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Full-Text Articles in Education
Making The Grade: Examining Teacher Education, Kurtis Hewson, John Poulsen
Making The Grade: Examining Teacher Education, Kurtis Hewson, John Poulsen
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
High quality teachers make a difference. Marzano notes, “the single most influential component of an effective school is the individual teachers within that school” (2007, p. 1). There are a multitude of considerations that impact the effectiveness of an individual teacher, but arguably the quality of a teacher’s educational training program is of paramount importance. The initial theory and practical training that pre-service teachers receive not only prepare educators to enter the classroom but can have a profound impact on their later growth and development as a professional. However, despite the impact that pre-service teacher training may have on developing …
Enhancing Understanding: Clarifying Teacher Mentor Roles In The Education Of Pre-Service Teachers, Lorraine C. Beaudin
Enhancing Understanding: Clarifying Teacher Mentor Roles In The Education Of Pre-Service Teachers, Lorraine C. Beaudin
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
As more teacher preparation programs emerge in Alberta and as a significant numbers of teachers retire, there is an ongoing need for clearly communicating practicum roles and responsibilities among stakeholders, especially to new Teacher Mentors. This paper outlines the implementation of the University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Education’s Educational Partners Orientation Program (EPOP) and briefly outlines the importance of clarifying what it means to mentor pre-service teachers in their internships.
Negotiating Liminal Spaces: Purposeful Pedagogy In Diverse Classrooms, Mildred T. Masimira
Negotiating Liminal Spaces: Purposeful Pedagogy In Diverse Classrooms, Mildred T. Masimira
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
This paper starts with a personal exploration of my life as an African immigrant in North America. I inhabit a liminal space, and this paper explores negotiating life as a person “inbetween” worlds. Notable theories have been put forward concerning liminality (Anzaldúa, 2002, Ledgister, 2001; hooks, 1984). I discuss the origins of liminality and its various permutations with the aim of clarifying what it means to inhabit this space. Liminality represents a powerful vantage point that accords inhabitants, “not just one set of eyes but half a dozen, each of them corresponding to the places you have been…..” (Said, 1988, …
Carol’S Portrait: The Lasting Effects Of Early Career Mentoring, Kathleen M. Cowin
Carol’S Portrait: The Lasting Effects Of Early Career Mentoring, Kathleen M. Cowin
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
Through portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997), the author creates a word portrait of a veteran teacher’s beginning career mentoring experiences. The portrait illuminates long-term effects of the teacher’s early career mentoring experiences on her teaching practice as a now veteran teacher. The study concludes that the teacher’s early career mentoring experiences helped shape her 25 year teaching career. Three themes emerged from the portrait and may offer insights for current mentors in developing mentoring practices and programs: (a) an invitation to develop a mentoring relationship, (b) supportive mentoring actions, and (c) mentors as models. The study concludes with recommendations for …
Barriers To Post-Secondary Enrollment For Former Foster Youth, Brenda Morton
Barriers To Post-Secondary Enrollment For Former Foster Youth, Brenda Morton
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of current and former foster youth who faced challenges with the process of enrolling in post-secondary education. These participants illuminated the importance of teacher preparation programs that include awareness of the contexts of foster children and youth. Unfortunately, little is known about this group, leaving them vulnerable to significant barriers. Many foster youth aspire to a four-year bachelors degree, but need the help and support of high school teachers to get there. Teacher educators have the unique opportunity to prepare future teachers to work with students from such varying …
Enhancing Ai High School Student Success: A Work In Progress, Mapuana C.K. Antonio, Mary Schilling, Sylvia Oliver, Jennifer Lebeau
Enhancing Ai High School Student Success: A Work In Progress, Mapuana C.K. Antonio, Mary Schilling, Sylvia Oliver, Jennifer Lebeau
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
This paper describes the first-year activities of a five-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Indian Education Demonstration Grants for Indian Children program. The project brings students, families, the tribal government, and the tribal community together to improve the lives and education of students, as well as their families and community, through a comprehensive change in school culture. The project utilizes a unique, multifaceted approach to offer academic and student support; a four-year Biomedical Science program; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) enrichment; professional development; and community engagement. The overall goal is to assist …
House Of Cards: An Edtpa Orientation Activity, Naomi Jeffery Peterson
House Of Cards: An Edtpa Orientation Activity, Naomi Jeffery Peterson
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
In this article, the author shares a theoretically-informed activity to support teachers who are impacted by Washington’s edTPA, the Teacher Performance Assessment. The author considers the edTPA as a common language for best practices in teaching and as a useful tool for orienting candidates to the profession. Step-by-step instructions are complemented with explanations of the conceptual connection between the activity and the edTPA requirements.
