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Content Is Not Enough: A History Of Secondary Earth Science Teacher Preparation With Recommendations For Today, Elizabeth B. Lewis

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

Secondary geoscience education has its roots in geography and physiographic education from the turn of the 20th century. High school Earth science reached a peak during the late 1960s and 1970s, after plate tectonic theory revolutionized geology. The production of Earth science teachers, unlike biology teachers, has never reached full capacity, which has likely contributed to the lesser presence and status of Earth and space science in U.S. high schools today. Historically, the geoscience community has focused on enriching teachers' geoscience content knowledge, but modern Earth and space science teachers need more than just content knowledge.

Based on current science …

Perceptions Of Technology Use In Rural And Urban Pennsylvania High Schools, Brenda M. Freeman

Dissertations

Purpose

Policy makers are implementing standards and developing guidelines for integrating technology into K-12 schools. With this in mind, the integration of technology into curriculum is an ever-growing point of discussion among high-school education professionals. Technology uses in teaching and learning present significant issues in educational reform literature. Rather than trying to describe the impact of all technologies as if they were the same, this study focuses on the differences in the ways technologies are being used in the classroom as well as the role technology played in instruction. There is also a need to investigate whether or not student …

Transforming Higher Education Through Part-Time Faculty Professional Development That Fosters Flourishing: A Dissertation, Janet Lynn Thompson

Educational Studies Dissertations

This qualitative study investigates the professional development experiences part-time faculty identify as positive. The purpose is to examine how positive professional development experiences inform part-time faculty's subsequent teaching, and what relational qualities if any are present in those positive experiences. Nine part-time faculty - five women and four men - ages 27 to 64, with teaching experience ranging from 3 to 20 years, responded to questions designed from Cooperrider's Appreciative Inquiry model. Conceptual frameworks include the adult development/adult learning interface and relational theory and its application in psychological and educational settings. Participants' positive experiences and how these experiences inform their …

A Partnership In Nebraska With The Humane Society, Sarah K. Edwards, Rebecca J. Pasco, M. Susan Mcwilliams, Kathy Everts Danielson

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Perhaps service-learning continues to grow as an effective pedagogy in colleges of education because it offers everyone involved an opportunity to put words into action. With the news full of stories of bullying and school shootings, teachers and teacher candidates look for someone to help them make sense of what feels to be a growing trend of cruelty. Perhaps it is a natural reaction for teachers to want to do something positive in the face of brutality. Perhaps our wanting to be proactive corresponds to whatever drew us to education in the first place. Regardless of the cause, four literacy …

Back Matter

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

Katherine Blair Yancey (right) created "Prime," the colored-pencil drawing on the front cover, while enrolled in "Drawing I" with Professor Beryl Solla (left) at Piedmont Community College.

Perceptions Of District Technology Coordinators Regarding Factors That Influence Technology Integration In Teacher Practice, Diane M. Paszkowski

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Thriving, Coping, Surviving, Hoping: Negotiating The First Year Of Teaching, Debrah Jean Fordice

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In this qualitative study, I examined how four teachers negotiated their first year of teaching. All four teachers graduated from the same teacher preparation program, and secured general elementary positions in the same school district where they conducted some or all of their clinical coursework. I explored the factors that shaped the practice of these first-year teachers.

Annie, a 23-year-old, single, female marathon runner, with a vision to work with children in an inner-city setting, secured a position as a first grade teacher at a school where 85% of the children lived in poverty. Rachel, 24 years old, newly-married, and …

Web-Based Courses To Support Efl Learning For Pre-Service Teachers: A Thai Pilot Study, Vijittra Vonganusith, Pagram Jeremy

EDU-COM International Conference

In a modern, information rich, economically driven society, Western universities as well as Thai Universities are turning towards the Web to disseminate and retrieve information. Integration of computers to support the learning environment in teaching language is still in its infancy in Thailand. Its implementation changes both the instructional strategy and also the teaching and learning environment. English has been taught as a foreign language for over a century, and plays an important role at all levels of the Thai education system. At higher education levels, English skills are essential components of every pre-service teacher‘s professional education. In order to …

