Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Barriers To Developing Physics Faculty Knowledge For Teaching: Identifying Gaps Through Critical Review Of The Literature, Deepika Menon

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Abstract submitted for the PSF13 Meeting of the American Physical Society, October 11, 2013 on barriers to developing physics faculty knowledge for teaching, identifying gaps through a critical review of the literature.

The Gender Trap: Parents And The Pitfalls Of Raising Boys And Girls, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Book review

The book The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls is an example of the kind of nuanced research that works toward unraveling the complexities of gender as expressed in individual lives as well as larger societal patterns that contribute to problematic assumptions about who girls and boys and women and men must be. Sociologist Emily Kane focuses specifically on the “gender trap” in parenting, which she defines as “a set of expectations and structures that inhibit social change and stall many parents’ best intentions for loosening the limits that gender can impose on …

Understanding The Language Of The Occupy Movement: A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis, Theresa Catalano, John W. Creswell

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In the expanding area of narrative inquiry, researchers often battle with the decision of how to analyze/interpret data. The aim of this article is to propose the use of cognitive linguistics as a tool in narrative analysis using as a case illustration interviews conducted in October/November 2011 with participants in the Occupy movement (Occupy). Results expose important metaphors/metonymies that reveal much about the perception of the movement by its inceptors. Not only did the analysis present the movement as a war and a force against government corporations, oppression, and inequality, but it was also seen as a strong structure and …

Advanced Low Language Proficiency–An Achievable Goal?, Aleidine Kramer Moeller

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

A standard of language proficiency recommended for world language preservice teachers has been set at advanced low as defined by the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires that foreign language teacher candidates in specific languages (e.g., French, German, Spanish) achieve the Advanced Low (AL) rating on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency interview (OPI) and the Writing Proficiency Test (WPT). They stipulate that 80% of preservice teachers must successfully demonstrate an AL level of language proficiency in order to achieve NCATE program accreditation. Many questions and …

Associations Between Teacher Emotional Support And Depressive Symptoms In Australian Adolescents: A 5-Year Longitudinal Study, Patrick Pössel, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Michael G. Sawyer, Susan H. Spence, Annie C. Bjerg

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Approximately 1/5 of adolescents develop depressive symptoms. Given that youths spend a good deal of their lives at school, it seems plausible that supportive relationships with teachers could benefit their emotional well-being. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the association between emotionally supportive teacher relationships and depression in adolescence. The so-called principle-effect and stress-buffer models could explain relationships between teacher emotional support and depressive symptoms, yet no study has used both models to test bidirectional relationships between teacher support and depressive symptoms in students separately by sex. Four-thousand three-hundred forty-one students (boys: n = 2,063; girls: n …

Organization Of Schooling In Three Countries, Edmund T. Hamann, Saloshna Vandeyar, Juan Sanchez Garcia

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

It has been more than 30 years since Britan and Cohen (1980) assembled a number of leading anthropologists in a joint call for an anthropology of bureaucracies. Their call was a refinement and rearticulation of a more enduring concern in anthropology, illustrated in particular in the work of South Africa-born, British anthropologist Meyer Fortes (1938) who was interested in what McDermott and Raley (2011: 46) have summarized as "the acquisition of kinds of people by social structure."

One starting point for an anthropology of organizations that sees schools as a particular kind of organization meriting direct scrutiny is the anthropology …

Acknowledging The Religious Beliefs Students Bring Into The Science Classroom: Using The Bounded Nature Of Science, Sherry A. Southerland, Lawrence C. Scharmann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Scientific knowledge often appears to contradict many students’ religious beliefs. Indeed, the assumptions of science appear contradictory to the metaphysical claims of many religions. This conflict is most evident in discussions of biological evolution. Teachers, in attempts to limit the controversy, often avoid this topic or teach it superficially. Recently, there has been a political effort to teach to the controversy—which some see as a way of introducing religious explanations for biological diversity into science classrooms. Many science educators reject this approach, insisting that teachers limit classroom discussions to science alone. This science only approach leaves the negotiation of alternative …

Where Is Earth Science? Mining For Opportunities In Chemistry, Physics, And Biology, Julie Thomas, Toni Ivey, Jim Puckette

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The Earth sciences are newly marginalized in K–12 classrooms. With few high schools offering Earth science courses, students’ exposure to the Earth sciences relies on the teacher’s ability to incorporate Earth science material into a biology, chemistry, or physics course. “G.E.T. (Geoscience Experiences for Teachers) in the Field” is an exploratory program funded by the National Science Foundation aimed to increase teachers’ geoscience interest and content knowledge. Participant teachers (n = 7) included non–Earth science teachers from underrepresented groups and/or high schools with a high percentage of students from underrepresented groups. A variety of quantitative and qualitative measures assessed …

