Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

The Virtual Teacher's Lounge: How Teachers Meaningfully Connect Through Online Networks, Randall S. Dunn

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study seeks to illuminate an understanding of naturally forming online communities of professional educators in the context of off-line communities. Essentially, an online discussion forum for educators is evaluated for the purpose of determining whether the forum provides a “space” conducive for the development of a community of professional educators as benchmarked against an understanding of offline community formation and existence. The primary approach to this study is qualitative in nature with some quasi-statistical support to elucidate analysis and conclusions. The study employs the use of QSR NVivo 7 to collect, catalogue, and analyze discussions from this online forum, …

Western Guide To Graduate Supervision, Elizabeth Skarakis-Doyle, Gayle L. Mcintyre

Purple Guides

Based on the experiences of Western's graduate supervisors, this 30 page guide addresses the supervision of graduate students and focuses on best practices in mentoring, promoting student progress, and clarifying expectations in the supervisor-student relationship.

Living “Glocally” With Literacy Success In The Midwest, Loukia K. Sarroub

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

This article examines the concept of glocality as a way to better understand why immigrants, poor people, print-illiterate families, and boys are short-changed by schools that often operate under a deficit model or deprivation model in which students’ economic, language, and gender status is the main determinant for school success. The author offers for discussion a set of themes that address (a) the challenges of recent immigration and resettlement in the Midwestern region of the United States, (b) the concept of glocality in connection to youth literacies and transnationalism, (c) the Midwest as a glocal context, and (d) the implications …

Teacher-Involved Conversations With Young Children During Small Group Activity, Tonia Renee Durden, Julie Rainer Dangel

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

This qualitative study examines the conversations of two preschool teachers with two- and three-year-old children during small-group activity settings in two high-quality child development centers. Using interviews, observations and videotaping of small-group activities, the conversations are characterized in terms of the kind and function of language, the usage of cognitive demands and the reciprocal nature of these conversations. The findings indicate that teachers use declarative statements primarily to manage instruction and encourage language development. While teachers control most conversations, teacher–child reciprocity is evident and more genuine in authentic, teacher-guided activities. In both classrooms, the language during small-group activities is characterized …

National Board Certification: A Scholarly Endeavor, Kathryn Loveless

All Graduate Projects

If today's students are going to succeed they need quality teachers. To atiract and retain those teachers, we need to have a system to recognize and reward those teachers. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) was created to fill that need. This study presents the historical development of the Natio1ial Board Teacher Certification program, research on its effects on student learning, and the personal certification experience of a teacher practitioner. The high standards set by the NBPTS are commendable and worthy of being replicated in teacher training programs. These standards set the ground work for what teachers should …

Different Teaching Formats, Vivian Reinhard

Learning Exchange Networks

While many classes are taught with a traditional Lecture/Demonstration format, this presentation and additional material illustrate that there are many different opportunities for teaching formats.

Promoting Student Collaboration In A Detracked, Heterogeneous Secondary Mathematics Classroom, Megan Staples

CRME Publications

Detracking and heterogeneous groupwork are two educational practices that have been shown to have promise for affording all students needed learning opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency. However, teachers face significant pedagogical challenges in organizing productive groupwork in these settings. This study offers an analysis of one teacher’s role in creating a classroom system that supported student collaboration within groups in a detracked, heterogeneous geometry classroom. The analysis focuses on four categories of the teacher’s work that created a set of affordances to support within group collaborative practices and links the teacher’s work with principles of complex systems.

Becoming A Reading Specialist: Surveying The Possibilities, Judy A. Abbott, Cari R. Williams, Allison Swan-Dagen, Steven D. Rinehart

Faculty Publications

The terrain of graduate programs is changing, especially in light of preparing highly qualified teachers (NCLB, 2001) and standards-based accreditation (IRA, 2004a, NCATE, 2008). This changing terrain is noticed as many institutions of higher learning undergo program reviews through self-studies required by the institution, by state departments of education, by specialized professional associations, or by national accreditation entities. This project sought to explore the nature of reading specialists master’s programs by examining their websites in light of the shift towards standards-based accreditation of programs and the influence of federal legislation. Specific objectives for this descriptive study included: (a) reviewing master’s …

