Digital Commons Network^™

Susan Bauer's 2003 Theory Of Well-Educated Mind: Could The Classical Approach To Teaching History Work In Southern California History K12 Classrooms?, Tomasz B. Stanek

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The main purpose of this research evolved from the publication of S. W. Bauer Well-educated mind, a study of the significance of new methods of teaching history course. Bauer (2003) argues that the grammarian approach of simple recognition and memorization removes students from reading primary sources. This theory suggests a new methodology for the instructors and students through the three-stage process of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric preparation with aid of primary sources or “great books list”. This paper supports Bauer’s thesis and provides evidence through extensive interviews that indeed this concept of pedagogy is present in Southern California schools.

Teacher Perspectives Regarding Gifted Diverse Students, Toni Szymanski, Thomas Shaff

Gifted Children

Abstract

Understanding teacher perceptions of diverse, gifted students is a first step to exploring the underrepresentation of non-white students in programs for advanced academic ability. As professionals, teachers are responsible for making referrals for special programming and are often the “gatekeepers” for student identification. This qualitative study used exploratory interviews to examine perceptions of five second- and third-grade teachers and the talented and gifted coordinator at a school in which 65% of the student population was Hispanic. Three themes emerged in the findings: (a) Teachers experience differences in training to work with diverse, low income students and gifted students; (b) …

Motivating English Language Learners By Integrating Their L1 And C1, Badequnzhu Badequnzhu

MA TESOL Collection

The subject of this research paper is the use of first language (L1) and culture (C1) of the learners in the process of learning English in an EFL classroom in a specific teaching context. The researcher used different teaching methods and approaches in a Tibetan secondary school context: the Silent Way, Desuggetopedia, Cooperative Learning, Way of Council and Total Physical Response. Implications of this action research can be used in the classroom to raise learners’ motivation to lower affective filters allowing deeper and more profound input of the target language, thus to improve communication and comprehension of the target language …

Teaching Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Students: A Phenomenological Study Of Volunteer Teachers' Learning Curve, Jessica Sierk

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore and describe the experiences of former Cristo Rey Jesuit High School teacher volunteers. The experiences of these teacher volunteers include how they learned to teach on the job, as well as how they developed the intercultural competence necessary to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Central Question: What meaning do former Cristo Rey Jesuit High School teacher volunteers attribute to their learning to teach process?

Cehs Student Research Conference Program

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

Welcome – Dr. Jon Pedersen

Keynote Address: Dr. Kenneth Howe, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Poster Session

Paper Sessions

Panel Sessions

Graduate Student Awards and Presentations

Student Panel: Advice for Beginning Graduate Students

Cehs Student Research Conference Program--Abstracts

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

Papers and Panels

Posters

The Curriculum For English Language Teacher Education In Australian And Vietnamese Universities, Minh Hue Nguyen

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper examines the curricula for English language teacher education in two universities, one in Australia and the other in Vietnam. Specifically, it analyses the structures of the two curricula, compares and contrasts them, and examines how the development of the curricula was shaped by distinctive contextual factors. Sources of data include relevant literature, policy and curriculum documents, and interviews with curriculum developers from the two universities. Analysis of data revealed great variation across and within the two curricula in terms of structure and content. Findings also reveal specific contextual factors that influenced the development of the curricula. Although the …

Teacher, Researcher, And Accountability Discourses: Creating Space For Democratic Science Teaching Practices In Middle Schools, Cory A. Buxton, Shakhnoza Kayumova, Martha Allexsaht-Snider

Democracy & Education

This study explores the role of competing discourses that shape current practices in U.S. schools and how professional development efforts can support teachers and researchers in finding ways to reinsert more democratic processes into their collaborative work. We examine the case of one research and professional development project with the goal of supporting middle school science and ESOL teachers in fostering more meaningful science learning for all their students but especially their English language learners. Using Gee’s notion of big-D discourses and Fairclough’s notion of interdiscursivity, we trace how the Discourse of accountability, the Discourse of science teaching, and the …

Integrating Music Into Samoan Primary Schools: Teachers’ Perceptions And Potential Benefits, Jennifer Fortin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study explores the knowledge-base of teachers’ beliefs and practices of music integration in Samoan primary schools, as well as the potential benefits it provides for young developing minds. Current Samoan teachers’ perceptions of the benefits of music are analyzed in light of data proving these benefits in Primary Education. Children gain only as much as teachers incorporate. Social benefits include a more positive learning environment, improved attention and attitude, as well as inspiration and motivation, along with academic benefits of increased verbal memory, abstract reasoning and reading development. Data was collected through a series of interviews, surveying, observation and …

Ell High School Students Of Mexican Ancestry: A Phenomenological Study Of Language Ideologies, Kristine Sudbeck