The Introduction Of Proof In Secondary Geometry Textbooks, Samuel Otten, Lorraine Males, Nicholas J. Gilbertson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Explicit reasoning-and-proving opportunities in the United States are often relegated to a single secondary geometry course. This study analyzed the reasoning-and-proving opportunities in six U.S. geometry textbooks, giving particular attention to the chapter that introduced proof. Analysis focused on the types of reasoning-and-proving activities expected of students and the type of mathematical statement around which the reasoning-and-proving took place, be it general or particular. Results include the fact that reasoning-and-proving opportunities in student exercises were predominantly of the particular type, whereas textbook exposition most commonly had general statements. Within the chapters introducing proof, opportunities for students to develop proofs were …

Voicing A Mindful Pedagogy: A Teacher-Artist In Action, Amanda Morales, Jory Samkoff

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Historically, educators and philosophers have struggled with defining the role and the value of formal curriculum and its impact on classroom praxis. As the current accountability movement dominates discussions in education, educators are pressured to implement increasingly standardized curricula. The authors of this work consider these tensions, situated first within contrasting theories on teaching and learning. They then explore the concept of phronesis through an interpretive biography of one teacher-artist, Frieda, whose praxis also demonstrates the aesthetic and artistic side of the teaching-learning process. This ninety-year-old teacher-artist‘s experiences with implementing her curriculums suggest that it is always possible to implement …

The Development Of A Model Of Culturally Responsive Science And Mathematics Teaching, Cecilia M. Hernandez, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This qualitative theoretical study was conducted in response to the current need for an inclusive and comprehensive model to guide the preparation and assessment of teacher candidates for culturally responsive teaching. The process of developing a model of culturally responsive teaching involved three steps: a comprehensive review of the literature; a synthesis of the literature into thematic categories to capture the dispositions and behaviors of culturally responsive teaching; and the piloting of these thematic categories with teacher candidates to validate the usefulness of the categories and to generate specific exemplars of behavior to represent each category. The model of culturally …

Using A Cohort Approach To Convert Edd Students Into Critical Friends, Edmund T. Hamann, Susan Wunder

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Exploring the role of critical collegiality and a cohort approach to doctoral education, this chapter considers the higher education design issues that have supported education doctorate candidates' pursuit of learning and degrees buoyed by the support—emotional, logistic, and content-based—of their graduate student colleagues.

A steadfast but not previously examined feature of our department’s six-year (and counting) experience with a Carnegie Project for the Education Doctorate (CPED)-influenced Doctor of Education (EdD) program is the successful implementation of a cohort model and, in turn, the utilization of practitioners’ sense of belonging and familiarity to become each other’s Critical Friends. Looking across the …

Researching Pds Initiatives To Promote Social Justice Across The Educational System, Gail Shroyer, Amanda Morales, Sally Yahnke, Lisa A. Bietau

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The examples and data shared in this chapter provide evidence that our comprehensive mission to understand and impact issues of social justice and equity within education is being achieved as the PDS Partnership continues to improve K-16 teaching and learning and enhance the teaching profession across all levels of education. The major implication of our findings is that systemic reform is achievable and the outcomes can be exceptionally rewarding. Of course, such initiatives require time, continuous effort, resources, broad-based participation of all stakeholders, and a sense of need for change. Developing human capital across the educational continuum requires a commitment …

Curricular Treatments Of Length Measurement In The United States: Do They Address Known Learning Challenges?, John P. Smith Iii, Lorraine Males, Leslie C. Dietiker, Kosze Lee, Aaron Mosier

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Extensive research has shown that elementary students struggle to learn the basic principles of length measurement. However, where patterns of errors have been documented, the origins of students’ difficulties have not been identified. This study investigated the hypothesis that written elementary mathematics curricula contribute to the problem of learning length measurement. We analyzed all instances of length measurement in three mathematics curricula (grades K–3) and found a shared focus on procedures. Attention to conceptual principles was limited overall and particularly for central ideas; conceptual principles were often presented after students were asked to use procedures that depended on them; and …

Preparing To Teach: Redeeming The Potentialities Of The Present Through “Conversations Of Practice”, Andrew Ek, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

A prospective teacher and a teacher educator enter into a yearlong conversation seeking greater curricular physicality and materiality within its enactment. Dewey’s (1938) temporal educative relation of teaching and learning as an ever-present process is helpful, asking both parties to dwell mindfully at the intersections of teaching/learning situations and interactions. Attention turns to the lived curricular features and consequences of preparing teachers to teach as an ever-present process. The role and place of self-other negotiation is illuminated within curricular enactment, giving expression to teaching/learning as an ever-present process. Pedagogical significances are redeemed through greater teaching mindfulness of the temporality at …