The Effectiveness Of Mentoring-Based Professional Development On Physical Education Teachers' Pedometer And Computer Efficacy And Anxiety, Jeffrey J. Martin, Nate Mccaughtry, Pamela Hodges Kulinna, Donetta Cothran, Roberta Faust

Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies

The purpose of our study was to examine the impact of mentoring-based professional development on physical education teachers' efficacy. Experienced mentor teachers were paired (n = 15) with inexperienced protégé teachers (n = 15) at the beginning of a yearlong intervention study. It was hypothesized that teachers would increase their efficacy to use pedometers and computers to enhance instruction, and reduce their computer anxiety. Repeated-measures ANOVAs for mentors and protégés revealed a variety of significant main effects. We found increases in computer and pedometer efficacy. A second set of repeated-measures ANOVAs based on mentors', protégés', and control groups' …

Assessment Of Adult Esl Learners’ Preferable Learning Styles : Implications For An Effective Language Learning Environment, Kayoko Yamauchi

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This research was conducted to investigate how adult ESL students learn effectively according to their learning preferences and their cultural/educational backgrounds. A total of 117 respondents in this study were categorized in three types: 58 language-based ESL students (L-B ESL students), 48 content-based ESL students (C-B ESL students), and 11 ESL teachers at Marshall University. In 2008, during the fourth week of September, the Productivity Environmental Preference Survey (PEPS) and a demographic questionnaire were administered to both L-B ESL students and C-B ESL students at Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia. Descriptive statistics, including correlation analysis, were used to describe and …

A Descriptive Study Of The Impact Of Planning Time On The Utilization Of The National Council Of Teachers Of Mathematics Process Standards Within The Algebra 1 And Applied Mathematics Subject Fields, Kerri Colleen Lookabill

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Planning practices are necessary requirements for effective instruction. Their importance is illustrated in the guidelines produced by several national organizations such as The Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Planning time is considered important by teachers at the grassroots level in order for them to develop thought-provoking lessons that allow students to make connections and form meaning as well as to reflect on previous lessons in order to make improvements for subsequent lessons. Collaborative planning is also considered important; however, it …

Teacher Burnout: Locus Of Control And Its Correlation To Teacher Burnout And Job Satisfaction, Kimberly A. Bevis

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Teacher burnout is a significant problem in education today. While studies have researched the possible reasons behind it and the effect it has on students and teachers, this study proposed to investigate the correlation between teacher burnout, locus of control and job satisfaction. Surveys were sent to 102 teachers who taught kindergarten through 12th grade in two school districts in Southeastern Ohio. Of the 53 surveys that were returned, 28% of the teachers demonstrated burn out, 40% were dissatisfied with their jobs, and 20% had an external locus of control. There was a moderate correlation between the Rotter IE Scale, …

Whatever Happened To Jane's Baby? Still Another Examination Of 'The Yellow Wall-Paper', Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe, Barbara Szubinska

English Faculty and Staff Research

Despite all the critical ink spilled over Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic story, one complex question still persists in college classroom and critical journals: what is the precise condition of the story's narrator and why is the baby presented in such a cursory manner?

Keeping Mason's 'Shiloh' C.R.I.S.P., Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

As Kansas foreshadowed for us in "Dust in the Wind" (1978), "nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky." This past year the two of us have transitioned from teachers into our new roles as co-directors of the university's Teaching & Learning Center, but we have still spent a lot of time in the classroom-as observers. One of our unit's services is assessing the classroom presentation of instructors, especially that of new faculty, and we have been overwhelmed by one major pedagogical problem shared by over 90% of the teachers. In short, no matter the discipline, a common problem stands …

Using Knowledge Surveys And Tests To Teach Literature: Do We Assess And Make Asses Of Ourselves, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

English Faculty and Staff Research

Even before the end of the twentieth century, literature teachers were under a great deal of pressure to join the assessment movement, but recently the screws have been tightened, this time by the federal government through the six regional accrediting agencies.

