The advent of relatively cheap micro-computers in the 1980s has led to major investment in information and communication technology (ICT) for schools. The technology has been developed continually, creating a situation where there may be significant differences between policy and practice. The literature relating to innovation diffusion and the rationale for ICT in school education has concentrated upon effectiveness and teacher professional development. Existing models of development in the area are limited in scope or make ill-founded assumptions. Little work has been done on the question of alignment between policy and practice. This study used a grounded theory approach to examine the relationships between policy, implementation and underlying models of development. This was done through a process of policy comparison, consultation with experts in the field and case study observations. The methodology used a comparative case study approach at national, school and classroom levels and examined issues such as the nature of development processes for policy in the area, implementation and practice in the use of computers in classrooms, teacher professional development and stages of development as perceived by practitioners. Data were gathered from the United States of America, England, Estonia and Australia from November 1999 to September 2002. The study found ICT curriculum approaches for students were strongly aligned with a stage of development which emphasised the integration of ICT into existing curricula and current classroom practice. There was poor alignment between overlapping policies for teacher training and student learning outcomes and also between policy and classroom practice. It was confirmed that students generally have better access to computers outside school than within it, a situation largely ignored by policy. It was also found that experts in the field perceived increasing reliance upon generic office software as an outmoded tool approach, and saw ICT as a driver for transformative change in school education. School and classroom observations confirmed that local practice included transformative uses of ICT. From these findings a general model of stages of development was derived. The model consisted of an introductory Phase 1, where students in school first use computers and information technology becomes a subject choice; an integrative Phase 2, where information and communication technologies are used to enhance learning opportunities in all traditional curriculum subject areas; and a transformative Phase 3, where the curriculum clearly includes topics of study that would not exist without information and communication technologies and schooling for most students no longer fits the traditional group-instruction model. The model has implications for alignment in policy development based upon a national cross-curriculum framework. It demonstrates the importance for teacher professional development to include training in virtual teaching and the evaluation of digital materials. In particular, there is a need to examine the alignment between conventional learning outcomes, policy and practice when ICT is much more available to students outside school than within. The study provides guidance for future policies concerning teacher ICT professional development and argues for their alignment with national cross-curriculum frameworks for ICT in school education. It will also be useful for educators training pre-service teachers to use and prepare online digital learning materials. Further, the study also informs school communities about the need to use ICT as a way of linking their institution with student homes and to extend learning opportunities.

abstract: There is a nationwide gap in which African American, Hispanic and low-income students perform significantly lower than their peers. Research suggests that teachers hold lower expectations for these students resulting in lower achievement. There are four main factors that influence teacher expectations: stereotypes, teacher self-efficacy, school culture, language and formal policies and programs aimed at increasing teacher expectations. The purpose of this study was to inquire into the following questions: (1) What are the factors that influence teachers' academic expectations for low-income and minority students? (2) What are teacher's perceptions on the effectiveness of formal policies and programs that are aimed at increasing teacher expectations? More specifically, do teachers feel that top-down formal policies, such as teacher evaluations, uniform curriculum, and performance-based pay are effective in impacting their expectations, or do teachers believe that bottom-up policies, such as book studies and professional learning communities, make more of an impact on increasing their expectations? Ten teachers were interviewed in a school district that is consistent with the state and national achievement gap. The findings revealed that teacher expectations are influenced by the four factors I found in the research as well as two other factors: a cultural disconnect among teachers and students and teachers' level of motivation. A combination of top-down and bottom-up formal policies and programs are needed as teachers are individuals and all respond to various forms of formal policies and programs differently. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2011

