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Personliga tränare (PT) i Sverige är en yrkesgrupp som verkar på en oreglerad marknad där vem som helst kan kalla sig PT och erbjuda tjänsten personlig träning. Den här studien undersöker svenska PT, deras yrkesverksamhet, utbildning och erfarenheter och uppfattningar om sin egen utbildning. En enkät administrerades till individer som är utbildade och/eller yrkesverksamma PT. I resultatet framträder en mångfacetterad yrkesgrupp, beståendes av män och kvinnor i alla åldrar mellan 18-63 år, med varierande grader av arbetserfarenhet och sysselsättningsgrad arbetandes både som egenanställd och anställd. Resultatet antyder att yrkesverksamma PT är utbildade, både från formella högskoleutbildningar och informella PT-utbildningar. PT anser sig generellt nöjda med sina utbildningar, men önskar att högre krav ställs både på utbildare av PT och de PT som slutför utbildningarna. Särskilt lyfts önskemål från PT fram om en kursplan som i längre utsträckning behandlar de praktiska arbetsuppgifter som kommer med PT-yrkets krav på försäljning och hantering av kunder. Det finns en tro och upplevelse bland PT att om högre krav ställs på PT-utbildningar kan en högre standard av yrkesrollen uppnås och med det kan yrkesrollens förutsättningar förbättras. / Personal trainers (PT) in Sweden is a profession that operates in an unregulated market where anyone can call themselves PT and offer the service personal training. This study investigated Swedish PTs, their professional activities, education and experiences and perceptions of their own education. A questionnaire was administered to individuals who are educated and / or actively working as PTs. The result shows a multifaceted occupational group, consisting of men and women of all ages between 18-63 years, with varying degrees of work experience and employment rate with both self-employed and employed PTs. The results suggest that PTs are educated, both from formal university educations and informal PT educations. PTs consider themselves generally satisfied with their education but would like to see higher demands placed on both educators of PTs and the PTs who complete their educations. In particular, the PT education requests a syllabus that to a greater extent deals with the practical tasks that come with the PT profession's requirements for sales and handling of customers. There is a belief and perception among PTs that if higher requirements are placed on PT educations, a higher professional standard can be achieved, and with that, the working conditions of the profession can be improved.

Student success has been understood primarily in the context of conventional classroom settings. Yet, despite the prevalence of pre-college programs in the lives of disadvantaged students, few studies explore how notions of success are conceptualized within these spaces. This study explores what counts as student success in a pre-college program from the perspective of those facilitating the program. Using archival program data consisting of 524 student performance evaluations, this study asks, In a program designed to remedy or level the playing field for historically disadvantaged students, what behaviors, attitudes, and outcomes count as success? The findings of this study suggest that what counts as student success and who is considered an ideal student is constructed by instructor’s perceptions and assessments of both student’s cognitive abilities and non-cognitive qualities. This study also shows that mainstream and stereotypical judgments about effort, character, and success more broadly persist even in spaces intended to supplement and, in many ways, serve as an alternative to traditional academic settings.

