Education Commons^™

Constructivist Teaching In A Virtual Space, Aviva Dorfman

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Due to the pandemic undergraduate course, ECE 340: Constructivist Teaching with Young Children, moved to an online, asynchronous format. The in-person methods I used, group work, in-class activities, and discussion, could not be directly transposed online as might lecture and recitation. Toward the term’s end students expressed appreciation for the degree of choice they had in assignments, examples of programs in text and video, and repeated opportunities to design centers and instruction. Some declared a greater sense of confidence as educators. The comments, suggested that the shift into an asynchronous provision of the course had been effective. This study is …

Mentor Teacher Positioning During Pedagogical Documentation With Early Childhood Preservice Teachers, Melissa Renee Westfall

Doctoral Dissertations

Teacher education research shows that partnerships among mentor teachers and preservice teachers facilitate meaningful professional development when both are afforded the opportunity to assume dynamic positions of teacher and learner. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study was to explore mentor positioning and pedagogical documentation at a university-based early childhood center with five mentor teachers (MTs) and five undergraduate preservice teachers (PTs). It explored the efficacy of pedagogical documentation review as a tool to facilitate moments of reciprocal mentoring. Through the framework of cultural-historical activity theory and subject positioning theory, I investigated how mentors positioned themselves during pedagogical documentation …

Prospective Early Childhood Teachers’ Evolving Conceptions Of Using A Mathematics Learning Trajectory To Guide Intentional Teaching, Melissa E. Hedges

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative, phenomenological study investigated how fifteen early childhood

preservice teachers’ (PSTs) mathematical knowledge needed for teaching and early mathematics

learning trajectory knowledge impacted the intentionality of instructional decision-making. The

central research question asked: In what ways do early mathematics learning trajectories inform

prospective early childhood teachers’ instructional decisions in ways that are likely to advance

student learning on the subitizing trajectory? The literature review revealed numerous studies

focused on the usefulness of learning trajectory knowledge on prospective elementary and

inservice teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, lesson planning, instruction, and

assessment, but no studies were found regarding early childhood pre-service …

Unraveling Universalist Perspectives On Teaching And Caring For Infants And Toddlers: Finding Authenticity In Diverse Funds Of Knowledge, Susan L. Recchia, Seung Eun Mcdevitt

Education Specialties Faculty Publications

Although child-rearing beliefs and practices vary widely across cultures, a dominant discourse on how to teach and care for young children undergirds most early childhood teacher education programs. In this qualitative multicase study, the authors explored the ways that immigrant preservice teachers negotiated their emerging teacher identities across discontinuities between their own funds of knowledge and the theory and practice presented in their infant and toddler practicum course. Using a funds of identity framework, the authors drew on multiple data sources to examine how three immigrant students questioned, complicated, expanded on, connected, and/or denied their funds of knowledge as they …

The Diffusion Of The Reggio Emilia Approach Among Early Childhood Teacher Educators In South Carolina, Julie Hartman

All Dissertations

Growing numbers of U.S. educators are traveling to the northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia to study the innovative, arts-based approach to early education developed in the town's municipal infant-toddler and pre-primary programs now commonly referred to as the Reggio Emilia Approach. And though there is no way of knowing exactly how many educators and early childhood programs across the U.S. are currently making use of the approach, increasing numbers of U.S. colleges and universities are including the approach in both their ECE teacher preparation as well as campus child development programs, suggesting the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA) is diffusing …