abstract: ABSTRACT Teachers working in isolation to overcome instructional challenges are left to their own devices, but teachers working together can benefit from others' perspectives. Teacher collaboration can increase communication and open doors to increased collective knowledge and rapport. Collaborative knowledge sharing and decision-making that focus on student achievement can go far in improving instructional learning. This action research focused on increasing collaboration among members of a middle school team of teachers. Involving teachers in a collaboration development processes was intended to improve productive interactions and contribute to instructional learning as a professional learning team. Study participants were involved in an eight week professional development initiative that involved techniques to promote collaboration along with instructional learning tools to promote professional learning in regard to guiding students to high levels of cognition. A mixed methods set of data was generated including a research journal, artifacts, surveys, meeting transcriptions, and interviews. Findings concluded that focusing on collaboration contributed to positive changes in the middle school team's interactions. Setting and revisiting norms of collaboration were crucial steps in this focus, leading to increased buy-in and active participation during team meetings. Focusing on relevance contributed to multiple aspects of the team's instructional learning. Participants valued their collaborative efforts especially when they found direct links between their professional learning and their individual classroom situations. Focusing on an action plan also contributed to participants' instructional learning. Setting manageable short terms goals gave the team direction and fostered accountability. Finally, working as a professional learning team contributed to the team's instructional learning. Taking the time to meet frequently allowed teachers to share classroom experiences, assist one another, and develop professionally. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Leadership and Innovation 2011

This thesis explores the nature of teacher collaboration for professional learning, key enabling and inhibiting factors, and their implication for the development of a culture of collaboration for professional learning in Kazakhstani schools. The current teacher professional development reform initiative in Kazakhstani secondary education has incorporated teacher collaboration as a strategy to encourage teachers to take ownership of innovations and changes. The underlying assumption for it is that when teachers engage in professional collaboration, there is both an individual and collective benefit. However, an increasing scepticism that followed the initial enthusiasm about the benefits of teacher collaboration in Western countries, where a second look at collaboration from a cultural and micropolitical perspective identified the contradictions between human agency and power, voluntarism and determinism, action and settings. Against this background, this study was undertaken to examine the Kazakhstani teachers’ beliefs, values and attitudes towards collaboration and interdependence. The study draws upon case study data gathered in three purposefully selected Kazakhstani schools. The first two schools represent Kazakhstani schools established during the Soviet communist era. One of them is selected from among the comprehensive rural schools and the second is a gymnasium located in a district town. The third one is an autonomous school tasked to serve as a platform to pilot a new reform initiative before its dissemination to all the mainstream schools of the country. Each case-study was covered during a six-to-seven week period, which corresponds to a term in a school year in Kazakhstan. The findings demonstrate the dependence of teachers’ personal beliefs and values about teacher collaboration on micropolitical, school organisational culture, and socio-political factors, mainly inherited as a legacy of the Soviet education system, as well as ambiguities in the understanding and implementation of reform initiatives dictated from the top. The study suggests that Kazakhstani school history and the culture of the teaching profession possess the potential to overcome these barriers, for there is a tradition of peer evaluation and peer observation in the system with teachers expected to observe and be observed by other teachers on a frequent basis within an appropriately defined school organisational structure, which historically is seen by the authorities as a means of control. The study concludes that it is of particular importance to build on the momentum of the recent reform initiatives and help teachers to develop agency by providing the support and conditions conducive to the continued development of professional learning communities based on teacher collaboration for learning.

The knowledge-based economy, advances in information and communication technologies and new pedagogical perspectives all influence the need to improve competencies in the 21st century. Innovative educational ideas and concepts have transformed the roles of teacher educators and their students. Adequate technology training is therefore a prerequisite for the teacher educator to develop prospective teachers who can use new technologies to support and improve their students’ achievement gains. However, many of these efforts fail since they are mostly based on a formal, institutional delivery of instrumental knowledge and skills. Adequate technology training is a major factor that can help to promote the uptake of emerging technologies into the curriculum, which in turn benefits students (Yoon et al, 2007; Collins & Halverson, 2009; Earley & Porritt, 2014). This research seeks to add to current knowledge about teacher educators’ technology professionalisation and to provide an instrument for the purpose of mapping teacher educators’ technology learning preferences in the workplace. The technology learning preferences instrument (TLP-instrument) designed, implemented and evaluated in this research is intended to create a link between teacher-educators’ technology learning needs in the workplace and the way in which professional development programmes should be tailored to meet teacher educators’ evolving learning needs. The investigation employs a design-based research approach which is cyclical and appropriate for addressing complex problems in educational practice for which no clear guidelines for solutions are available. To collect and analyse the data, a mixed methods approach was used. The rationale for mixing both types of research is that qualitative and quantitative methods complement each other (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2011). Findings in this dissertation and in follow-up research are intended to lead to more effective technology professionalisation programmes through suggestions for better design and development based on teacher educators’ learning needs.