Education research has investigated teaching practices and uncovered a potential disconnect between instructors' knowledge and beliefs about teaching and their actual teaching practices. While experts of the subject matter, their understanding of teaching and their awareness of their own teaching capability significantly impact their enacted practices. However, there is a dearth of research in engineering on this aspect, particularly in electrical engineering (EE) education. EE as an applied science comprises many abstract concepts among other engineering disciplines that require strategic teaching practices to facilitate student learning. The intangible nature of these concepts, such as the foundational circuits concepts, raises the likelihood of acquiring issues in teaching among engineering instructors that can impact the construction of contextual knowledge and skills among engineering students. In this qualitative case study, the primary aim was to study the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) faculty who taught the first and second-year ECE courses at Virginia Tech. Answers were sought through the overarching research question how do engineering instructors' knowledge and beliefs about engineering teaching influence their enacted practice in teaching introductory electric circuits? using a synthesized framework of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), instructor beliefs and Watkins and Marsick's Continuous Learning Model (WMCLM). The significant findings from the analysis of interviews, class recordings, and Canvas course materials suggested that the ECE instructors' formed PCK and held beliefs can have an affirmative influence on enacted practice, meaning, their knowledge and beliefs about engineering teaching reinforced their enacted practice. This influence was apparent in their various student-centric approaches to contextualizing the ECE concepts using their combined experiences. In contrast, constructive influence captured the potential causes of "disconnect" between their formed "knowledge and beliefs" and their enacted practice. This influence was rooted in how the abstract fundamental ECE concepts, in most cases, required contexts outside of the instructors' core experiences. The attempt to use multiple strategies to attain the course goals had created oversight tendencies on their implementation magnified by the online and hybrid modality, especially with the team-teaching design of the base ECE courses. Such relevant issues needed time-constraining solutions from the course instructor to the administrative level. This work can further advance the instructional methods in EE education after understanding the influences of instructors' beliefs and knowledge on their enacted practices to teach foundational concepts in ECE. More broadly, this work will have implications for educators, curriculum designers, and researchers who seek to improve engineering instruction and address the current issues in teaching engineering. The outcomes provide research opportunities to interrogate how we can use instructional practices to design methodologies that can elucidate and solve issues on instructors' enacted practices constructively. More importantly, the results of this study can be utilized to design professional development programs for engineering teaching faculty by having a framework to continuously examine instructors' beliefs and knowledge to support their teaching practice. / Doctor of Philosophy / In the past years, research has been done in uncovering why there have been issues in teaching practices. While instructors are assumed experts of the content they are teaching, research suggests they must develop an awareness of their ability to teach to improve their enacted practice. However, there is a need for further research in electrical engineering (EE) education in this aspect because of the challenges associated with the abstract nature of its fundamental content for which engineering students' learning can be heavily impacted by engineering instructors teaching practices. In this case study, the primary aim was to study the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) faculty who taught the first and second-year ECE courses at Virginia Tech. Answers were sought through the overarching research question how do engineering instructors' knowledge and beliefs about engineering teaching influence their enacted practice in teaching introductory electric circuits? using a synthesized model of instructor knowledge, beliefs, and practices. The significant findings from the analysis of interviews, class recordings, and Canvas course materials suggested that the ECE instructors' knowledge and beliefs can have an affirmative influence on enacted practice, meaning, their knowledge and beliefs about engineering teaching reinforced their enacted practice. This influence was seen in their various use of real-world examples around the ECE concepts using their own experiences to provide context. In contrast, constructive influence captured how the abstract fundamental ECE concepts, in most cases, required contexts outside of the instructors' core experiences. The attempt to use many different strategies to achieve the course goals had created issues on their implementation. This has been magnified by the online and hybrid modality, especially with the team-teaching setup for which the resolution relies on administrative-level decisions. This work can further advance the instructional methods in EE education after understanding the influences of instructors' beliefs and knowledge on their enacted practices to teach foundational concepts in ECE.

Teaching presence and its implications for the intellectual climate of an online classroom cannot be fully understood unless explored from the perspective of the instructors who experience it. Framed in the theoretical perspective of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, this collective case study investigated the actions, intentions and perceptions of instructors with the intent of developing an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of teaching presence as it was established in a structured online learning environment. The experiences of selected successful instructors in this specific online context were explored to gain insight on how pedagogical choices influenced the establishment of an intellectual climate appropriate to the courses taught. Using semi-structured interviews as the main source of data, the study utilized the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method as an analytical tool to address concerns of rigor in the qualitative interpretation of experiential data. It was the goal of this study to gain an understanding of how teaching presence is established and the decision processes employed in doing so in order to make a contribution to the body of knowledge from a practical pedagogical perspective. Findings of the study provided insight into the following: Practices in Establishing Teaching Presence. Intentions of Instructors. Influence on Intellectual Climate. Nature of Teaching Presence. Overall, the collective case revealed that an active interest and passion for teaching and an understanding of relevance to the student encouraged student engagement, and inspired intellectual curiosity and a shared responsibility for the learning process. The findings show that the common goal of learning shared by instructor and student had its foundations in the creation of authentic relationships between instructor and students that extend beyond stated learning objectives and expected outcomes. The results of this study contribute to knowledge related to the nature of teaching presence and its role in setting an academic climate, addressing the overarching question of the study about how instructors establish teaching presence and inspire intellectual curiosity within the courses they teach. In addition, the experiences of the selected instructors helped provide a vocabulary with which to describe the shared pedagogies of instructors and served to catalog commonalities in actions and intent associated with setting an intellectual climate that met the requirements of academic rigor appropriate to the courses they taught.