Education Commons^™

Clarion Calls For Change: Editorial Remarks, Penny A. Bishop, James F. Nagle

Middle Grades Review

No abstract provided.

Conceptions Of Adult Education Teachers-In-Training Regarding The Media Literacy Education Of Older People. A Phenomenographic Study To Inform A Course Design, Hanna Vuojärvi, Sirpa Purtilo-Nieminen, Päivi Rasi, Susanna Rivinen

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This phenomenographic study represents part of an ongoing design-based research initiative to inform the design of a new course on older people’s media literacy in the adult-education teacher-education context. The aim was to describe the conceptions of teachers-in-training regarding media literacy education for older people. The data consist of students’ written assignments in which they defined the concept of older people, their societal roles, and of the media literacy education targeting them. The participants included teachers-in-training (N = 22) from a Finnish university’s teacher education program. The data were analyzed qualitatively with the aim of exploring how these students …

Justice Through Practice: Inquiry On The Development Of Preservice Teachers’ Teaching For Social Justice, Bethany Silva, Elyse L. Hambacher, Ruth Wharton-Mcdonald

Journal of Practitioner Research

This article reports on a collaboration among three teacher educators to facilitate pre-service teacher (PST)s’ equity literacy through a social-justice themed afterschool program for elementary-aged children that was embedded in PSTs’ coursework. The teacher educators engaged in practitioner inquiry (e.g., Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 2007; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), posing the question, “What happens when preservice teachers use justice-oriented children’s literature to facilitate discussions about inequity with young children?” We used inductive analysis (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014) to observe themes across 17 PSTs’ written and videotaped reflections, collected over two semesters. Reflections pointed to a fear of the unknown …

Teacher Education Programs Of Top Pisa Scoring Countries, Stephanie Kafer

Honors Projects

This research paper aims to investigate the teacher education programs of four different countries that have consistently scored high on the international Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test. This project intends to answer two questions: What locations consistently perform high on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test? What do the teacher training programs look like for these locations and are there commonalities between programs of different locations? The first question is answered using statistics of PISA scores from the past twenty years and from those statistics, the top four countries that this paper focuses on are Finland, …

Comparing Special Education Teachers’ Personality Profile With Their Choice To Teach, Laron A. Scott, Lauren Bruno, Philip Gnilka, Lindsay Kozachuk, Katherine Brendli, Vivian Vitullo

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

Researchers have yet to examine the association of Holland personality profiles as it relates to special education teachers. In response to this need, we report the personality and vocational profiles (Holland Codes) of 134 special education teachers across a special education training program. The purpose of this paper is to summarize findings from the Self-Directed Search measure commonly used to assess the personality of participants in an occupation and suggest implications for participants’ choice in becoming a special education teacher. Our focus was on personality match with vocational choice to include participants’ demographic (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, and geographical location) profile. …

Dangerous Associations: Racializing Urban Communities And The Influence Of One Critical Service-Learning Course To Disrupt Racist Ideological Habits, T.J. Stockton

Peer Reviewed Articles

This study examined pre-service teachers’ initial perceptions of urban communities and schools. Furthermore, it explored whether engaging in critical service-learning coursework incorporating an anti-racist curriculum disrupted the mechanisms that perpetuate racist ideological habits and associations. The narrative analysis deconstructed 12 participants’ reflective essays using a critical race theoretical lens. The overall findings revealed that the participants experience urban communities through racist associations and ideologies promoting white supremacist thinking. The critical service-learning course did influence the perceptions of the participants. However, findings suggest that a single critical service-learning course is insufficient to prepare pre-service teachers with the anti-racist pedagogies necessary for …

Building Community Using Experiential Education With Elementary Preservice Teachers In A Social Studies Methodology Course, Stephanie Speicher