Teacher Perception About Implementation Strategy Of B.Ed Teaching Practice In Real School Classrooms: Issues And Challenges, Wasim Qazi, Khalid Jamil Rawat, Muhammad Yousuf Sharjeel, Shila Devi

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Teaching practice is the core component of all pre-service teacher education programs. Through teaching practice, a novice teacher is assumed to have inculcated a supposedly viable pedagogic experience to transfer the core competency of the subject knowledge to students in real classroom situation. This study encompasses the challenges and issues that the novice teachers experience at post-training level of their B.Ed programme of studies. The investigations also enlighten the gaps that the trained teachers have shared with the researchers. The study highlights the extent to which the on-training components of teaching practice is reflected in the attitude of the trained …

A Synthetic Teaching-Learning Model: A Contextualized Study, Wasim Qazi

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The paper aims at institutionalizing instructional technology with a view to improving the quality of education. The conceptual framework developed in this paper reviews the existing status of training programs in light of the suggested initiatives of education sectors reforms (Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan -August-2003). It has been argued that major purpose of imparting professional training to teachers and administrators should be directed towards improvement of quality of education. In stating the problem the malaise underlining the teaching-learning process has been identified as a core issue. The teaching-learning process which is the hallmark of quality of education has …

Sustainable Teachers' Development: Exploring The Effect Of Follow-Up Support An An Element, Wasim Qazi

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty and Staff Scholarship

A professional development program with built-in follow up support mechanism was offered during years 2004-06 in selected districts of Pakistan. The training reportedly had sustained impact on teachers’ attitude toward teaching. This paper investigates the role of follow up support as an element of sustainable teacher development, and the part of teachers’ learning they could have implemented over the period after the end of project. Data was collected through classroom observations, interviews with these teachers and the head teachers of these schools, and analysis of lesson plans and reflective journals maintained by the teachers. Findings affirm that the follow up …

Koinonia, Kevin Johnson, Brent Ellis, Rebecca Sok, Carl Ruby, Benjamin Kulpa, Michael Santarosa, Stephanie Santarosa, Aaron Damiani, Laura M. Rodeheaver

Koinonia

Leadership Spotlight Features
Developing Servant Leaders: The Tale of Two Questions, Kevin Johnson

Life at the Cross Roads: Living out the Eternal in the Midst of the Temporal, Brent Ellis

Leadership Process vs. Results (Regardless of Culture, Country or Gender), Rebecca Sok

Leading During Times of Conflict: Lessons from the Early Church, Carl Ruby

From Fiction to Fact, Benjamin Kulpa

Thinking Theologically
Charismatic Boy Meets Reformed Girl, Michael and Stephanie Santarosa

Book Reviews
A Review of Integrity: The Courage to Face the Demands of Reality (by Henry Cloud), reviewed by Aaron Damiani

Leadership Can Be Taught (by Sharon Daloz Parks), …

Preparing Nebraska Teachers To See Demographic Change As An Opportunity, Jenelle Reeves, Edmund T. Hamann

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

This paper reflects on an effort to support Nebraska teachers, both practicing and preservice, to become more ready for the state‘s changing demographics, notably for the growth in Latino and Spanish-speaking populations. To that end, it describes an effort funded by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln‘s Initiative on Teaching and Learning Excellence called, ―Schooling in Nebraska‘s Demographically Transitioning Communities.‖ That initiative makes mentors of practicing teachers who have enrolled in summer courses in second language acquisition. In the fall of 2006, ten such teachers mentored 44 undergraduates enrolled in TEAC 331 ―Cultural Foundation of American Education‖ or TEAC 413A ―Second Language …

Teaching Advanced Life Sciences In An Animal Context: Agricultural Science Teacher Voices, Mark Balschweid, Alexandria Huerta

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine agricultural science teacher comfort with a new high school Advanced Life Science: Animal course and determine their perceptions of student impact. The advanced science course is eligible for college credit. The teachers revealed they felt confident of their science background in preparation for teaching the course and they emphasized their intensive science background in preparing to become agricultural science teachers. Teachers indicated they had significant background in advanced science concepts, but they hadn’t used the previous knowledge and it required effort to review the concepts related to the new course. Teachers …

Creativity & Inspiration: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Engaging Pre Service Teachers, Mildred M. Pearson Dr., Krishna Thomas, Beverly J. Cruse

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

The instructor's focus in the class, Social and Emotional Development in Middle Level Curriculum, was to provide the instructional foundation and foster planning for social, emotional, intellectual, and physical growth in middle level adolescents, providing classroom management strategies appropriate for this age-group. Practicum block experience was taken along with this class. This course was designed to provide a psychological basis for working with middle level studenrs.