Student -Teacher Relationships And Their Effect On Student Achievement At The Secondary Level, Cheryl Dix Modlin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Previous research has demonstrated that adolescent learning increases with a proactive type of student-teacher relationship. However, due to the lack of common expectations for a positive student-teacher relationship, a disconnection occurs for some students, who then may become disengaged at school and may not reach their full potential academically, socially, or developmentally. This mixed method sequential, exploratory design focused on a Midwestern secondary school of approximately 250 students. The disconnection between students and teachers was addressed by investigating positive student-teacher relationships; student achievement; and the connection between student-teacher relationships and achievement. Qualitative data were collected using focus groups of students …

Changing The Negative Behavioral And Developmental Outcomes To A Toxic Prenatal Environment Through Parent Education, Angela Elieen Laughlin Lebedev

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of current education materials on changing maternal smoking attitudes. Children are affected by prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke. Although there are educational efforts to discourage pregnant women from smoking, the practice continues in a significant number of pregnancies. New materials, based on current research, were also evaluated for effectiveness. The theoretical framework for this study was adult learning theory presented by Knowles which makes the assumption that an individual is shaped by environmental systems, that adult learning is affected by previous knowledge they bring to the learning and that adults …

Discourse In Inquiry Science Classrooms (Diisc): Reference Manual, Dale R. Baker, Rachelle Beard, Nievita Bueno-Watts, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Gokhan Özdemir, Giota Perkins, Sissy Wong, Senay Yaşar-Purzer

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

One of the greatest challenges facing scholars and funding agencies interested in reform is determining the impact of classroom practice on student achievement. The degree to which this effect can be determined is contingent upon instruments that measure teachers’ ability to enact specific instructional strategies. Frequently, a general instrument will not do because it was not designed to measure the unique focus of a professional development program or a set of variables of interest to researchers.

Consequently, specific instruments should be developed to allow researchers to measure fidelity of classroom implementation. Fidelity of implementation is always the first step in …

A Multi-Year Program Developing An Explicit Reflective Pedagogy For Teaching Pre-Service Teachers The Nature Of Science By Ostention, Mike U. Smith, Lawrence C. Scharmann

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

This investigation delineates a multi-year action research agenda designed to develop an instructional model for teaching the nature of science (NOS) to preservice science teachers. Our past research strongly supports the use of explicit reflective instructional methods, which includes Thomas Kuhn’s notion of learning by ostention and treating science as a continuum (i.e., comparing fields of study to one another for relative placement as less to more scientific). Instruction based on conceptual change precepts, however, also exhibits promise. Thus, the investigators sought to ascertain the degree to which conceptual change took place among students (n=15) participating in the NOS instructional …

Career Concerns, Pathing, And Professional Development Of High-School Technology Educators, Linda A. Tolan

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Constructing An Ethic Of Care In Teacher Education: Narrative As Pedagogy Toward Care, Colette Rabin

Faculty Publications

Teacher educators have a civic responsibility to prepare novice teachers to foster relationships across cultural, racial, and socioeconomic divides. Care ethics acknowledges this imperative. This study explores how to cultivate the knowledge, skills and dispositions associated with constructing a caring stance toward the work of teaching. Data come from two preservice teacher education courses. A cluster of course activities sought to foster novice teachers’ core skills for a caring stance. In particular, one assignment, an ethical dilemma case, gave the novice teachers the opportunity to write a narrative about practice and consider any potential moral implications. Since narrative methodology accounts …

Learning How To Conduct Educational Research In Teacher Education : A Turkish Perspective, Ismail H. Demircioglu

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper examines the attitudes of student teachers in social studies towards an educational research assignment, undertaken in an educational research methods course given at the Fatih Faculty of Education at Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey. A questionnaire containing open-ended questions and an interview were used in the data-collection process of this research. 74 student teachers answered the questionnaire; 20 of these teachers were selected for interview through a random sampling method, and they then participated in a semi-structured interview. In the light of the data, it can be said that the majority of student teachers gained basic educational research skills …

Competence Development Of Synchronously Coached Trainee Teachers In Collaborative Learning., Ralph W. Hooreman, Piet A. Kommers, Wim M. Jochems