Schoology-Supported Classroom Management: A Curriculum Review, Shampa Biswas
Schoology-Supported Classroom Management: A Curriculum Review, Shampa Biswas
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
Schoology is an online learning, classroom management, and social networking platform that attempts to improve learning through better communication, collaboration, and increased access to curriculum and supplemental content. In this article, the author evaluates different prospects of Schoology-supported classroom management using selected principles of students learning and literacy development from Cummin et al (2007). Innovative approaches and tools in the Schoology website facilitate both teachers, students, parents to build a collaborative community of learners to fulfill the educational goals in the 21st century. It can be expected that Schoology’s supported instruction has the strongest potentiality of connecting and collaborating school …
Work Less, Party More: A Review Essay About Collaborative Teacher Professional Learning, Jim Parsons
Work Less, Party More: A Review Essay About Collaborative Teacher Professional Learning, Jim Parsons
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
This article reviews the positive aspects of teacher collaboration. The author’s latest research focuses specifically upon teacher professional learning and teacher efficacy; and, findings in this research suggest that, of all the reported opportunities for positive professional learning, the highest percentage of teachers note that collaboration with colleagues is the “best” professional learning. In addition, the author’s previous research also had much to say about teacher collaboration. This article synthesizes this research and attempts to pull together foundational understandings that would help articulate “key attributes” of teacher collaboration.
Personal, Cultural, And Educational Implications Of Language Loss/Transformation: A Canadian Context, John W. Friesen
Personal, Cultural, And Educational Implications Of Language Loss/Transformation: A Canadian Context, John W. Friesen
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
In this article, the author provides an engaging account of language loss, transformation, and preservation, and the personal, social, cultural implications of language shift. John’s personal reflections on replacing Low German with English as a child, in tandem with a carefully researched account of various language communities in Canada, alerts us to the unique opportunities and challenges teachers face with respect to the multicultural, multilinguistic character of the contemporary classroom. He punctuates his paper with four thoughtful observations with respect to cultural diversity in schools.
Language As Social Context And Literacy Development Of Students From Diverse Backgrounds, Abir R. El Shaban
Language As Social Context And Literacy Development Of Students From Diverse Backgrounds, Abir R. El Shaban
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
In this article, the author invokes Cummins’ model for social empowerment of minority students to suggest an alternative way of thinking about the empowerment of school communities. This paper explains Cummins’ theoretical framework and suggests implications that might help teachers better understand social language literacy development in terms of Cummins’ (1986-1994) conceptual framework, which is based on the notion that students who are from a diverse background are in need of school literacy learning that attends to “the goals of instruction, the role of the home language, instructional materials, classroom management and interaction with students, relationships with the community, instructional …
Building A Teacher Education “To Do List”, Jim Parsons, Larry Beauchamp, Kelly Harding
Building A Teacher Education “To Do List”, Jim Parsons, Larry Beauchamp, Kelly Harding
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
This paper reviews current practices in preservice teacher education to suggest possible improvements that, if practiced, might help mediate many pressures young teachers face. Here we (1) synthesize our recent research in the area of in-service teacher professional learning to inform teacher education programs and (2) use these research findings to suggest possible changes and improvements to pre-service teacher education programs. Synthesizing the research, we generate a “To Do List” of six activities we believe would improve preservice education programs. We believe such instructional activities and pedagogies can become essential foundations that would help build more efficacious teachers, help stem …
The Time For “Positive” Transformation In Teacher Education, Colin Saby, Clive Hickson
The Time For “Positive” Transformation In Teacher Education, Colin Saby, Clive Hickson
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
Prevalence rates of serious mental health issues for students at all levels of education are currently unprecedented. Teaching has been frequently identified as one of the most stressful professions. Educational institutions need to be transformed into positive spaces that promote overall wellbeing for students and teachers. This transformation requires a clear, purposeful, and imaginative new vision –Positive Education. Positive Education provides curriculum and instruction that fosters both the skills of wellbeing and academic achievement. Positive Education puts teachers in a better position to rise to the challenges of the profession, which in turn helps students flourish and learn. Teacher education …
