Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Start With The End In Mind: Experiences Of Accelerated Course Completion By Pre-Service Teachers And Educators, Anita Collins, Iain Hay, Irmgard Heiner

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In response to changes government funding and policies over the past five years, the Australian tertiary sector has entered an increasingly competitive climate. This has forced many universities to become more strategic in attracting increased numbers of PSTs. Providing accelerated learning opportunities for PSTs is viewed as one way to gain greater market share. Accelerated learning programs are one of the fastest growing transformations in Australian higher education over the past five years. There is limited research that investigates the effectiveness of accelerated programs and the ways in which PSTs experience them. This preliminary study investigates the experiences of pre-service …

Rethinking The Literacy Capabilities Of Pre-Service Primary Teachers In Testing Times, Eileen Honan, Beryl Exley, Lisa Kervin, Alyson Simpson, Muriel Wells

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper demonstrates how teacher accreditation requirements can be responsibly aligned with a scholarly impetus to incorporate digital literacies to prepare pre-service teachers to meet changing educational needs and practices. The assessment initiatives introduced in the newly constructed four year undergraduate Bachelor of Education program at one Australian university are described and analysed in light of the debates surrounding pre-service primary teachers’ literacy capabilities. The findings and subsequent discussion have implications for all literacy teacher educators concerned about the impact of standardised assessment practices on the professional future of teachers.

Ideas Of And Attitudes Towards Projects And Changing Practices: Voices Of Four Teachers, Saurav Shome, Chitra Natarajan

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The paper reports a study of the project practices of four Indian middle school teachers, elicited through semi-structured interviews of individual teachers. The teachers also responded to a proposal to modify four aspects of existing project practices, viz. subject integration, assessment, group work, and management of resources. The aspects were derived to be significant from the recommendations of the Indian National Curriculum Framework (2005), and based on research literature on project-based learning (PBL). The study found that teachers largely used projects as motivating exercises before teaching, or an activity for applying what was learnt. Hence, they associated fluid meanings to …

Negotiating The Inclusion Of Nanoscience Content And Technology In Science Curriculum: An Examination Of Secondary Teachers' Thinking In A Professional Development Project, Jennifer Gayle Wells

Dissertations and Theses

The Next Generation Science Standards represent a significant challenge for K-12 school reform in the United States in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (NSTA, 2012). One important difference between the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) and the Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve, 2013) is the more extensive inclusion of nanoscale science and technology. Teacher PD is a key vehicle for implementing this STEM education reform effort (NRC, 2012; Smith, 2001).

The context of this dissertation study is Project Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Outreach (NANO), a secondary level professional development program for teachers that provides a summer workshop, …

Effects Of A Sustained Federally Funded Science Professional Development Program On Elementary Teachers Who Teach Science, Sally Michelle Creel

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

The purpose of this study was to investigate how participation in a sustained professional development, the Math Science Partnership, improves teacher self-efficacy in science instruction and how it motivates teachers to incorporate elements of the training into their classroom instructional practices. This study considered the perspectives of forty-nine practicing elementary teachers as they participated in a sustained professional development over a two year period. This research study was intended to identify the most successful elements of the sustained professional development and their relationship to teacher self-efficacy in science.

The research design for this study was a case study. While case …

It Takes A Village: Investigating The Critical Role Clinical Faculty Play In Mathematics Teacher Education, Damon L. Bahr

Faculty Publications

The dispositions of preservice elementary education teachers toward reform-oriented mathematics education were surveyed before and after an extended pre-student teaching practicum. During the practicum, university and school-based personnel served a "clinical faculty" as they supported the preservice teachers' practicum experiences. The preservice teachers' perceptions of the clinical faculty's dispositions were also surveyed. Relationships between changes in the dispositions of the preservice teachers and their perceptions of the clinical faculty were discovered thus highlighting the important influence clinical faculty wield as mathematics teacher educators.

Developing Mathematical Thinking: Changing Teachers’ Knowledge And Instruction, Jonathan L. Brendefur, Keith Thiede, Sam Strother, Kim Bunning, Duane Peck

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the present research, we evaluated the effectiveness of a multi-year professional development program in mathematics for elementary teachers. Each year the program focused on a different domain of mathematics. We found the program increased teachers’ knowledge of (a) number and operations, (b) measurement and geometry, and (c) probability and statistics. We also examined the relation between mathematical knowledge and teaching practices. Across the three domains neither pretest nor posttest mathematical knowledge were related to classroom teaching practices. However, change in knowledge was positively related to six different dimensions of teaching practice for number and operations, and for measurement and …

September 27, 2013 - Alec Faculty Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

Second Grader’S Comprehension Of Expository Text: Examining The Effectiveness Of Text Structure As A Comprehension Strategy, Michelle Marie Mcclellan, Dr. Kendra M. Hall