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The need to make trainee teachers more prepared to coach collaborative learning effectively is increasing, as collaborative learning is becoming more important. One complication in this training process is that it is hard for the teacher trainer to hear and understand the students’ utterances and those of the coaching trainee teacher. Besides, it is essential that the teacher trainer does not intervene with the students directly. This constraint is a strong plea for facilitating the direct whispered suggestions by an earpiece to the trainee teacher. In this study, first of all an instrument for measuring the quality of the teacher …

Professional Development As A Critical Componenet Of Continuing Teacher Quality, Paulina Phillips

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Professional Development is critical for improving and maintaining teacher quality and the effect flows on into the classroom. Factors influencing the success of Professional Development activities include potential for workplace change, the diverse effect and understanding of adult learning principles, subject specificity, effective mentoring and the relevance of the presented material. Relevant Professional Development plays a major role in school reform and mentoring programs including new teacher induction and can enhance the benefits of sharing expertise between generations

Encouraging Student Creativity In Higher Education, Roisin Donnelly, Terry Barrett

Journal Articles

This chapter focuses on how teachers encourage the development of creative states of flow in their students and in themselves. The chapter aims to stimulate educators in higher education to think freshly about creativity and to widen their range of strategies for encouraging student creativity.

Paper 5: Preservice Teachers’ Disposition Self-Appraisals: Is There A Connection To Mathematics Instructional Practices?, Shonda Lemons-Smith

Georgia Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (GAMTE) Annual Conference (2007-2019)

This paper explores preservice teachers’ dispositions and the connection to mathematics instructional practices. The Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy served as the theoretical grounding for the study. Hence, its three broad propositions: conceptions of self and others, social relations, and conceptions of knowledge structure the argument presented. The participants in the study are elementary preservice teachers enrolled in a post-baccalaureate alternative certification program. The full-time, accelerated program focuses on and is specifically designed for individuals committed to teaching in urban, high-poverty schools. A dispositions survey, open-ended narratives, and teaching observation rubric served as data sources for the qualitative study. Findings …

Preservice Teachers’ Disposition Self-Appraisals: Is There A Connection To Mathematics Instructional Practices?, Shonda Lemons-Smith

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators

This paper explores preservice teachers’ dispositions and the connection to mathematics instructional practices. The Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy served as the theoretical grounding for the study. Hence, its three broad propositions: conceptions of self and others, social relations, and conceptions of knowledge structure the argument presented. The participants in the study are elementary preservice teachers enrolled in a post-baccalaureate alternative certification program. The full-time, accelerated program focuses on and is specifically designed for individuals committed to teaching in urban, high-poverty schools. A dispositions survey, open-ended narratives, and teaching observation rubric served as data sources for the qualitative study. Findings …

Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Ethical guidelines for educational developers prepared by Mintz, Smith, & Warren, January 1999. Revised March 1999, September 1999, and March 2000.

Grounded Theory Research In Faculty Development: The Basics, A Live Example, And Practical Tips For Faculty Developers, Michael Sweet, Rochelle Roberts, Joshua Walker, Stephen Walls, John Kuscera, Shana Shaw, Janet Riekenberg, Marilla Svinicki

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

While autobiographical narratives and case study reflections remain vital to faculty development research, we must also make substantive efforts to build theory in our field. Researchers making claims about collective meanings of observed behaviors and the mechanisms that underlie them (i.e., theoretical claims about social behavior) must be disciplined in how they identify and organize the evidence they use to support those claims. Such systematic, inductive theory-building in the social sciences is called “grounded theory” research. This chapter presents the basics of grounded theory research, describes a grounded theory research program currently being executed by faculty developers, and offers practical …

Supporting The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning At Liberal Arts Colleges, Dolores Peters, David Schodt, Mary Walczak

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Although the liberal arts college, with its traditional focus on teaching, may seem like a natural environment for the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), few such institutions participate in national SoTL initiatives. Our associates’ experience since 2001 suggests a model for supporting SoTL in teaching-intensive contexts based on faculty ownership, a focus on general education, and some emerging rules of engagement. Because faculty reward systems must validate SoTL if it is to become part of the institutional culture, we also describe one department’s efforts to reform its review criteria in order to define scholarly activity broadly.

Food Insecurity And Maternal Depression In Rural, Low-Income Families: A Longitudinal Investigation, Catherine Huddleston-Casas, Richard Charnigo, Leigh Ann Simmons

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between household food insecurity and maternal depression in a rural sample to determine whether food insecurity predicted mothers’ depression over time or vice versa.