Reflections (2008 Issue), College Of Health Professions

College of Health Professions Newsletters & Magazines

This issue summarizes the achievements of the College of Education and Health Professions for the academic year 2007-2008, including the creation of the Isabelle Farrington School of Education.

More Than A Native Speaker: A Teacher Training Program For Native English-Speaking Teachers In Korean Hakwons, Sunhee Kim

MA TESOL Collection

This paper describes a teacher training program for native English-speaking teachers who teach children at hakwons (private English-teaching institutions) in Korea. The emphasis on English as a necessary skill in the global economy has caused a kind of ‘English fever’ to sweep the nation. A massive number of native English speaker are being rushed to Korea to teach English in hakwons. The majority do not have a background in teaching English. This has caused widely publicized discontent among stakeholders such as parents and difficulties for the teachers. This paper outlines a teacher training program specifically designed to provide basic teaching …

What Helps Law Professors Develop As Teachers? -- An Empirical Study, Gerald F. Hess, Sophie M. Sparrow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The overall goal of this article is to provide concrete suggestions for how law schools can improve teaching and enrich law student learning. In doing so, it reviews and analyzes the data collected from two national surveys about the kinds of faculty development activities that are most effective in improving law professors’ teaching. One survey was designed to quantify how many law teachers engaged in twenty-two types of teaching development activities over the previous five years and to assess the effectiveness of each of those activities. The other survey focused on the effectiveness of a national conference on teaching and …

Multicultural Education: More Than The Acknowledgement Of Black History Month, Owen Latimore

Perspectives In Learning

I remember clearly as a child, in the early nineteen sixties, the only African American mentioned in my school was Crispus Attucks. For a long time I thought there was only one black man that fought in the entire revolutionary war. From the big old musty textbooks we were given to study it was obvious very few black people had accomplished anything worth writing about. I hated history. I thought its only concern were old dead white men. Understandably, I did not do well in history. Since 2005, enrollment in public schools has increased, but “Black males continue spiraling down …

Catalogue 2008-2009, Bank Street College Of Education

Graduate School of Education

This course catalog from a past academic year is a resource for referring to previous course offerings, degree requirements, institutional policies, and more.

Building Assignments That Teach, Mary-Ann Winkelmes

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

We have come to take assignments for granted as a necessary part of undergraduate education, largely because they provide the basis for a student's grade. But assignments can accomplish much more. In addition to helping students learn course content, assignments can enable students to practice the most essential skills of a discipline. Further, assignments can offer an opportunity for students to become better evaluators of their own academic work.

Thoughtfully structured assignments offer teachers an opportunity to build students’ mastery of essential disciplinary skills alongside their content knowledge; to improve students’ ability to evaluate their own academic work; and even …

Beyond Writing: Integrative Learning And Teaching In First-Year Seminars, David H. Krause, Robert C. Lageaux

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Campuses across the country continue to establish first-year seminars that promise students integrative and transformative learning experiences necessary for the twenty-first century. This trend inevitably challenges faculty members to teach in ways that transcend or subvert both their disciplinary expertise and their familiar, comfortable ways of teaching. These challenges become especially visible in the design and evaluation of assignments. At Columbia College Chicago, for example, where the majority of students aspire to careers in the arts, media, and communication, teachers have been negotiating the place of writing in a required firstyear seminar in liberal learning. These negotiations play out differently …

Role-Play: An Often Misused Active Learning Strategy, Stephanie Nickerson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Role-play is a special kind of case study, in which there is an explicit situation established with students playing specific roles, spontaneously saying and doing what they understand their “character” would, in that situation. Role-plays differ from other case studies in the immediacy of the experience. Students find themselves in the role-play. In a case study, they read about situations and characters. One of the reasons role-play can work so well is because of the power of placing oneself in another’s shoes. This provides opportunities for learning in both the affective domain, where emotions and values are involved, as well …