Journal of Global Education and Research

There is urgency for teacher educators to instruct preservice teachers in the tenants of social justice education. This urgency is based upon the American demographic landscape and the responsibility of educators to teach for social justice. Preservice teachers report feeling inadequately prepared to educate for social justice when entering the classroom setting (citations from below). Feelings of incompetence in social justice teaching expressed among preservice teachers coupled with minimal examination in the literature of the effects of teacher education practices that aid in the readiness to teach for social justice provided the foundation for this study. This study examined experiential …

Protocol: Teacher Professional Development For Disability Inclusion In Low- And Middle-Income Asia-Pacific Countries: An Evidence And Gap Map, Syeda Kashfee Ahmed, David Jeffries, Anannya Chakraborty, Petra Lietz, Amit Kaushik, Budiarti Rahayu, David Armstrong, Kris Sundarsagar

Assessment and Reporting

According to prior research, teacher readiness and capability are key contributors for successful transition towards disability inclusive education, yet in-service teacher professional development for disability inclusion remains an under-researched area. The key objective of this evidence and gap map (EGM) is to locate evidence on interventions for disability inclusion focused teacher professional development (TPD) in low-to-middle-income-countries (LMICs) in the Asia-Pacific region. As such, it will illustrate different levels of evidence for TPD interventions as well as where there is no evidence (i.e., gaps). In other words, the EGM can make agencies aware where they might be operating in an area …

Keeping The End In Mind: Re-Centering Jesuit Pedagogy For Preservice Teacher Preparation, Margaret Schauer

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Jesuit Universities embody a mission to prepare students to be men and women for and with others. Serving people on the margins and working with them to dismantle systems of oppression is infused in academic majors and core curricula. Jesuit pedagogy seeks to engage students in contexts, experiences, reflections, actions and evaluations that develop the whole person for the common good. Jesuit teacher education programs (TEP) are in a unique position where pedagogy is critical to the development of university students who then implement pedagogy with students in K-12 schools as preservice teachers. TEPs are charged with demonstrating ways program …

Changing Worlds, Changing Classrooms: Satellite Children And Their Teachers In The Transnational Era, Ming-Hsuan Wu, Sonna L. Opstad

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

The challenges for immigrants in the US and Canada include the difficulties of making a living while raising their children. Due to the high cost of living and childcare in cities, along with the realities of low paying jobs and long working hours among many working-class immigrants, growing numbers of families send their infant children to their countries of origin to be raised by relatives for a few years. When the children reach school age, they are returned to their parents in the US. Prior research has focused on immigrant parents’ decision-making rationale and their reports of adjustments that children …

Recognizing And Sustaining #Blackgirlmagic: Reimagining Justice-Oriented Approaches In Teacher Education, Tia C. Madkins

Occasional Paper Series

As our global public health, race, and education crises continue to converge, PK-12 teachers must engage justice-oriented pedagogies. This historical moment highlights BIPOC children’s dehumanizing experiences, yet Black girls’ educational lives remain invisible. To address these issues within teacher education, scholars suggest teachers need to develop critical consciousness and reject deficit views of students, especially Black girls. Therefore, I discuss how we can support educators and teacher educators in recognizing and sustaining #BlackGirlMagic (i.e., Black girls’ and women’s universal awesomeness and brilliance). We can prepare educators to celebrate the diversity of Black girlhoods and disrupt monolithic views of who Black …

Remote Portals: Enacting Black Feminisms And Humanization To Disrupt Isolation In Teacher Education, Mildred Boveda, Keisha M. Allen

Occasional Paper Series

As two Black women teacher educators who contend with the neoliberal expectations of the westernized academy and the material realities of preparing teachers for P-12 contexts, we face the pressures of performing productivity while attempting to ameliorate injustices for multiply-marginalized students (e.g., Black students with disabilities facing economic hardships). Working within predominantly white spaces, we were already socially and intellectually isolated prior to the 2020 pandemic. In this collaborative essay, we articulate how COVID-19 exasperated existing educational and social inequities, yet served as a portal to collective sense-making of our heightened intersectional consciousness, sense of duty to community, and enactments …