Design: The study employed a prospective design using three waves of data from ‘Rural Families Speak’, a multi-state study of low-income rural families in the USA. Food insecurity was measured using the Core Food Security Module and depression was measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression Scale. A structural equation model was fit to the data using the AMOS software package.

Setting: Sixteen states …

The Impact Of Professional Development On Assessment And Grading Practices For Secondary Teachers, Nicole Lynn Roorda

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Studies suggest that a potential misalignment between assessment and grading practices in reporting secondary student academic achievement has negatively impacted students since grades may not truly reflect actual achievement. Accordingly, the purpose of the current study was to compare secondary teachers' use of academic and nonacademic factors when reporting student achievement before and after professional development on assessment and grading practices. Following change theory, the study investigated the efficacy of employing professional development as a means of influencing more standard and appropriate practices among secondary teachers with regard to using academic and nonacademic factors when employing standards-based reporting to determine …

Intrinsic Motivation Of Students With Disabilities In The General Education Setting: What Teachers Should Know And Be Able To Do, Beverly Stinson Faircloth

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) requires that students with disabilities (SWD) be educated in the least restrictive environment, while the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires that these students meet minimum criteria on statewide testing by 2014. This sequential explanatory mixed methods action research study, situated in Bandura's self-efficacy and Atkinson's drive theories, examined the effects of teacher training and subsequent implementation of strategies on the intrinsic motivation of SWD. Intrinsic motivation was measured using the Children's Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (CAIMI) before and after the training. A repeated measures t-test analyzed the mean difference in the students' …

The Impact Of The 101s: A Guide To Positive Discipline Training On Teacher Interaction Practices, Attitudes, And Prosocial Skill Outcomes In Preschool Classrooms, Marie Louise Talayco Masterson

Theses and Dissertations in Early Childhood Education

This study investigated the impact of The 101s: A Guide to Positive Discipline on teachers of preschool Title 1 children. Current research supports the impact of responsive social emotional support and positive teacher-child interactions on both short and long term social and academic outcomes, with specific remediating benefits for children most at risk of school failure. The 101s training and materials evaluated in this study included ten principles/skills to support respectful, responsive interactions hypothesized to support positive prosocial skill responding. Training was provided to 34 teachers with control and experimental groups. Analysis of quantitative pre and post observation data found …

Does Content Knowledge Matter In Scoring Teacher Work Samples?: A Study Of Rater Differences, Yana A. Cornish

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The study examines the role of rater characteristics in the assessment of teacher practice as presented in Renaissance Teacher Work Samples (RTWS). The study analyzed ratings of 10 teacher work samples submitted by teacher candidates at the University of Northern Iowa between Fall 2000 and Spring 2004. These teacher work samples, created in the area of Spanish language learning at 7-11 grade levels, were analyzed to determine the impact of content expertise, amount of teaching experience, and previous RTWS rating experience on reviewer's ratings. Three study questions form the foundation for the investigation:

(1) Is there a significant difference between …

Primary Teachers' Knowledge And Knowledge Calibration Of Early Literacy Practices, Tami Al-Hazza, Charlene Fleener, Jane Hager

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This research design was based on the knowledge calibration work by Cunningham, Perry, Stanovich, and Stanovich (2004). One hundred and forty-one full time teachers participated in a four day professional development workshop on research-based reading instruction. Participants were administered a three-part survey comprised of 1) demographic information 2) knowledge calibration items measuring perceived understanding of phonics, phonological awareness, and syllabication and 3) phonics pretest published in Self-Paced Phonics: A Text for Educators (2005). There were statistically significant differences between participants who rated their knowledge as high and those who rated their knowledge as low on the phonological and phonics items. …

Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers Today, Jeniffer M. Lane

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This portfolio documents the learning journey of a preservice teacher educator in Western Australia. The problem investigated is how should we best to prepare preservice teachers for teaching in future contexts. This document has several sections, firstly the literature review discusses topics that have relevance for teacher educators preparing teachers of the future to work in a knowledge-based economy. Then four phases of research both quantitative and qualitative are presented interlinked by a personal narrative. The narrative describes how the studies and research impacted on the teaching practices of the researcher. The powerful findings of the research with teachers in …