Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Examining New Teachers' Perceptions Of Preparedness, Allison Cugini

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Attrition rate is high for beginning teachers in an urban school district in the Northeast United States. Without a proper support system in place, new teachers struggled transitioning from their preparation programs into the classroom. This study focused on recent graduates from a teacher preparation program at a large local university. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of preparedness of recent graduates from the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) accredited preparation program. The TEAC standards provided the conceptual framework which informed the interview guides. The research questions focused on the perceived readiness of new teachers, the …

Teachers' Perceptions About Reading Instruction In Elementary Inclusion Classrooms, Elizabeth Ann Kempf

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers argued that special education students should learn alongside regular education students because involvement with peers affects special education students' ability to assimilate information. However, inclusive elementary classroom teachers in a local Texas school were struggling to meet the learning needs of their diverse student populations in reading instruction. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers' perceptions about reading instruction in an inclusion setting and to investigate what teachers believe was needed to improve the effectiveness of their practice. King-Sears's inclusion instructional model served as the conceptual framework to guide this study. The research questions were focused on …

European Spaces And The Roma: Denaturalizing The Naturalized In Online Reader Comments, Theresa Catalano, Grace E. Fielder

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

With the entry of several Eastern European nations into the European Union (EU), a “third” space has developed in the discourse for nations perceived as not fully integrated “inside” the EU system. This article investigates the construction of this “third space” in the resultant “moral panic” about undesired immigration from other EU countries and its potential drain on the social services of the United Kingdom and links it to Euroskeptic discourse in British media. The article uses construal operations from cognitive linguistics combined with critical discourse studies as a way of denaturalizing the discourse in online comments that focus on …

Within And Beyond A Grow-Your-Own-Teacher Program: Documenting The Contextualized Preparation And Professional Development Experiences Of Critically Conscious Latina Teachers, Amanda Morales

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study provides an account of seven Latina teachers’ select educational, professional, and personal experiences over the past 10 years as they completed a grow-your-own-teacher program, became licensed teachers, and established themselves in Latinx minority–majority public schools within their rural, mid-western community. More specifically, as a Latina researcher and participant observer, I sought to better understand the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) Latina teachers’ process-oriented engagement and conscientization over time. Far from being ‘ready-made’ conscientized teachers, in this work I discuss the ways CLD Latina teachers’ multiple and developing identities as bilingual learners, mothers, racialized minorities in schools, and educated …

What Does An Anthropologist Of Educational Policy Do? Methodological Considerations, Edmund T. Hamann, Thirusellvan Vandeyar

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Although Margaret Mead (Hughes, 1952; Mead, 1961), Manuel Gamio (1916), and other leaders of 20th-century anthropology often made pronouncements regarding what schooling should and shouldn't do-in essence proposing to be educational policymakers of a sort-the turn of anthropology to the study of policy and particularly education policy is relatively new (Shore & Wright, 1997). It follows that what an anthropologist of educational policy implementation should do is therefore not yet depicted all that clearly or in detail. The groundbreaking work of Sutton and Levinson (2001) and their contributing authors in some senses stands out as an important exception to that …

Navigating Authoritative Discourses In A Multilingual Classroom: Conversations With Policy And Practice, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, Violet J. Harris

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Using Bakhtinian concepts of persuasive and authoritative discourse, this study reports on science and English language arts instructional practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. Situated in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and through the use of case study, the study explores classroom discourse data to illustrate how teachers use instructional practices to reproduce, contest, or navigate prevailing institutional monolingual policies when mediating students’ access to literacy and content. By analyzing classroom discourse, the authors argue that restrictive language policies that aspire for fixity disconnect multilingual learners from their daily realities. In contrast, they call for …

Teacher Identity Work In Neoliberal Schooling Spaces, Jenelle Reeves

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Negotiation of teaching identities in neoliberal schooling spaces is examined. Dissonance between a teacher’s values (e.g. care for students) and neoliberalism’s tenets is documented. A model of teacher identity work is applied to data, illuminating teacher identity work processes. Opening identity work spaces of potentiality is recommended.