The aim of the research reported in this thesis is to examine the factors that Irish post-primary teachers report as influencing their decision making regarding engagement in continuing professional development (CPD) and to present a conceptualisation of what I call engagement. The study examines the current research and theorising about CPD and from this develops an analysis and argument about how there is a need, within the context of CPD, to examine the relationship between the agency of the professional and the structuring context in which they are located. The study offers, through case study work with teachers in six post-primary schools in Ireland, new understandings of teachers' personal views, opinions and reflections with regard to the factors that influence their decision making regarding engagement in CPD. The analysis of the data leads to a number of outcomes, firstly, it offers a conceptualisation of these factors as a contribution towards a refinement of understanding of a model of engagement in CPD, secondly, consideration is given to what engagement means for professionalism and professionality and the implications that arise for both the policy makers and for post-primary teachers in Ireland. In pursuit of these aims the following research questions are addressed:1. What are the factors that influence teacher decision making regarding engagement in CPD?2. What does this mean for CPD and professional practice?The findings presented in this study are twofold. Firstly, in general, Irish post-primary teachers recognise the need for, and appreciate the potential value and benefit of professional learning in developing their understanding of the learning processes and its potential to improve the student experience and learning outcomes. Secondly, within the current Irish context individual teachers’ decision making with regard to engagement in CPD is influenced by a variety of factors but none more so than that of the impact of their decision to engage on their own personal lives. Consequently, it shows that there are emerging tensions between teachers and the Government in light of recent Government policy to locate more and more CPD events in an after school-time elective context. These issues combine to an examination of how teachers are being positioned and are positioning themselves for the reform process and what this means for the professionalism and professionality of Irish post-primary teachers.

When international graduate students and their families participate in study abroad experiences, there are many challenges and opportunities that accompany these experiences. Depending on the context of the study abroad experience, some might be characterized as both opportunities and challenges. International graduate students and their families experience cultural and linguistic challenges/opportunities while also facing conscious (and unconscious) decisions of assimilation and acculturation. Education opportunities are rarely neutral and may be accompanied by uncertainty, discontinuities, and result in identities that shift and change in the course of crossing boundaries that are geographic, educational, emotional and metaphoric in nature. The ways in which international graduate students and members of their family take advantage of opportunities and address the challenges is the focus of my research. In this study, I draw on Akkerman and Bakker's theories of learning in the context of boundary crossers and boundary objects to document and describe my family's journeys between Indonesia and the United States while in pursuit of educational goals. Data sources for this qualitative study involve stories documented in field notes and recorded in email exchanges between family members. These stories illuminate tensions and dilemmas we faced as a transnational family as each of us dealt with issues of acculturation, assimilation, linguistic and cultural differences in the context of international moves from 2001 until 2012. I use narrative analysis in order to understand the deeper meanings of family experiences captured in stories we told, recorded in writing, and shared with each other. These stories reveal our transitions and interactions as boundary crossers. Central to my study is the use of books as boundary objects to address the dilemmas and tensions my family faced in the midst of our transnational journeys. Books, in the form of children's literature, often served as the means to create figured or "as if" worlds and provided the means for prompting dialogues among members of my family so that we could explore and discuss the cultural tensions and dilemmas that face many transnational families. In particular, one book served as a critical moment in my family's transnational experience. In order to better understand the value of this book as a boundary object, I made use of content analysis to understand the larger themes and document the role of the book, in family discussions as we anticipated our return to Indonesia. The methods of my study as well as the findings I describe may serve to benefit other international students who explore educational opportunities abroad while accompanied by their family. I document the ways in which identities of my family are dynamic and changing in the context of our transnational journeys. The use of books as boundary objects situated at the intersection of geographic, cultural, and emotional boundary crossings may provide transnational families with dialogues to explore dilemmas and tensions. Finally, the process of recording family stories may serve international students and families as they become cultural and linguistic boundary crossers themselves.

