Elementary teachers at a school in the southeastern United States received iPads and iPad training to improve teaching and learning in the content subject areas. Despite the iPad training provided by district technology personnel, teachers expressed a need for more content-specific training. Teachers need adequate and appropriate professional development to assist in preparing integrated computer-based technology instruction to increase student academic achievement. The purpose of this qualitative bounded case study was to explore the descriptions of 10 purposely selected 4th and 5th grade teachers who used iPads in content subjects and 1 instructional technology facilitator who provided district iPad training regarding the district's iPad professional development and implementation in instruction. The theoretical support for this study was the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework that provided an interaction among technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge. Data were collected from face-to-face interviews and lesson plans. Inductive analysis was used with hand coding to discover themes. Teachers recognized the need for ongoing professional development and collaboration with colleagues to create content-specific iPad integrated lessons. Based on these findings, a project was designed to provide teachers with a 3-day professional development to include modeled lessons, collaboration with colleagues, a shared Google Drive folder, and a schedule for ongoing professional development. These endeavors may promote positive social change by providing ongoing content-specific iPad professional development for elementary teachers that could improve computer-based technology instruction and student learning in content subject areas.

The purpose of this study was to explore participants’ perceptions of the impact of a cultural proficiency workshop that discussed concepts of race and racism. Moreover, I was interested in understanding the factors and experiences associated with a greater likelihood that people would want to engage in dialogue on race and racism. The literature suggests that when discussions like these are broached, people can often become disinterested and disengaged (Derman-Sparks & Phillips, 1997; Diem & Carpenter, 2012; Singleton & Linton, 2006; Tatum, 1997). Therefore, if it is indeed pertinent for educators to be presented with knowledge that can be critical to student success, it is vital to understand what aspects of the training and what qualities of the participants lend themselves to a higher level of engagement and interest. To research these phenomena, a mixed method study design was employed. School district central office personnel were required to attend a culture proficiency professional development session which covered concepts of race and racism. I surveyed these participants to gather their perceptions about the impact of the training. In addition, several participants were interviewed. To answer the second research question, certain participants were asked to participate in a follow-up interview to determine the qualities and characteristics that created a greater likelihood that these individuals would see the importance of race-based discourse and continue these conversations. Findings suggest that workshop participants perceived that the workshop helped to increase their level of racial awareness and change their behaviors or disposition. However, it was found that additional follow-up was needed to sustain these efforts. They also expressed that these kinds of workshops are essential. For those who were likely to engage in race-based discourse, it was found that these individuals were racially aware, rejected notions of colorblindness, discovered race at a young age, were more likely to attend diverse schools and live in diverse neighborhoods and were likely to have faced discrimination as a person from an oppressed group or due to a close relationship with someone who was. / text

This survey addressed the experience of receiving tenure through the personal narratives of Directors of Library and Information Science Schools in the USA. Fifty-five respondents were asked to rank the emphasis of the variables operating in tenure based on their experience. Participants agreed that the granting of autonomy via tenure was an opportunity to exercise academic freedom. With tenure came the responsibility to contribute as a citizen of both the institutional and disciplinary communities of the profession. The most prominent factor in determining tenure and promotion decisions for LIS faculty is demonstration of research productivity through peer reviewed publications: articles, books and conference proceedings. Teaching and service are also important components of academic life. It was found that collaboration underpinned collegiality and created an environment conducive to research. In turn, the stability and collegiality of a tenured position made the institution work as a teaching and learning environment.

This case study examined the evolution of a partnership between a middle school mathematics teacher and a university researcher around discussions on the content and teaching of mathematics. In particular, the study sought to examine the evolution of the partnership, the constraints present for the teacher and researcher, the impact of the partnership on the mathematical and pedagogical issues that arose in planning, teaching, and assessment, and the impact on the tasks that the teacher chose and implemented in the classroom. Drawing from the literature on collaborations and the emergent perspective, the evolution of the partnership occurred through three stages, determined by the content-teaching tensions. The first stage focused on the mathematics content, with the agenda being set and run by the researcher. The second stage gave rise to the content-teaching tensions as the teacher shifted the discussions from content to a focus on lesson planning and teaching. Tensions were resolved in the third stage with the teacher taking a proactive role in the discussions of lesson design and teaching. The mathematical issues in planning and teaching reflected the shift in the partnership where in the beginning the discussions focused on the mathematical content, later discussions centered on a combination of content, pedagogy, and student thinking. The assessment discussions addressed differences between the language of the curriculum and the district and state tests.The shift in the partnership can be attributed to the teacher's choice of high level mathematics tasks, the subsequent adoption of a conceptually based mathematics curriculum and the effective management of the dialectic tensions by both partners. This study illustrated that generating perturbations and effective management of dialectical tensions has the potential for a fruitful collaboration between teachers and researchers.

The main purpose of this thesis is to deepen the current understanding of how the teacher self is constructed. Specifically, the study intends to integrate into this understanding the way in which language personal, professional, and student teacher identities inform this process. A special emphasis is placed on the role that language teachers’ life histories play on the construction of teacher selves. Narrative research constitutes the research design for this thesis project since I strongly believe that selves are narratively constructed through stories. This study is focused on the storied self (Chase, 2005) that is co-constructed between the researcher and narrator that reveals how personal, professional, and student teacher identities resist and interact with discursive environments in order to create and recreate a language teacher’s self. Life histories constitute the source of data collection in this study. This facilitated the construction of a broader understanding of how six language teachers’ personal, professional, and student teacher identities are shaped throughout a lifetime and the way these impact the formation of the teacher self. The results suggest that language teachers’ selves are in close relation to emotions. Language teachers negotiate their identities and emotions in order to make sense of the different sets of values that the social context presents to them. This in turn leads them to create/recreate their own teacher selves that serve as sources of agency that generates new sets of social/moral rules or stagnation that leads to the preservation of the current status quo. The thesis concludes by providing a series of suggestions tailored to the needs of the teaching context where this research took place with the purpose of fostering a continuous engagement with individual actors and socio-cultural factors that motivate transformation through reflection.