Shades Of Gray: The Nuances Of Telling Among Elementary Preservice Teachers In The Mathematics Classroom, Montana Smithey

Georgia Educational Research Association Conference

Mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) often prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach in ways they may not be familiar—including facilitating conversations that are responsive to children’s mathematical thinking (Robertson et al., 2016). Specifically, MTEs support PSTs in understanding what it means to take on the mathematical work for children and ways children can engage in sense-making (Baxter & Williams, 2010; Wood, 1998). Telling, a teaching move that can be used to take on the mathematical work for children, is often used by PSTs (Moyer & Milewicz, 2002). Thus, MTEs focus PSTs learning of more productive teaching moves such as exploring details …

Diversifying The Classroom: Masculinity And Intersectionality In (Teacher) Education: A Review Of Literature, Scott V. Gealy

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

While much has been written about the gender and demographic divide in the U.S. between the population of students and their teachers, complex gendered, cultural, and socioeconomic forces appear to be widening it. In an effort to reveal the many ways that teacher education programs can attract and retain a more diverse body of candidates, this literature review lays out a general overview of masculinity’s work as it pertains to the socialization of boys and young men in K-12 schools; it examines the influence of gendered, racial, and socio-economic assumptions on both teachers and learners; it looks at the experience …

Reflections On Preservice Preparation And Professional Development Among Instructors Of Adult Emergent Bi/Multilingual Learners, David A. Housel

Theses and Dissertations

The preservice preparation and ongoing professional development for instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners (EBLs) in the United States has been characterized as “deeply uneven,” lacking uniformity, consistent academic rigor, and practical application to bolster instructors’ feelings of self-efficacy and agency in addressing their students’ complex learning needs. Using the Standards for ESL/EFL Teachers of Adults (2008) as a foundation, this explanatory sequential mixed methods research study explored the reflections of instructors of adult EBLs regarding their preservice preparation, ongoing professional development, and the guidance and support received from teaching colleagues and supervisors. The survey instrument developed contained a combination …

Supporting And Retaining Early Career Mathematics Teachers Using An Online Community Of Practice, Paula Jakopovic, Travis Weiland, Maria Campitelli, Lorraine Males, Lisa Amick

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Faculty Publications

This study reports on efforts over several years to design and implement a yearlong intervention intended to support secondary mathematics teachers in their early years of teaching. The intervention is designed to retain early career mathematics teachers in the professions by engaging them in the development of meaningful professional relationships with a school-based mentors, and by creating an online community of practice for support with other professionals. The intervention itself consists of early career teachers and their mentors participating in monthly professional learning activities such as online meetings, videoconferencing panels with experts, and collaborative reading and discussing timely, purposeful, and …

Planning And Teaching For Student Learning In Mathematics: How Graduate Student Instructors Develop And Implement Instruction, Jennifer S. Crooks-Monastra

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore undergraduate mathematics teaching from the perspective of a graduate student serving as a first-time precalculus instructor of record. A multiple case study was designed to follow three mathematics graduate student instructors (MGSIs) through one semester of teaching to understand their goals for student learning, efforts to achieve these goals, influences on planning, and to identify challenges they encountered. For each MGSI, data collection included four interviews, three observations of teaching, weekly journal entries, and written assignments from a pedagogy course. A focus group, field notes from the pedagogy course, audio from mentor …

Black Liberation In Teacher Education: (Re)Envisioning Educator Preparation To Defend Black Life And Possibility, Justin A. Coles, Darrius Stanley

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Current configurations of teacher education programs are insufficient in attracting and producing teachers equipped to teach through the permanence of antiblackness, instead still relying on race-neutral or color-evasive pedagogies that perpetuate the misrecognition of antiblackness. As evident by the sustained inequities experienced by Black children and the routine marginalization of Black (teacher) educators in the field, we recognize that teacher education programs, and subsequently P-12 classrooms, are not designed nor equipped to reduce the harm caused by persistent anti-Black racism. Despite the ways Blackness is derided and invisibilized in educator preparation, Black students, families, and communities have long countered anti-Black …