To be a teacher doing identity work in today’s educational policy climate, a teacher seeking her own ethical self-formation, will require the stamina and flexibility to live and teach within imperfect, even de-professionalizing contexts where a bit of double agency may serve one well. In this era of deprofessionalizing discourses and policies, teachers’ …

Fostering Eabcd: Asset-Based Community Development In Digital Service-Learning, Rachael W. Shah, Jennifer M. Troester, Robert Brooke, Lauren Gatti, Sarah Thomas, Jessica E. Masterson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The continuing expansion of digital service-learning is bringing emergent dynamics to the field of community engagement, including the challenge of fostering asset-based views of community partners in online spaces. “Online disinhibition” (Suler, 2004) can prompt harsh critique or insensitive language that would not have occurred during face-to-face relationships. Traditionally, the field of community engagement has drawn on asset-based community development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993), which calls for relationship-driven, asset-based, and internally focused partnerships, to encourage ethical and positive interactions with community members. However, this theory was not originally intended for digital, text-based interactions. This article explores how aspects of asset-based …

Opportunities To Learn Mathematics Pedagogy And Connect Classroom Learning To Practice: A Study Of Future Teachers In The United States And Singapore, Traci Shizu Kutaka, Wendy M. Smith, Lorraine Males

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this study, we conducted secondary analyses using the TEDS-M database to explore future mathematics specialists teachers’ opportunities to learn (OTL) how to teach mathematics. We applied latent class analysis techniques to differentiate among groups of prospective mathematics specialists with potentially different OTL mathematics pedagogy within the United States and Singapore. Within the United States, three subgroups were identified: (a) Comprehensive OTL, (b) Limited OTL, and (c) OTL Mathematics Pedagogy. Within Singapore, four subgroups were identified: (a) Comprehensive OTL, (b) Limited Opportunities to Connect Classroom Learning with Practice, (c) OTL Mathematics Pedagogy, and (d) …

Language Ideologies And Epistemic Exclusion, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Research in educational linguistics is now challenging the efficacy of monolingual approaches that often dominate educational practices in multilingual settings. In most African nations where multilingualism is the norm, there remains a persistent reluctance by educational stakeholders (principals, teachers, parents, and students) to embrace multilingualism in education or to reposition local languages as resources in classrooms. This article draws on qualitative data from a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya to interrogate the articulated ideologies and their effects on communicative practices as voiced by the participants and by observing actual classroom practices. Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, legitimate language, and symbolic …

Where Should My Child Go To School? Parent And Child Considerations In Binational Families, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga, Juan Sánchez García

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Using examples encountered from our multi-year study of students encountered in Mexican schools with prior experience in US schools, we look at transnationally-tied families’ decision-making regarding where to send their children to school and ask whether parents should ‘parent from afar’. We don’t pose that as a question about ideals— what would be best if parents had economic security and unambiguous legal residential status— but rather as a more pragmatic one. Given some parents’ and children’s limited agency in real- world circumstances, what is their best path forward?

English Education As Democratic Armor: Responding Programmatically To Our Political Work, Lauren Gatti, Jessica E. Masterson, Robert Brooke, Rachael W. Shah, Sarah Thomas

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which attention to programmatic vision and coherence – rather than foci on individual courses – might advance the work of justice-oriented, critical English education in important ways. The authors propose that consciously attending to the work of English education on the programmatic level can better enable English educators to cultivate democracy-sustaining dispositions in preservice teachers. Using Grossman et al.’s (2008) definition of “programmatic coherence”, the authors illustrate how one interdepartmental partnership is working to create a shared programmatic vision for English education.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on …