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

The formation of languages and dialects is frequently considered a social process (Gal & Irvine, 1995). As such, humans form their own ideologies about particular language varieties, placing values on certain ones in a given context more than others (Greenfield, 2010). The development of a person’s language ideology can be influenced by the profit of distinction, which Pierre Bourdieu (1984) describes as the “noted margin of difference for usefulness and prestige of a particular language” (p. 55). It is through the process of misrecognition (Bourdieu, 1984) that a particular language is “recognized as legitimate and appropriate for discourse in official …

Differentiated Instruction In The High School Mathematics Classroom, Sherri Kruger

Mathematics Graduate Theses

The purpose of this research paper is to address the challenges of instruction within a classroom whose census is a diverse mixture of student mathematical abilities. The diverse ability of low and high achieving students all required to master the different strands of mathematics creates problems for instructors and students to stay engaged and actively moving forward deepening and widening their knowledge base. This paper will focus on differentiated lessons, assessments, and projects of a mathematics classroom in a public high school.

The Effect On Cumulative Language Acquisition Increase For English Language Learner Students In Kindergarten Through Third Grade Who Attended Multiple Years Of Summer Remediation Programs, Gregory Anthony Baker

Open Access Dissertations

Baker, Gregory A. Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2013. The Effect On Cumulative Language Acquisition Increase For English Language Learner Students In Kindergarten Through Third Grade Who Attended Multiple Years Of Summer Remediation Programs. Major Professor: Marilyn A. Hirth

Already academically at risk, students in the rapidly growing English Language Learner (ELL) student population in the United States face additional challenges due to regression of English language acquisition over the average ten-week agrarian summer break when they return to homes in which Spanish was the primary language spoken. While the influence of summer learning loss has been investigated in different contexts …

English Language Teacher Educators’ Pedagogical Knowledge Base: The Macro And Micro Categories, Shahab Moradkhani, Ramin Akbari, Reza Ghafar Samar, Gholam Reza Kiany

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The aim of this study was to determine the major categories of English language teacher educators’ pedagogical knowledge base. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 5 teachers, teacher educators, and university professors (15 participants in total). The results of data analysis indicated that teacher educators’ pedagogical knowledge encompasses eight macro categories; namely, knowledge of language and related disciplines, knowledge of ELT theories, skills, and techniques, knowledge of context and social relations, knowledge of class, time, and learning management, knowledge of research and professional development, knowledge of practicum, knowledge of teachers and their assessment, and knowledge of reflective and …

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, …

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

Student-Teachers' Comments' Type On Children's Writing: Practices And Perceptions Of Their Role As Writing Facilitators, Esther Sayag- Cohen, Merav Asaf, Nurit Nathan

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Student-Teachers' Comments' Type on Children's Writing: Practices and Perceptions of their Role as Writing Facilitators

Abstract

This study examines how student-teachers in the final stage of their teacher education program, perceive the role of feedback and how they write feedback on children's writing. Towards this end, student-teachers wrote compositions, answered a questionnaire, and wrote feedback on compositions written by 6^th grade students. 10 student-teachers were also interviewed. Findings are that student-teachers perceive writing as a functional and technical process; they mainly edited the texts, they did not relate to the content, and were critical towards the expression of feelings …

Exploring Identity-Based Challenges To English Teachers’ Professional Growth, Heather C. Camp

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study explores identity-based challenges that can hinder secondary English teachers enrolled in Master’s degree programs from experiencing professional growth. It illustrates how identity conflicts can prevent teachers from integrating a disciplinary identity into their professional sense-of-self, thereby limiting the benefits they might gain from graduate coursework. In particular, the study suggests that dissonance between discourse norms and values, concerns about community allegiances, and assumptions about language, difficulty, and power can impede teachers from appropriating disciplinary discourse and hinder them from combining it with more familiar discourses that circulate in schools and shape teachers’ identities.

Reflective Teaching Practices: Looking Beneath The Surface And Emergent Cyclical Experiential Learning Processes And Outcomes, Mazie E. Black

MA TESOL Collection

In this professional paper, I examined the kinds of processes I experienced for English language acquisition (ELA) in practice. This journey is about my transition from a generalist to a TESOL specialist. One of my most successful lessons was not in English, but a science lesson to students who were majority users of English as a second or third language. It was about the use of reflective and refractive telescopes. My approaches were very student centered and project based. They worked in groups, chose which type of telescope to make, kept journals with notes, drawings and key vocabulary, made inferences, …

Can The Differentiated Math Classroom Be A Reality?, Carl Jeff Morris

Mathematics Graduate Theses

Imagine a math classroom that looked more like a Google workplace where collaboration, teamwork, and innovation are the centerpieces. Instead of just students sitting in rows passively learning about the nature of mathematics, picture a classroom of students in small circle discussing mathematics. This could range from groups working together on a problem solving strategy for a newly learned concept, students helping students using technology as an aid, another small group receiving intervention from the teacher, or individual students making or viewing instructional math videos. All of this according to research focused on classroom differentiation; specifically in middle school and …