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Teaching students to read is one of the most important aspects taught in an elementary classroom and often is one of the harder concepts to teach. Teachers use many different strategies when they teach students to read. One method of teaching the students is to teach comprehension strategies, which tends to be one of the more complex methods. Many teachers often struggle with this aspect of teaching as they try to find the most efficient way to teach their students. For the project, it was proposed that we use expository texts and text structure to see how well the students …

Discursive Tactical Negotiations Within And Across Literacy Coaching Interactions, Carolyn S. Hunt

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, the researcher employed de Certeau's theoretical insights into cultural production in everyday life to examine how literacy coaches and teachers discursively negotiated issues of identity, power, and positioning during coaching interactions. The study also explored how literacy coaches and teachers enacted emotions within these discursive negotiations of identity, power, and positioning; and how physical, social, and ideological spaces were shaped by and reflected in coaching interactions. Data were generated during a yearlong qualitative study of literacy coaches and teachers interacting within a mid-size, suburban district in the U.S. Midwest. The researcher used a microethnographic approach to discourse …

The Ethos Of Excellence In An Effective School: A Study Of An Exemplary Urban School, Karen Danita Gyenfie

Theses and Dissertations

THE ETHOS OF EXCELLENCE IN AN EFFECTIVESCHOOL:

A STUDY OF AN EXEMPLARY URBAN SCHOOL

This research project was organized in three phases. Phase I began with the selection of the high performing urban school site to be studied. Phase II of the study centered on the researcher's study of the school's policies, curriculum, instructional practices, personnel, and related artifacts. The researcher processed, analyzed, and coded all data in accordance to qualitaive standards in order to identify those indigenous practices that impact the success of the school.

The findings of the study including the following:

1. School improvement is a multifaceted …

Academic Language, Anne Dahlman

All Resources

A Powerpoint presentation on academic language and how to incorporate it in the classroom.

Innovation In Academic Libraries During A Time Of Crisis, Dane Michael Ward

Theses and Dissertations

During a period of rapid social and technological change, academic Academic libraries and librarianship are experiencing a period of great change, or crisis, influenced by multiple factors including emerging technologies, declining budgets, and changing information. More than a transitory historical phase, these changes represents a fundamental transition between paradigms (Kuhn, 1962). Academic libraries and librarianship are moving from a paradigm focused on collections and books to a paradigm focused on learning. Within this context, innovations are new processes, services and products that facilitate this transition to the new paradigm.

Beyond this definitional work, the work serves as an exploration of …

The Gender Trap: Parents And The Pitfalls Of Raising Boys And Girls, Mardi Schmeichel

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

Book review

The book The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls is an example of the kind of nuanced research that works toward unraveling the complexities of gender as expressed in individual lives as well as larger societal patterns that contribute to problematic assumptions about who girls and boys and women and men must be. Sociologist Emily Kane focuses specifically on the “gender trap” in parenting, which she defines as “a set of expectations and structures that inhibit social change and stall many parents’ best intentions for loosening the limits that gender can impose on …

Karen Rowan Cd Summer 12, Karen Rowan

Grant Awardees Lists

Supports faculty to redesign or develop a course in ways that implement high-impact, evidence-based, and/or innovative teaching strategies to improve student learning.

Julian Montoro-Rodriguez Cd Spring 10, Julian Montoro-Rodriguez

Grant Awardees Lists

Supports faculty to redesign or develop a course in ways that implement high-impact, evidence-based, and/or innovative teaching strategies to improve student learning.

The Effects Of An Undergraduate Algebra Course On Prospective Middle School Teachers' Understanding Of Functions, Especially Quadratic Functions, Jonathan Taniola Duarte

Theses and Dissertations

Although current reform movements have stressed the importance of developing prospective middle school mathematics teachers' subject matter knowledge and understandings, there is a dearth of research studies with regard to prospective middle school teachers' confidence and knowledge with respect to quadratic functions. This study was intended to fill this void. It generated information on prospective teachers' knowledge of quadratic functions as well as of their confidence to answer questions involving quadratic equations and multiple representations of functions.

The study employed a multiple-perspectives design, with data being collected from different vantage points - documents, pre- and post-teaching tests, artifacts, interviews, classroom …

Strategic Thinking Is At The Core Of Strategic Planning, Darvesh Karim

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

No abstract provided.

Call For Submissions

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Embracing A Productive Rhetorical Pragmatism: Teaching Writing As Democratic Deliberation, Jennifer Clifton

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Our current points of stasis in American politics make clear: we are facing a deep crisis of imagination in public life. Our (in)ability to imagine the interests and experiences of others limits not only how we understand domestic and global citizenship but also how we enact that citizenship with others. In talk and in practice, the inability to take seriously the interests and experiences of others leads Americans – in English Language Arts classrooms and in public life – to cast those who disagree as deeply flawed in character – unpatriotic, ungodly, lazy, irresponsible, or criminal.

In this article, I …