Reflections On The Politics Of Professionalism: Critical Autoethnographies Of Anti-Blackness In The Ela Classroom, Stephanie P. Jones, Robert P. Robinson

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

As Black educators, we are implanted with testimonies of how our pedagogies remained in close proximity to whiteness. We employ antiblackness and critical race theory frameworks. Through what we call vignettes of repair we address ourselves and our students to first, repair the harm we caused and second, to engage in collective witnessing that makes room for (re)claiming and (re)membering our own knowledge. From our critical reflection, we propose that teacher educators engage in a similar practice for their prospective teachers.

If You Are Not Ready, Then Step Aside: Intentionally Centering The Black Male Body In Teacher Education, Cherrel Miller Dyce, Julius Davis

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The conditions of Black male students in K-12 schools have been well-documented by scholars and clearly illustrate institutionalized anti-Black maleness that continues to go unaddressed or, in some cases, never addressed in most educator preparation programs and school systems in the U.S. We call for the centering of Black male bodies in teacher education and offer Afrocentric Assessment Mattering Pathways (AAMP) for guidance for intentionally centering the Black male body in teacher education: 1) critical anti-black self-reflection, 2) Afrocentric curricular change using Black history, and 3) engaging in off-campus Afrocentric environments.

The Teaching Artist Experience: An Art-Based Study Exploring Teaching Artists' Perspectives On The Efficacy Of Employment-Based Training And Support, Tessa Bry Taylor

Educational Studies Dissertations

This art-based research study seeks to examine teaching artists’ current perspectives on the models of training and support provided to them by their employers. The study was conducted with a group of teaching artists exploring two key research questions: What models of training and support do teaching artists receive? What are teaching artists perspectives on the efficacy of those models? Responses were explored collaboratively through a cyclical process of artmaking, reflection, and discussion designed and facilitated by the artist-researcher. The study yielded the following outcomes: teaching artists believe training and support received from employers is inefficient and inconsistent; teaching artists …

Critical Awareness For Literacy Teachers And Educators In Troubling Times, Patriann Smith, S. Joel Warrican

Literacy Practice and Research

The field of literacy remains assailed by a persisting discrepancy between an increasing body of literacy research that honors the diversity in students’ practices juxtaposed against a persistent system of schooling and high-stakes assessment that has not been designed to draw from underrepresented students’ literate assets. This discrepancy has created a situation where teachers often receive well-intentioned instruction from literacy educators about how to address diverse literacy needs, but then, struggle to enact this instruction in the high-stakes testing environment of classrooms and schools where they have little autonomy. We argue in this essay that critical multilingual, critical multicultural and …

Supporting Health Literacy In Adolescent Populations: Distinguishing Pedagogies For Sun Safety Education In Schools, Donna Barwood

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to distinguish pedagogies supporting critical health literacy development in adolescent populations. Specifically, for sun safety education in schools. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on an exploratory intrinsic case study design to qualitatively examine the learning conditions that Pre-Service Teachers' (PsTs) mobilise to advance Health Literary (HL) in learning activities. Findings: This paper presents data that shows the different ways thirty Pre-Service Teachers (PsTs) in Western Australia conceptualise HL in sun safety education for Year 7 students (12–13 years old). Examination of three consecutive lesson plans categorised learning activities (n = 444) according to HL …

Admitting Smarter: Refining The Admission Process Through Professional Dispositions, Catherine Snyder

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Since 2018, news agencies have shifted from reporting teacher layoffs to teacher shortages. This swift shift in the industry left many floundering to recruit enough teachers to fill classrooms. Even in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, there is still a demand for teachers, now with added online teaching skills. This article addresses one program’s admissions improvement process: an analysis of the acceptance process, improvements and changes in the process with the goal of reducing attrition, and improving the quality of candidates admitted. Several improvements were made, specifically related to introducing dispositional tools and standardizing the acceptance process across the …