A Content Analysis Of Early Childhood Teachers’ Theoretical And Practical Experiences With Infants And Toddlers In Australian Teacher Education Programs, Susanne Garvis, Narelle Lemon, Donna Pendergast, Bonnie Yim

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In Australia, the growth in the provision of early childhood services for very young children aged birth to three years has placed increased demands on pre-service teachers as new policy stipulates the need for qualified early childhood teachers. While many teacher education programs offer early childhood courses, they have traditionally had a greater focus on kindergarten and the formal years of schooling. Less is known about the amount of time devoted to developing the specialist educational capacity for teaching and caring for infants and toddlers. This paper explores 55 Australian early childhood teacher undergraduate education programs to provide data regarding …

Exploring The Effects Of Classroom Culture On Primary Pre-Service Teachers’ Professional Development, Taner Altun

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study aims to examine primary student teachers’ (PSTs) perceptions about the effects of pre-formed classroom culture on their professional development. In the study, a mixed method approach was used. The study group consisted of 4^th year student teachers who attend a primary teacher education program leading to a B.Ed diploma at the Fatih Faculty of Education at Karadeniz Technical University. The data was collected during the spring semester of the 2011-2012 academic year, in which student teachers carried out their teaching practices in primary schools. The main data collection instruments included a preliminary questionnaire which was distributed to …

The Fitzroy Valley Numeracy Project: Assessment Of Early Changes In Teachers’ Self-Reported Pedagogic Content Knowledge And Classroom Practice, Lorraine Jacob, Andrew Mcconney

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The Fitzroy Valley Numeracy Project (FVNP) was designed to improve numeracy outcomes for Indigenous students by developing a systematic, co-ordinated approach to teaching primary school mathematics. In this study, using early project data, we examine FVNP teachers’ self‑reported pedagogic content knowledge and classroom practice from initial and follow up questionnaires, as well as interviews from case study teachers. After the first FVNP year, teachers reported being better able to plan focused mathematics lessons and to monitor student learning. On the other hand, teachers also felt less able to make mathematics explicit to students and their confidence in providing engaging activities …

Towards Internationalising The Curriculum: A Case Study Of Chinese Language Teacher Education Programs In China And Australia, Danping Wang, Robyn Moloney, Zhen Li

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper presents a comparative curricular inquiry of teacher education programs of Chinese as a foreign language in China and Australia. While there is an increasing demand for qualified Chinese language teachers both within China and Western countries, pre-service teacher training is regarded as one of the major factors in impeding success in effective student learning. Using an interpretative approach, this paper captures voices from teacher educators and pre-service teachers through in-depth interviews to supplement curriculum document reviews. The results identify curriculum differences in educational aims and objectives, learning content, methods of delivery and assessment. The study suggests aspects of …

Understanding The Language Of The Occupy Movement: A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis, Theresa Catalano, John W. Creswell

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

In the expanding area of narrative inquiry, researchers often battle with the decision of how to analyze/interpret data. The aim of this article is to propose the use of cognitive linguistics as a tool in narrative analysis using as a case illustration interviews conducted in October/November 2011 with participants in the Occupy movement (Occupy). Results expose important metaphors/metonymies that reveal much about the perception of the movement by its inceptors. Not only did the analysis present the movement as a war and a force against government corporations, oppression, and inequality, but it was also seen as a strong structure and …

Thinking Aloud In The Science Classroom: Can A Literacy Strategy Increase Student Learning In Science?, Lindsey Joan Mockel

Dissertations and Theses

This research study investigated the effect of using the think aloud protocol while reading informational text on students' ability to learn from text in a secondary science classroom. The participants in this study were high school students (n=47) in three classes of a mixed-grade Integrated Biology, Chemistry, and Physics course. The study tracked student achievement during a four-week curriculum unit on the theory of evolution and evidence for biological evolution. All students received instruction on using the think aloud protocol, and all students practiced the think aloud protocol when reading short articles related to scientific evidence for evolution. The researcher …

English Article Acquisition Of Native Russian Speakers, Jacob Burdis, Ray Graham

Journal of Undergraduate Research

For decades, researchers have explored various aspects of the development or morphology in second language learners of English. Undoubtedly, one of the most popular models describing this development is the natural order hypothesis. Stephen Krashen (1977) presents an average morphological order of acquisition for English where learners, “acquiring English as a second language also show a “natural order” for grammatical morphemes, regardless of their first language” (p. 146). Many recent studies have challenged the assertion that a learners’ native language does not influence this order, but plays a vital role in its development. This study examines an aspect of the …