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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 …

Influences On Professional Learning: Five Teachers' Stories, Mary Lincoln Sterling

Educational Studies Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify and understand changes that endured in teachers' knowledge and practice after participation in professional development. Case studies were conducted with five teachers who completed a common professional development course in pedagogy.

Shaking It Up: Challenging Veteran Teachers To Change, Evelyn Baker Lang

Educational Studies Dissertations

My research, conducted at a 600 student middle school, explored the conditions and factors needed by veteran teachers to learn about and implement educational change, either mandated or teacher-initiated. Qualitative research methods used included in-depth interviews of veteran teachers and observations in classrooms, cluster meetings and professional development workshops. Five factors appeared to facilitate the change effort for this group of teachers. They are: An understanding that the change process is a challenge in itself. A school culture that is conducive to change. A school principal who supports, inspires and encourages teachers. Appropriate professional development is offered to teachers. Teachers …

How Elementary School Teachers Learn To Teach Mathematics, Phyllis Schneider Kirschner

Educational Studies Dissertations

This study examines how elementary school teachers learned to teach mathematics during their pre-service education and during their first few years of teaching. The study identifies those experiences teachers found to be most significant in their development as mathematics teachers. All seven teachers in this study had been taught using procedural methods and each had to find a way to integrate conceptual mathematics education into their own understanding. The study examines the teachers' motivations for pursuing this understanding and the circumstances that provided opportunities to do so.

Getting To The Heart Of Mentoring Relationships, Karen Leduc

Educational Studies Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how the mentoring relationship and its organizational supports help to inform mentoring programs in public schools. Mentoring is defined as a complex interaction between a public school teacher, the mentor, and a new-to-the-district teacher, the protege. The mentoring relationship is examined from the perspectives of the mentor and the protege.

Revitalization Not Retirement: A Case For Transformative Professional Development That Echoes The Voices Of Eight Veteran Literacy Teachers, Mary Ann Johnson

Educational Studies Dissertations

Guided by the central question "How do professional development opportunities regarding the use of running records effect the thinking and practice of veteran teachers ?", this study investigated the way in which eight highly experienced literacy teachers learned to use formative assessment to guide instruction of a student at risk of failure in reading. From the most veteran teacher with thirty-three years to the "baby" with fifteen years of service to children, they represented a seasoned group of early childhood professionals willing to grapple with formative assessment, a concept for which all admitted they had been ill-prepared. Through this action …

Dialogue: A Qualitative Study Of A Faculty Development Intervention To Assist Faculty In Exploring The Practitioner Assumptions That Impact Their Role In Higher Education And Medical Education, Donna M. Qualters

Educational Studies Dissertations

The Dialogue study is concerned with understanding how Dialogue could be applied to faculty development. Dialogue is a structured form of group interaction developed as an organizational behavior tool (Isaacs, 1993) which creates space for practitioner assumptions to be probed and insight into practice be achieved. It provides an intervention for faculty at the pre-contemplative stage of change (Prochaska, 1986), who are not motivated to modify their practice. The study focused on self-selected multi-discipline faculty from a four year institution and a public medical school. Participants ranged in experience from one to thirty five years of practice. This study was …

Cooperative Learning: The Teacher's Perspective, Nancy A. Mickunas

Educational Studies Dissertations

This dissertation is an inquiry into what happens when classroom teachers in public schools study and adopt one or more of the cooperative learning models of David and Roger Johnson, Spencer Kagan, and/or Robert Slavin and shift the emphasis of their classrooms from competitive and individualistic to cooperative structures. Method: A representative sample of eighteen kindergarten through twelfth grade public school teachers from the suburbs of Boston were asked to relate their experiences with training and implementation of these cooperative models. The goal of this research was to explore both the common and unique experiences of these teachers and to …

Taking Charge: Second Graders Negotiate Ownership Of Their Expressive Writing, Susan Douglas Fleming

Educational Studies Dissertations

This ethnographic study of a single, second grade, public school classroom explores students' ownership of their writing as they negotiate their dual roles of active writer and compliant student.

Writing process advocates such as Calkins (1987), Graves (1983), and Murray (1968, 1985) stress the need for student writers to assume ownership of their work by writing from personal experience and by making the decisions governing direction of the text. This involvement encourages awareness of self as learner and as person, and stimulates cognitive and identity development. Robert Brooke (1991), in a study of college students, points out that the power …