice, Willard Donald Creekmore

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the experience of engaging in reflective practice through the framework of Levelising. Reflective practice has been of interest to professionals and educators of professionals for many years. However, Levelising is a recently introduced approach. Levelising categorizes the reflective process into four modes. These modes include an awareness of what is occurring (Level I), considering one’s actions (Level II), considering one’s conceptual frame (Level III), and considering the conceptual frames of others (Level IV). This study focuses on my personal experience of improving my facilitation using Levelising as a framework for reflective practice. The context of the study …

Collaborative Reflective Practice Of Two Early Childhood Educators: The Impact On Their Ongoing Inquiry And Professional Development, Stacy Cummings Onks

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

Two preschool teachers served as participants in this instrumental case study with the purpose of: (1) identifying the emergence of new understandings and processes of joint, shared activity, (2) examining the ways in which the use of two diverse methods (electronic and audio journals) influenced and mediated critical reflective practice, and (3) examining the link between reflection and action.

There were two major findings. First, the use of multiple methods to engage in reflection was found to be critical to encourage and support effective, rich reflection. Second, teachers changed the conceptualization of their professional relationships and of reflective practice. …