Language practices around the world have experienced a significant shift in the last number of years (McDermott, 2011; Walsh, 2005). Communities that continue to speak minority or heritage languages, such as Irish Gaelic, have felt the effects of the various social, political and economic pressures that have gone hand in hand with globalization, resulting in a breakdown in intergenerational transmission (Anderson, 2011; Hornberger, 1998; Norris, 2004). In the Republic of Ireland, the education system has been set as the corner stone of Irish language revitalization efforts since the 1920s, thereby assigning much responsibility to Irish language teachers. Yet, there is a dearth of existing research that gives voice to Irish teachers, and their experiences and motivations to teach a language that just 1.8% of the population speak on a daily basis remain unclear (National Census of Ireland, 2011). In this study, I engage with teachers from both Gaeltacht (where Irish is spoken as a first language) and primarily English speaking parts of Ireland, in order to give a broader account of Irish teachers’ experiences in different educational settings. In addition, I look to identify what implications a better understanding of teacher motivation could have for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs offered to Irish teachers, and situate these recommendations within the current educational policies that exist within the Irish education system. / February 2017

Only two years after graduating themselves, speech and language therapists are asked to act as placement educators and supervise student speech and language therapists. The role of the placement educator is to supervise, teach, support and assess the student in the clinical environment and as such is a complex and demanding role. Some previous research has suggested that the training and support provided to developing placement educators does not adequately prepare them for the role. However, the development of speech and language therapists as placement educators is a relatively under-researched area in the UK. This interpretive study explores how ten speech and language therapists feel they develop the necessary skills to be successful as placement educators, through the stories they tell about their experiences. This exploration of clinical education and professional development is set within a social constructivist perspective on learning. The participants talked at length of their own early experiences as students and described these as the starting point for their own enactment of the placement educator role. They also emphasised the importance of continuing to learn and develop their skills as they gained experience in the placement educator role itself. The themes of talk, collaboration, reflective practice and experiential learning were central to the stories told by the participants and underpin how these speech and language therapists learnt to be placement educators. It is suggested that in describing how she felt she learnt to be a placement educator each participant created a unique and dynamic map of that learning. This study contributes to the on-going discussion about the role of critical reflection in understanding and challenging established practice and reinforces the place of reflective practice as integral to both the clinical and placement educator aspects of the SLT’s role. The findings highlight the importance of peer support and shared opportunities for critical reflection with colleagues in ensuring that placement educators do not feel isolated or disillusioned.

The problem of this study was to develop and analyze a useful approach to the professional development of faculty members in schools of business through the technique of self-appraisal. This study contained the following subdivisions: (1) a review of current college faculty development practices, (2) a review of current executive development practices within industry, (3) an explanation of the philosophy and technique of self-appraisal in professional development, (4) an application of the technique in six institutions of higher education, and (5) an analysis of results obtained from these institutions along with some suggestions for further research.

The purpose of this study was to understand professional development for paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD in Virginia. This understanding was reached through explanatory, sequential mixed methods design. Surveys and interviews provided insight into training practices, training needs, and training barriers. An interpretation of their professional development was developed through considering the perceptions of paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD, teachers of students with ASD, and directors of special education. Findings revealed a lack of supervision, training, and skills. The lack of training and supervision resulted in paraprofessionals learning through trial and error. Paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD felt qualified to complete their duties as a result of personal disposition and effective supervision. Paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD desired individualized training concerning behavior management. The results of this study provide several recommendations for training content and delivery format. It also provided a theoretical framework for explaining how paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD experience training.

Studies have shown that mentoring is a viable form of professional development.Faced with large numbers of retirements and a projected increase in student enrollment, the issues of recruitment, retention and revitalization of current faculty are at the core of this study. There is little empirical research on the phenomenon of structured or formal mentoring in higher education from the perspective of both the mentee and the mentor.The purpose of this study was to identify, describe, and analyze the perceived benefits that both senior or more experienced faculty mentors and junior or new-to-the institution faculty mentees at a large urban research university received from participating in a structured faculty mentoring program.A nonexperimental, descriptive study was designed to explore these issues. The method used to collect data was a survey questionnaire. Utilizing both descriptive and correlational statistics, the most notable findings revolved around the significance of sharing aspects of institutional culture by older, more experienced faculty members. Independent samples t-tests performed on ten subscales by participant type were significant at the p≤0.05 level. Specifically, mentors gave higher ratings for Scale 3, Institutional Culture and Scale 10, Value of One-to-one Activities. Mentees gave higher ratings for Scale 5, Psychosocial Compatibility elements.The findings also indicated that women gave higher value to the personal, psychosocial aspects of being involved in the structured mentoring program than men. Women gave higher ratings for Scale 5, Psychosocial Compatibility and Scale 8, Psychosocial Compatibility and Activity Elements.Correlations for faculty members years of experience at this institution as well astheir total years of being faculty members in higher education found faculty members at the current institution with greater years experience was positively correlated with Scale 3, Institutional Culture (r = .33). Total faculty years in higher education was also positively correlated with Scale 3, Institutional Culture (r = .40) and Scale 10, Value of One-to-one Activities (r = .27). The findings also suggest areas of emphasis administrators might use in designing and implementing faculty development activities that involve formal mentoring by more experienced faculty in order to obtain the greatest benefit for all participants.