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Full-Text Articles in Education
Teaching Beliefs And Their Relationship To Professional Development In Special Education Teachers, Jennifer Francois
Teaching Beliefs And Their Relationship To Professional Development In Special Education Teachers, Jennifer Francois
Educational Considerations
Access to high-quality, meaningful professional development (PD) for in-service teachers around inclusive practices is an important element that has the potential to influence change in classroom practice and student outcomes. This is particularly important for children with identified disabilities. Previous research has identified that a teacher’s self-efficacy impacts the adoption of PD and subsequent implementation of new educational strategies. In addition, teacher beliefs about their own teaching ability (i.e., self-efficacy) has been shown to be related to motivation and the willingness to seek out PD experiences. The current study investigates the relationship of PD and teaching self-efficacy for inclusive practices. …
Collaborative Autonomy: Exploring The Professional Freedom Of Three Science Teachers, Michael Ralph, Darian Robbins, Stephen Young, Laurence Woodruff
Collaborative Autonomy: Exploring The Professional Freedom Of Three Science Teachers, Michael Ralph, Darian Robbins, Stephen Young, Laurence Woodruff
Educational Considerations
Education reform efforts must support and protect professional autonomy for classroom teachers. When policymakers attempt to make systemic change in ways that reduce the professional autonomy of educators, student learning suffers. Teachers need the freedom to identify their professional goals, seek resources and collaboration opportunities in pursuit of those goals, and act on feedback regarding their progress in meeting those goals. We present three stories from teachers who share a department engaged in collaborative autonomy. These accounts provide guidance for how professional autonomy can be defended by those pursuing systemic change.
Kansans Can: Redesigning Schools, Brad Neuenswander
Kansans Can: Redesigning Schools, Brad Neuenswander
Educational Considerations
Kansas, like many states that are coming off of an era of accountability under the federal No Child Left Behind requirements, is looking at more meaningful ways to value and measure student success. We have asked ourselves questions such as: are we focusing on the right measures; is our accountability system aligned to our educational priorities and values; or is it the educational system itself that needs to change in order to produce a more meaningful set of outcomes? These are questions that need answers before any educational reform initiatives can be addressed. The Kansas State Department of Education leadership, …
Kansans Can: Redesign Professional Learning And Re-Licensure, Paul Erickson
Kansans Can: Redesign Professional Learning And Re-Licensure, Paul Erickson
Educational Considerations
Professional learning is and always has been a core expectation for educators. Educators, whether they are self-directed as intrinsically motivated learners or compliantly fulfilling requirements set by their employing districts and state departments, engage in professional learning throughout their careers. While educators engage in traditional means of professional learning in the form of workshops, conferences, mentoring, and graduate coursework, this study centered on educators’ professional learning efforts that are more informal and more personalized to their specific interests and passions. This professional learning often comes in the nonconventional forms of social media, professional learning networks, peer observations, and professional units …
Making The Case For An English Academy: Reflections On An Ongoing Endeavor, Geoff Bender
Making The Case For An English Academy: Reflections On An Ongoing Endeavor, Geoff Bender
Educational Considerations
This article makes a case for the academy as a site for meaningful school-university dialogue in order to strengthen rapport across stakeholders in the teacher education process while generating crucial data for a teacher education program’s continuous improvement. Similar in some ways to its cousins, including the leadership academy and the professional development school, the academy model described here is distinguished from these related structures in its diverging purposes. While invested in bringing new professionals into the field, the English Academy keeps its linked teacher education program abreast of trends in public education that help shape that program’s work in …
The Relationship Between Pre-Service Training And Teaching Self-Efficacy For Inclusive Practices, Jennifer Francois
The Relationship Between Pre-Service Training And Teaching Self-Efficacy For Inclusive Practices, Jennifer Francois
Educational Considerations
Pre-service programming is instrumental in providing skills to teachers that builds positive teaching self-efficacy. This becomes increasingly important for those teachers who are hired to work in inclusive settings. Directives by the Division for Early Childhood and the Individuals for Disabilities Act have outlined content areas that teachers working in special education settings should have knowledge of and are comfortable in implementing (Division of Early Childhood 2014; United States Department of Education 2017). Many teachers, however, continue to come away from pre-service experiences without these skills (Lewis et al. 1999). Institutions continue to struggle with the integration of course content …
Our Moonshot: Dighton Public Schools, Kelly Arnberger
Our Moonshot: Dighton Public Schools, Kelly Arnberger
Educational Considerations
“Through redesign you have the opportunity do whatever you choose to do to make your school reflect the needs and desires of your community. I believe our public-school teachers can do the great things we keep hearing private and charter schools do if we would just let them.” Randy Watson said something to that effect at Dighton in January, 2017. We would now have permission to make our school reflect the true mission, vision, and values of our community without constraint. Sounds great! At least many of us in attendance listening to Dr. Watson that day thought so. We chose …