Scientism, Philosophy And Brain-Based Learning, Gregory M. Nixon
Scientism, Philosophy And Brain-Based Learning, Gregory M. Nixon
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
Since educators are always looking for ways to improve their practice, and since empirical science is now accepted in our worldview as the final arbiter of truth, it is no surprise they have been lured toward cognitive neuroscience in hopes that discovering how the brain learns will provide a nutshell explanation for student learning in general. I argue that identifying the person with the brain is scientism (not science), that the brain is not the person, and that it is the person who learns. In fact, the brain only responds to the learning of embodied experience within the extra-neural network …
The Common Core Of A Toothache: Envisioning A Pedagogy Of Renewal And Contemplation, David Lee Keiser
The Common Core Of A Toothache: Envisioning A Pedagogy Of Renewal And Contemplation, David Lee Keiser
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
In this article, the author makes a case for the metaphor of “Sea Mind” as seen through the lens of pedagogy and describes the importance of his perspective for teaching and teacher education. As a teacher educator who has engaged both educational and contemplative work, his essay introduces the concept of a Sea Mind’s relationship to contemplative teaching and explores the challenge of maintaining healthy selves in a raging river of highstakes testing and test preparation and the rough waters of public school reform.
A Call To Action: What Student Teachers Can Teach Us, Kathleen M. Cowin
A Call To Action: What Student Teachers Can Teach Us, Kathleen M. Cowin
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
This qualitative study uses six years of survey data, collected from student teachers in a graduate level university initial teacher licensure program, to illuminate student teachers’ experiences with their cooperating teachers during their student teaching internship. The data, comments made by student teachers about their experiences with their cooperating teachers, were used to answer this research question: What are student teachers telling us about their experiences with their cooperating teachers? Using the constant comparative method of qualitative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) the survey data consisting of answers to the open form question “My cooperating teacher could have been more …
Living The Flourish Question: Positivity As An Orientation For The Preparation Of Teacher Candidates, Sabre Cherkowski, Keith Walker
Living The Flourish Question: Positivity As An Orientation For The Preparation Of Teacher Candidates, Sabre Cherkowski, Keith Walker
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
In this article, the authors unpack taken-for-granted elements in a question central to their research and teaching: “What if the primary role of teachers is to learn how to thrive as educators and, in so doing, to continually co-explore and facilitate all means by which everyone in their learning communities flourishes most of the time?” As they explore a positive orientation to teaching and research, they work to understand the potential for generative and positive growth in themselves and school communities. Their article focuses upon seeking to create and sustain personal and professional flourishing at the heart of educational practice …
Standardized Testing: An Overview For Pre-Service Teachers, Kurtis Hewson, John Poulsen
Standardized Testing: An Overview For Pre-Service Teachers, Kurtis Hewson, John Poulsen
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
This paper serves as an overview for pre-service teachers of the current realities of standardized testing and offers some considerations when entering their first classrooms, where these assessments will most likely be a reality. It also aims to serve as a potential resource for study and discussion for pre-service teachers in their education programs.
Using Technology To Promote In-Service Teacher Education And Enhance Professional Capital, J. Edward Frick
Using Technology To Promote In-Service Teacher Education And Enhance Professional Capital, J. Edward Frick
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
Collaboration has been identified as a vital component to enhancing the educational context and is a key component to professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013). With that being said, technology offers a viable and productive venue for such collaboration to take place. The dilemma for districts is determining how to provide in-service education opportunities that promote the use of technology for the purposes of enhancing collaboration. This article explores how in-service opportunities that utilize technology for collaboration can enhance professional capital within the educational context. Recommendations for both district-level leadership and the individual practitioner are outlined.