Interrupting The Professional Schism That Allows Less Successful Educational Practices With Ells To Persist, Edmund T. Hamann, Jenelle Reeves

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Different worldviews, different histories of induction into teaching, presumed differences in responsibilities, and different emphases in pre-service and in-service preparation have all long contributed to enduring schisms that keep general education (or mainstream) teachers and English language support faculty from coordinating and finding common cause in their efforts. This division has been at the cost of impeding many English language learners’ (ELLs) academic success. So, given that ELLs consecutively or concurrently negotiate these too-often separate schooling subworlds, it is imperative to overcome historical divisions and to conceptualize all teachers as needing (a) to be willing to see ELLs as part …

Understanding American Mexican Children, Víctor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In 1997, when we first met while independently conducting field work in Whitfield County, Georgia, and its county seat, Dalton, we heard from local principals and teachers that Latino students sometimes "disappeared" from the schools. Most of these who disappeared were immigrant students from Mexico and other Central American countries, students who had arrived suddenly in local schools while accompanying their parents who found jobs in the carpet and poultry mills of the area (Hamann, 2003; Hernández-León & Zúñiga, 2000; Zúñiga & Hernández-León, 2009). The "disappearances" led one of us (Hamann, 2001) to develop a concept—the sojourner student—and draw from …

Professional Journals As A Source Of Information About Teaching Nature Of Science: An Examination Of Articles Published In The Journal Of College Science Teaching, 1996-2012, Deepika Menon, Somnath Sinha

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Recent efforts to reform science education have strongly emphasized the understanding of the nature of science (NOS) as important to achieving broader scientific literacy. Despite the realization that students‘ understanding of NOS is important, there is a gap between research and practice. In order to teach NOS effectively in pre-college or college classrooms, teachers need appropriate activities, examples, and models of instruction that can contribute towards the development of their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for teaching NOS. One widespread and readily-available source teachers may consult to find appropriate models of teaching practice and example activities is professional journals. The present …

Teacher Education And Supporting Immigrant Students In The Standards-Based Education Era, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This commentary reflects on pre-service and in-service teachers' sense that teaching to standards and being responsive to immigrant newcomers are, if not incompatible, unlikely to be reconciled by peers or administration. It highlights that away from classroom leaders (e.g., superintendents) are positioned to challenge this unnecessary dichotomy in the interest of educational equity and success.

Obstacles To Addressing Race And Ethnicity In The Mathematics Education Literature, Amy Noelle Parks, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This Research Commentary builds on a 2-stage literature review to argue that there are 4 obstacles to making a sociopolitical turn in mathematics education that would allow researchers to talk about race and ethnicity in ways that take both identity and power seriously. The obstacles discussed are (a) the marginalization of discussions of race and ethnicity; (b) the reiteration of race and ethnicity as independent variables; (c) absence of race and ethnicity from mathematics education research; and (d) the minimizing of discussions of race and ethnicity, even within equity-oriented work.

Rural Latino High School Students Considering Identity And Belonging Through Comparative Study Of Newcomer Youth In South Africa, Edmund T. Hamann, Saloshna Vandeyar, Janet M. Eckerson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Precipitated by an arranged but unusual classroom activity — eight Latina immigrant high school students in the rural u.s. Midwest interviewing a visiting South African scholar of immigration and transnationalism — this study captures their deliberations as the consideration of youth immigration to South Africa compels their own autobiographic reflections on who they are, where they are 'of', and with what ethnic groups or nationalities they feel affiliation or welcome. For purposes of bracketing, it also juxtaposes the students' voices with those of the three coauthors: their classroom teacher of Spanish as a heritage language, the visiting scholar from South …

Good Teaching? An Examination Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy As An Equity Practice, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The adoption of educational policy measures to close the achievement gap, as well as the significant amount of scholarship dedicated to the subject, are just some of the indicators that reflect the tremendous concern in education about the academic performance of students of color. Within research aimed at promoting equitable practices in education, culturally relevant teaching has emerged as a good teaching strategy to improve achievement. Using genealogical methods to examine the ways in which culture has become relevant to classroom practice, the author argues that the perceived difference from white students that made it possible to conceive of children …

Book Review: North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest To Solve The Great Mystery Of Earth’S Magnetism By Gillian Turner, Elizabeth B. Lewis

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Gillian Turner’s first book, North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism, provides a thorough, historical accounting of scientific discovery of the earth’s magnetism, magnetic field, and its resulting effects. Turner is a senior lecturer in physics and geophysics at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and her writing possesses the voice of both a teacher and storyteller. She meticulously traces the history of our scientific understanding of magnetism, the scientists who were intrigued by the phenomena, and the innumerable research efforts to solve the puzzle of earth’s magnetism and its effects …