Are Student Teachers Ready To Teach? What Do Different Stakeholders Think?, Erdem Aksoy, Belgin Aydin

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Teaching practice is one of the most important components of teacher education programs, yet (it) has been frequently criticized for including various problems. The curriculum change in 2018 included significant changes improving the applications in Turkey. These changes - ranging from limiting the number of student teachers to having a centralized evaluation system - had significant effects. Yet, how the system change impacted the applications and how this is perceived by the stakeholders have not been studied much. This study aims to identify the perspectives of three stakeholders. Opinions of 63 academics, 24 mentor teachers and 56 student teachers stated …

"It Opened My Eyes...": The Potential Of An Embedded Clinical Experience In Teacher Preparation, Danielle M. Hilaski, Nicole Maxwell, Jennie Jones

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Teacher candidates (TCs) often feel underprepared for their first teaching positions. Teacher education programs are, at least partially, responsible for the level of readiness of their graduating TCs. Fortunately, teacher educators have the capacity to positively change teacher education, creating a more effective, better prepared teaching force. Embedded clinical experiences connected to university literacy courses are one innovative approach to create more purposeful and engaging learning opportunities for TCs. TCs in an early childhood and special education program participated in an embedded clinical experience focused on reading and assessment, which allowed them to implement course content directly with elementary students, …

Pre-Service Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge(Tpack) Self-Efficacy And Development In K-6 Math, Fitsum Abebe

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was threefold. First, it examined K-6 pre-service teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) self-efficacy for math content area. Second, it identified the impact of Technology Knowledge (TK), Pedagogy Knowledge (PK) and Content Knowledge (CK) self-efficacy on TPACK self-efficacy. Third, it evaluated the change of pre-service TK, PK, CK and TPACK self-efficacy during a semester. The study was guided by Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) theoretical framework and Social Cognitive Theory on self-efficacy.

The study adapted the widely used Schmidt, D. A. et al. (2009) survey instrument to address the purposes of this study. Interview …

Effects Of Behavioral Skills Training On Preservice Teachers’ Ability To Code Articles, Rena Vanderwall

Dissertations

The research-to-practice gap in education has been well documented over the decades (e.g., Abbott et al., 1999; Burns & Ysseldyke, 2009; Cook & Odom, 2013; van Ingen & Ariew, 2015). To best benefit PreK-12 student outcomes, educators must understand and implement scientifically based practices in their teaching (Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 6301 et seq., 2015; Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq., 2004). However, this task can be daunting. When presented with educational research, teachers often struggle with identifying the key information, as well as applying it to their …

Policies, Practices, Places, And People: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Learned Literacy Teaching, Chad H. Waldron

Michigan Reading Journal

This article features cases of how elementary education preservice teachers made sense of teaching literacy. Their contexts for teaching varied in policies, curricula, and demands for their literacy teaching, shaped their learning and understanding of literacy instruction and assessment as beginning teachers. The research featured in this article pushes upon conceptualizations of "good" literacy teaching and how mentor teachers serve a critical role in preparing the next generation of elementary literacy teachers. Recommendations are made on how to best support elementary preservice teachers in literacy instruction and assessment.

Artefacts And Influence In Curriculum Policy Enactment: Processes, Products And Policy Work In Curriculum Reform, Karen Lambert, Laura Alfrey, Justen O’Connor, Dawn Penney

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© The Author(s) 2020. Artefacts are an important part of policy work, and a means of representation, translation, re-negotiation, and resistance of policy. While research has established their integral role in policy enactment, little research has examined the production and/or dissemination of artefacts by teacher educators. This paper reports and analyses the production and re-production of a specific set of artefacts, arising from the policy work of four teacher educators seeking to influence the interpretation and enactment of the Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE). Analysis and discussion pursue: the rationale for producing a set of artefacts …