Education Commons^™

The Evolution Of Portfolios In Teacher Education, Nancy D. Turner

Essays in Education

Portfolios have been used in many fields of study to highlight the best work of individuals. In teacher education, portfolios serve as an authentic assessment, in that they contain artifacts representative of the preservice teacher’s performance in the classroom. As teachers are accountable for an in-depth understanding and implementation of teaching standards, portfolios can become the avenue for documenting how these standards are being met. The teacher preparation program at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana has utilized portfolios since 1994. Over the years, these portfolios have evolved from their inception to a performance-based evidence that indicates the attainment of …

Charter Schools And Equal Access: Implications For Magnet And Other Choice Schools, Carrie Ausbrooks

Essays in Education

American public schools have been entrusted with the responsibility of inculcating citizens with democratic values. However, schools have come under attack for a variety of reasons. School choice provides parents with opportunities to select from options, both within and outside the public system of schooling, which will provide their children with the type of education they desire. Among these school choice options are charter and magnet schools. This article begins with a discussion of the basic similarities between magnet and charter schools, followed by a discussion of a legal research study which examined the extent to which U.S. charter school …

Paraeducators In Education, Debbie Morrissette, Patrick J. Morrissette, Julien Richard

Essays in Education

This paper discusses the role of paraeducators within the American educational system. Although it is unknown whether paraeducators enhance the learning of children or the classroom environment, their numbers are rapidly increasing as they are perceived to be vital to the educational system. As revealed in this paper, despite exceptional growth, the practice of using paraeducators generally remains unregulated, underdeveloped, and unmethodical. It is argued that this current state of affairs leaves teachers, paraeducators, and students in a precarious situation. Important issues discussed in this paper include the (a) changing role of the classroom teacher, (b) teacher-paraeducator matching process, (c) …

Teacher Persistence: A Crucial Disposition, With Implications For Teacher Education, Karl F. Wheatley

Essays in Education

Teacher persistence helps foster effective teaching. Specifically, teacher persistence may promote high expectations for students, the development of teaching skills, teachers’ reflectiveness, responsiveness to diversity, teaching efficacy, effective responses to setbacks, and successful use of reformed teaching methods. Common evaluation practices in teacher education may undermine teacher persistence. Teacher educators might support the development of teacher persistence by emphasizing the knowledge that makes persistence a rational response to setbacks, by teaching self-regulation skills that support persistence, and by using evaluation practices that require greater effort and persistence of students. The importance of fostering thoughtful teacher persistence is discussed, along with …

Time Efficient Team Building, Kristi Alexander, Bruce Johnson, Dorothy Winslow

Essays in Education

Team building requires the knowledge of available tools to accomplish the tasks at hand while working in time constraints of school districts. This article reviews: a) effective team building strategies, b) applies team building to develop new knowledge, and c) makes use of total quality management tools to build teams in a limited time frame.

“Been There---Ah, Haven’T Tried It That Way”: A Professional Effort To Differentiate Instruction, Donna M. Sobel

Essays in Education

It goes without saying that the most critical component of preparing educators lies in their ability to competently teach. Differentiation provides a framework to develop classrooms where realities of genuine student variance can be addressed with curricular realities. The author describes a professional development project that differentiated a series of teacher workshops that were designed to increase teachers’ perceived competency to differentiate instruction. The purpose here is to describe a collaboratively created and implemented professional development program designed to train staff in ways to differentiate instruction for all learners. Sample training activities, along with perceptions from participants and suggestions for …

Bring Context To Mentoring, Dean Cristol

Essays in Education

The nature of mentoring varies, but shares a commitment to nurture on-going, indepth relationships through dialogue, decision-making, and reflection that has often been absent in traditional university-field site settings. One of the most exciting aspects of this new approach to teacher education is sharing power and wisdom with a variety of participants. Teachers and teacher educators provide avenues for beginning teachers to teach from real world contexts in order to study the complexities of their own teaching. School-university partnerships inherently provide a rich resource for modeling problem solving and effective decision-making. This article will describe and examine staff development delivery …

Missing In Action: Research On The Accountability Of Multicultural, Inclusive Teacher Education, Sheryl V. Taylor, Donna M. Sobel

Essays in Education

While a substantial amount of research has been conducted on the effects of various teacher education programs to prepare teachers for multicultural, multilingual, inclusive classrooms, very little of it examines the impact of multicultural, inclusive teacher education on how pre- and inservice teachers actually teach children in the classroom. Few researchers have followed teachers into the classroom to find out if or what “carry over” exists from multicultural teacher education (Sleeter, 2001). Even if teachers show growth through their course work and learning experiences in multicultural education, what evidence is there that they are or are becoming strong teachers in …

The Best Of Both Worlds – The Hybrid Program, Hope Jordan, Marcia G. Derrick, Jill Crandell, Rhiannon Schuster

Essays in Education

The special education teacher shortage in the United States is a critical issue and becoming a national crisis. Universities struggle to provide sufficient numbers of trained and licensed teachers to fill this need. These shortages are intensifying as modern universities also struggle with concepts of on-line learning and adult learning styles. The Hybrid Model developed at Regent University, incorporates the best components of the traditional classroom with those of the on-line learning environment, and provides a program resulting in the best of both worlds. This article describes one such model, its successes, and suggestions for on-going improvement.

New Teachers And Old Pay Structures: An Analysis Of How Teacher Pay Influences Job Acceptance Of First-Year Teachers, Chance W. Lewis

Essays in Education

This study identified whether compensation packages were a factor in first-year teacher’s decisions to accept a teaching position in the states of Colorado and Louisiana. This study involved (a) identifying the components of a school district’s compensation package that were factors in the job acceptance decisions as indicated by respondents and (b) indicating other factors besides compensation that played a major role in job acceptance decisions.

The study surveyed a sample of 12 school districts in Colorado and Louisiana during the 2000-2001 academic school year. It included first-year teachers in the 12 approved school districts that had no previous teaching …

It’S Time To Upgrade: Tests And Administration Procedures For The New Millennium, Michael Russell

Essays in Education

Increasing use of computers in schools has led to a mis-alignment between the way some students develop skill and knowledge and how they are tested. This paper reviews past research that demonstrates that paper-based tests that require students to produce written responses underestimate the achievement of students who are accustomed to writing on computer. The paper then explores how learning that occurs through other instructional uses of computers is not adequately captured by current testing practices. The paper argues that new approaches should be explored to better measure student learning.