Teacher Identity, Jenelle Reeves

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The concept of teacher identity has experienced a resurgence of research attention as scholars in education, psychology, and related fields have expanded our understanding of identity from something internal, coherent, and fixed to something socially mediated, fragmented, and multiple. Identities are constructed as individuals claim identity positions and as external others assign identity to individuals; these self-positionings and positionings done by others may be complementary or contradictory. Simultaneously with an individual’s use of agency to claim identity positions, external forces are at work to assign identity positions to that same individual; and, when these two forces clash, a negotiation of …

Sybil Ludington: Double The Distance, Half The Recognition, Elizabeth E. Saylor, Mardi Schmeichel, Jillian Tullish

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article describes a lesson for elementary students based on Sybil Ludington’s midnight ride during the Revolutionary War. The tasks and activities presented in the lesson afford students the opportunity to learn about this period in history by comparing Ludington’s ride to Paul Revere’s ride. Through an analysis of the stories told about these midnight rides, students are also encouraged to think about the reasons why Revere’s story is the one most often presented in history books and to consider the consequences of excluding the experiences of marginalized groups when telling stories from the past.

It’S A Balancing Act: A Self-Study Of Teacher Educators’ Feedback Practices And The Underlying Tensions, Sherry Dismuke, Esther A. Enright, Julianne A. Wenner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

While there are documented benefits of full-time faculty participating in clinical supervision, challenges, such as conflicting time demands, personal bias, adherence to common evaluation forms, and power differentials, can create impediments to effective practicum supervision (Ciuffetelli Parker & Volante, 2009). We, as teacher educators, turned to reflection through self-study to investigate our professional practice with the aim of better understanding and overcoming those challenges. Like Bullock (2017), we utilized teacher candidates’ perspectives to disrupt, confirm, and extend our narratives. We focused on the practice of giving teacher candidates feedback on their developing teaching during their clinical placement in elementary schools. …

Effect Of X-Word Grammar And Traditional Grammar Instruction On Grammatical Accuracy, Sue Livingston, Andi Toce, Cyndi Casey, Fernando Montoya, Bonny R. Hart, Carmela O'Flaherty

Publications and Research

This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar texts over a three-month period of time for 20% of their class time. Essays written at three different times were analyzed for the correct and incorrect use of sentence patterns and verb constructs. Results demonstrated that improvement (writing with less error) was larger in both categories for the X-Word Grammar group and …

The Massachusetts Educator Evaluation System And Teacher Perceptions Of Professional Growth, Craig Goldberg

The Graduate Review

Teacher evaluation has gained wide-spread attention and implementation in recent decades. In 2011, the State of Massachusetts adopted new regulations for the evaluation of all teachers designed to assist in developing talented educators through self-directed analysis, reflection, planning, action steps, and collaboration. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of Massachusetts State mandated teacher evaluation on teacher perceptions of professional growth. In this study, professional growth refers to reflecting on feedback from observations as well as formative and summative meetings with evaluators to adjust practice in the classroom. Specifically, the development of a teacher’s professional growth includes …

Writing Across The Curriculum: Integrating Writing Into Daily Elementary Math, Science, And Social Studies Lessons, Emily Lundh

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

There is a significant lack of time spent writing with students in the primary grades, namely writing informationally. By using research done by experts in the fields of writing and literature in the elementary grades I have created lessons that integrate informational writing into the daily lessons in math, science, and social studies in first, third, and fifth grades. These lessons are individual, pair, and small group plans that can be completed in just one day or a few days where students are engaging with the content in a different way.

Toward Learning And Justice, Through Love, Isis Artze-Vega

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter responds to the call for educational developers to isolate the one perspective that guides our work. It retraces the author’s career steps, seeking the origin of love as a guiding principle, and describes its evolution and application during her career. To do so, the piece includes a theoretical perspective on love and argues that its utility as a characterizing perspective for our profession stems from its significance to learning and justice. It suggests the timeliness and urgency of elevating the role of love in our field, notes associated risks and rewards, and suggests resources for doing so.

The Idea Of Educational Development: An Historical Perspective, Laura Cruz

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This essay examines the idea of educational development, inspired both in content and approach by John Henry Newman’s influential 19th century work on the idea of a university.