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The Caring Teacher: A Multiple Case Study That Looks At What Teachers Do And Believe About Their Work With At-Risk Students, Sarah Whitney Thompson

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Caring teachers have been identified as a critical component of successful interventions with at-risk students, however just what constitutes a caring teacher is less well understood. Specifically, what are the behaviors, characteristics, and beliefs of caring teachers, and how are they impacted by the contexts within which they work? The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand more about caring teachers who work with at-risk students in secondary schools located in a Midwestern city and thereby to add complexity to the literature. Two middle school teachers and two high school teachers were recruited to participate. They were observed …