Improving Elementary American Indian Students’ Math Achievement With Inquiry-Based Mathematics And Games, Jamalee Stone, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Project Inquiry-Based Mathematics was a National Science Foundation Math-Science Partnership implemented in a Great Plains city school district with a significant K-12 Native American population. One goal of the project was to reduce the achievement gap between Native American and non-Native students enrolled in the district. This gap reduction was to be achieved using inquiry-based mathematics curricula along with cognitively guided instructional strategies, particularly at the elementary level. This study focuses on whether inquiry-based mathematics strategies were consistently implemented in three fifth-grade classrooms at K-5 elementary schools with significant Native American student populations. Test result of Native American students at …

Series Editors' Foreword: Placing Practitioner Knowledge At The Center Of Teacher Education., Edmund T. Hamann, Rodney Hopson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The starting point for this book is a new phase—the Carnegie Program for the Education Doctorate (CPED)—of the longstanding dilemma of whether and how to to distinguish advanced graduate education for the Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in education from the Doctorate of Education (EdD). EdD graduates should have gained not just in knowledge, but also in capability—to not only know new things, but to be able to do new practices and/or engage previous skills and practices more effectively.

Goal Setting And Student Achievement: A Longitudinal Study, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Janine M. Theiler, Chaorong Wu

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The connection between goals and student motivation has been widely investigated in the research literature, but the relationship of goal setting and student achievement at the classroom level has remained largely unexplored. This article reports the findings of a 5-year quasi-experimental study examining goal setting and student achievement in the high school Spanish language classroom. The implementation of LinguaFolio, a portfolio that focuses on student self-assessment, goal setting, and collection of evidence of language achievement, was introduced into 23 high schools with a total of 1,273 students. By using a hierarchical linear model, researchers were able to analyze the relationship …

A Longitudinal Study Of Teaching Practice And Early Career Decisions: A Cautionary Tale, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Patrick Mcquillan, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Dianna Gahlsdorf Terrell, Joan Barnatt, Lisa D’Souza, Cindy Jong, Karen Shakman, Karen Lam, Ann Marie Gleeson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Although the turnover rate among beginning teachers has been a major concern for some time, most studies do not link teacher retention with teaching practice. In contrast, this study looks specifically at career decisions coupled with practice. Guided by a view of teaching as social and cultural practice, the study used multiple qualitative data sources, including extensive observations, interviews, and samples of teachers’ and students’ work. Based on within and cross-case analysis of 15 cases at four distinct time points within a 5-year period, the authors identified multiple patterns of teaching practice linked to early career decisions, which reflect considerable …

Contextualizing The Path To Academic Success: Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Students Gaining Voice And Agency In Higher Education, Melissa Holmes, Cristina Fanning, Amanda Morales, Pedro Espinoza, Socorro Herrera

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This ethnographic case study documents the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) first-generation immigrant students as they developed their sense of voice and personal agency at a predominantly White, Midwestern university. The study is framed within the larger context of an ongoing, longitudinal study on the BESITOS (Bilingual/Bicultural Education Students Interacting To Obtain Success) model of recruitment and retention (Herrera & Morales, 2005; Herrera, Morales, Holmes, & Terry, 2011-2012), which was developed in 1999 to address the multifaceted assets and needs of Latina/o learners in higher education. The model takes into account literature on CLD student recruitment and retention …

Growing Effective Cld Teachers For Today’S Classrooms Of Cld Children, Gayla Lohfink, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Using a case study design, this investigation examined the effective teaching characteristics of nontraditional, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) student teachers placed in rural, elementary schools with high populations of Latino/a students. Data collected reflected high percentages of effective teaching characteristics in multiple domains with specific indicators reflective of consistent teaching over time. A discussion of these findings considered aspects within the distance-delivery model that facilitated the CLD participants’ development of effective teaching and noted (1) consistent leadership, (2) explicit teacher instruction within CLD school settings, and (3) the strong cohesive nature of the CLD participants’ cohort as positively affecting …

From Remediation To Acceleration: Recruiting, Retaining, And Graduating Future Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (Cld) Educators, Socorro Herrera, Amanda Morales, Melissa Holmes, Dawn Herrera Terry

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This ethnographic case study explores one mid-western state university’s response to the challenge of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), especially Latino/a, student recruitment and retention. BESITOS (Bilingual/ Bicultural Education Students Interacting To Obtain Success) is an integrated teacher preparation program implemented at a predominantly White university that seeks to both increase Latino/a students’ initial access to higher education and provide institutional support to facilitate a high rate of graduation. The researchers consider key elements of the BESITOS program model as they relate to and support the sociocultural, linguistic, academic, and cognitive dimensions of the CLD student biography. For each dimension, …