Following up on the educational reform initiatives of the 1990s and early 2000s, which are centered on the notion of accountability, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's Race to the Top initiative strives to bring such accountability down to the level of the individual teacher through the use of advanced statistical parsing of student achievement data. Through the calculation of "teacher value-added," a given teacher's "effectiveness" can be measured and ranked, hence assigned a value. Duncan's rhetoric around the issue, and the assumptions visible in the studies of teacher quality and effectiveness that he and other reformers cite, suggest that at long last we as a society will be able to know and to communicate just who our best and our worst teachers are. Such an ability will allow us as a polity, on this view, to direct public funding much more efficiently than has heretofore been possible: armed with this new knowledge, we can reward the best teachers to ensure that they do not abandon the profession for higher-paying employment, and cull the worst teachers so that they may be replaced with more effective personnel. The newfound ability to distinguish between good and bad teachers also has transformative implications for teacher training programs. By analyzing the practice of the highest-quality teachers, one might discover "what works" in classrooms, the specific behaviors, skills, or mental states involved in highly effective teaching. Once discovered, these behaviors, skills, or mental states might then be given to pre-service teachers, which would dispense with what Duncan considers to be the overly theoretical and largely abstract curricula of current teacher education programs. The problem outlined above is obviously philosophical in nature. The method of investigation involves a conceptual analysis of Race to the Top's teacher-quality and achievement-data initiatives, comparing the policies to the Secretary of Education's public rhetoric employed to market the policies to the public. Taking the public rhetoric as an expressing the various needs to which the policies will be responsive, this thesis tests the coherence of the underlying assumptions about teaching and learning, and assesses the conceptual fit between the needs visible in the rhetoric and the outcomes sought and measured according to the proposed policies. The thesis finds that Duncan's public rhetoric expresses largely unproblematic needs, fears, or disquietudes around questions of teacher quality, but that the policies intended to answer those needs are wholly insufficient to the task. At issue is a misconception of teaching as a skillful endeavor, a mistaken idea about what teaching is. This thesis concludes that the needs and desires expressed in Duncan's rhetoric do necessitate a response, but that any adequate response will require a different view of teaching and learning entirely. The thesis offers the fundamental requirements of a different notion of teaching and learning, one better suited to the needs of the public, as the Secretary of Education expresses them.

Although studies have addressed high school English language arts (ELA) instruction, little is known about the decision-making process of ELA teachers. How do teachers decide between the resources and instructional strategies at their disposal? This study focused on two monolingual teachers who were in different schools and grades. They were teaching mainstream students or English Language Learners. Both employed an approach to writing instruction that emphasized cultural mediation. Two questions guided this study: How does the enactment of culturally mediated writing instruction (CMWI) in a mainstream classroom compare to the enactment in an ESL classroom? What is the nature of teacher decision-making in these high school classrooms during English language arts instruction? Data were collected and analyzed using qualitative methodologies. The findings suggest that one teacher, who was familiar with CMWI’s principles and practices and saw students as partners, focused her decisions on engagement and participation. The other teacher deliberately embedded CMWI as an instructional stance. Her decisions focused on empathy, caring and meaningful connections. These teachers enacted CMWI in different ways to meet their students’ needs. They embraced the students’ cultural resources, used and built on their linguistic knowledge, expanded thinking strategies to make difficult information comprehensible, provided authentic learning opportunities, used formative assessments as instructional guides, and delivered just-in-time academic and non-academic support.

Environmental Education (EE) has an overall goal of fostering eco-literate citizens who are capable of building a more sustainable planet (North American Association for Environmental Education, 2019). While EE is associated with a plethora of benefits, it is still not widely implemented in the field of education due to the many types of barriers as well as the complexity of EE content knowledge and skills. Professional Development (PD) in EE may be a viable way to increase effective implementation of EE, yet PD in EE is not widely attended or offered. It is, therefore, imperative that PD programs are designed in a way that will maximize the benefits for participants. This mixed methods case study examined the experiences of K-5 educators who attended a one-day, Everglades Literacy Teacher Training Workshop in order to understand the effective components of the workshop, changes in teacher content knowledge and self-efficacy, and experiences of teachers after the implementation of the Everglades literacy curriculum in their classrooms. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection