No description available.

The introduction of the 2007 Further Education Teachers’ Qualifications Regulations has meant that a wider group of providers, including those providing adult and community learning (ACL), have had to check that teaching staff are appropriately qualified. However, will this requirement help to ensure that there is ‘better’ quality provision or will it just be an additional cost that takes resources away from delivery of learning? This thesis is to see if any evidence can be found that teachers with higher qualifications, in particular teaching qualifications, provide ‘better’ teaching and learning and obtain higher grades in class observation, and also therefore during inspection. It also looks to see if any other characteristics of teachers employed can be identified as having an impact on classroom performance so that providers working in a similar area to the WEA, and using a workforce that is predominantly part-time sessional tutors, can consider employment and staff development policy to help meet the needs they face regarding quality and inspection. This is done by comparing tutor profiles of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), employed over a four year period (academic years 2005 – 2008), and grades in 4,267 internal observations of teaching and learning (OTL) undertaken during this period. The thesis explores the background and context of the current reforms of qualifications for teaching staff in the sector and then places the WEA provision and its teaching staff in a wider context. It also considers the use of OTL, and its effect on tutors, as part of a the self-assessment process and how the current quality agenda for the Further Education sector fits within the move of Government to more accountability, measurement and ‘performativity’.

This thesis reports the findings of research conducted with Irish primary teachers who had recently completed probation. The study employed semi-structured interviews to examine the teachers’ perceptions of beneficial influences on the development of their teaching identity. The principals of the two schools involved were also interviewed. The interviews were designed to allow me to explore influences that had been identified in the literature as important in the formation of teacher identity. In the interviews, themes that have been identified in the literature on teacher identity were explored with participants. The teachers identified incidents and persons whom they perceived as having inspired them to become teachers. Their perceptions of how their interactions with pupils and parents had influenced their identities were examined, as were their experiences of school cultures and of working in collaboration with colleagues. Finally, their awareness of theoretical literature as a tool to help their further development was examined. The findings of the study confirm that teachers’ identities are formed by a combination of factors and add a more detailed understanding of those factors in the Irish context. Beginning teachers are influenced strongly by their own biographies, and by their experiences as students prior to and during their pre-service teacher education. They are sensitive to the perceptions of them by parents and pupils. Their willingness to engage collaboratively with other colleagues, including their principals and mentors, features strongly in their own perceptions of how their identities have been formed. The importance of the school culture in helping to shape the teacher’s identity is highlighted as a phenomenon which both shapes and is reshaped in turn by teachers and their colleagues. Literature is generally not considered relevant by the Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) in this study, although the principals’ responses indicate their familiarity with themes common in the literature concerning teacher induction, and with concepts of teachers as reflective practitioners who need to continuously examine their practice and experience in order to promote the ongoing shaping of their identity as teachers. The thesis argues for a conception of teacher professionalism which respects the identity of teachers and the agency of teachers as individuals in a world of individuals who are engaged in the constructionist creation of knowledge. This understanding prioritises practical wisdom, phronesis, over the technical knowledge, techne, and knowledge of subject, episteme, which teachers also require. This is at odds with widespread competency-based conceptions of teacher professionalism. The findings of the research indicate that the development of teacher identity is complex and is affected by a broader range of influences than the imperative to develop competencies. It calls for an alternative approach to teacher induction which acknowledges the importance of these factors.

The study is concerned with post-observation feedback and its role as an instigator of teacher learning and change. It investigates two kinds of feedback: corrective and confirmatory and explores how each kind of feedback may have contributed to the learning of a group of student teachers. It also investigates the ways in which these teachers have experienced changes in behaviour and changes in cognition. It adopts a qualitative approach to research, making use of case studies. It brings an additional perspective to the literature on change by examining changes in teacher persona, as reported by the student teachers themselves. It introduces and discusses two new concepts that emerged from the research reported in the study: convergent change and divergent change. It argues that certain kinds of feedback seem to be more facilitative of convergent change while some others seem to lead to change that is characterised as being more divergent. It considers the implications which the findings may have for teacher educators.

An ecological approach to space allows human constructs to become the primary prism through which to view workplaces (Nespor, 2000; Urry, 2005; Murdoch 2006). Human beings create meaning in their environments via the unity of symbolic actions and generalized meaning fields that gain their social usefulness via their affective tone. The resulting personal system becomes projected onto the world via the personal arrangement of things that are important for each person (Valsiner, 2000; Valsiner, 2005). Consequently, individual human beings constantly order parts in their environments through an affective-emotional lens when they encounter ideas, objects and spaces (Hochschild, 2003; Thrift, 2008; Boys, 2011). I use the emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) concepts of display rules (expectations for emotional display) and feeling rules (expectations for internal affect) together with an ecological approach to space to investigate the existence of affective-emotional zones in schools. My research questions were: How do participants in a school make sense of their work environment through the lens of affective-emotional zones? How are affective-emotional zones characterized in terms of display rules and feeling rules? What challenges do teachers face when they are in particular affective-emotional zones and why? I broadly utilized a case study approach with a European international school to interview six experienced teachers using an active interview technique with open coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) and critical event coding (Webster and Mertova, 2007) as the principle methods of analysis. I was able to label and describe four zones that I argued are products of teacher rituals, habits, feelings (feeling rules) and emotions (display rules); the communal zone, the school zone, the student zone and the teacher zone. I further the notion of heretical feelings and emotions and describe how they constitute elements of the teacher condition. I found school affective-emotional zones are temporal as school spaces have the potential to shift from one affective-emotional zone to another as a consequence of time changes in the school day. I outline questions for future research based on my findings.

A study of the literature relating to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) suggested that, while mentors had been studied as instruments of their partnership Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), there was little work which investigated the mentor as acting subject in ITE. Through an analysis of spoken and written data, this empirical study offers insights into how two teachers in a secondary school in England appeared to develop subjectivities to assist them in their work in ITE, in the context of the HEI partnership and government policy for ITE. A post-Vygotskyan Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) were used to explore the rules and conceptual and language tools that those teachers seemed to be drawing on when they worked as mentors. The study concludes that, even though the school or partnership appeared to offer few spaces for the development of robust identities, where a mentor had a pre-existing strong pedagogic orientation to mentoring, s/he was better able to construct a subject identity to help her work with students. Where a mentor lacked such a pedagogic orientation and drew on more managerial approaches, s/he experienced more tension in mentoring work and struggled to find an identity which might resolve those tensions.

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία έχει ως στόχο να διερευνήσει με ποιον τρόπο και σε ποιο βαθμό μπορεί να βελτιωθεί η διδασκαλία και η επαγγελματική ανάπτυξη των εκπαιδευτικών με την ερευνητική διαδικασία της μελέτης μαθήματος. Παράλληλα ερευνάται πώς μπορεί να λειτουργήσει η συνεργασία των εκπαιδευτικών σαν ερευνητική ομάδα στη δημιουργία σχεδίων μαθημάτων στους λόγους και τις αναλογίες. Πιο συγκεκριμένα ερευνάται, όσον αφορά στη διδασκαλία των λόγων και των αναλογιών, ποιες δραστηριότητες είναι κατάλληλες για τους στόχους της κάθε διδασκαλίας, πόσο αποτελεσματικές ή μη είναι και πώς αναδιαμορφώνονται μετά τον αναστοχασμό της ομάδας. Επιπλέον ερευνάται ποιες παρανοήσεις εμφανίζονται στην τάξη που διδάσκονται οι λόγοι και οι αναλογίες και πώς αυτές αντιμετωπίζονται. Επίσης ποιες στρατηγικές επιλέγονται από τους μαθητές, κατά πόσο είναι αποτελεσματικές ή με ποιον τρόπο αλλάζουν. Επιλέξαμε να διερευνήσουμε τις συγκεκριμένες έννοιες των λόγων και αναλογιών διότι θεωρούνται δύο από τις πιο δύσκολες έννοιες να διδαχθούν αλλά από τις πιο απαιτητικές σε γνωστικό περιεχόμενο καθώς και απαραίτητες για την επιτυχία στα μαθηματικά. Το ιδιαίτερο χαρακτηριστικό των λόγων και των αναλογιών είναι ότι είναι πάρα πολύ προσιτά παρά τη δυσκολία τους. Πριν από τις διδασκαλίες γινόταν η συνάντηση της ομάδας για να σχεδιαστούν οι διδασκαλίες. Κατά τη διάρκεια των συναντήσεων παρακολουθούνταν οι βιντεοσκοπήσεις των διδασκαλιών που προηγήθηκαν και συζητούνταν τα κρίσιμα σημεία των διδασκαλιών. Συλλέχθηκαν ποικίλα δεδομένα τόσο από τις συναντήσεις της ομάδας όσο και από τις διδασκαλίες. Βιντεοσκοπήθηκαν και ηχογραφήθηκαν όλες οι διδασκαλίες καθώς και οι συναντήσεις των εκπαιδευτικών και συλλέχθηκαν όλα τα φύλλα εργασίας των μαθητών. Κατά τη διάρκεια των αναστοχασμών εμφανίστηκαν τα κρίσιμα σημεία των διδασκαλιών που αφορούσαν τις παρανοήσεις των μαθητών, τη διαχείριση του εκπαιδευτικού, την αποτελεσματικότητα των δραστηριοτήτων που είχε επιλέξει η ομάδα καθώς και οι στρατηγικές και η συλλογιστική των μαθητών. Πολλές φορές η ομάδα αναδιαμόρφωσε τους στόχους της επόμενης διδασκαλίας και τις δραστηριότητες με βάση τα δεδομένα που συνέλεξε από την παρακολούθηση των βιντεοσκοπημένων διδασκαλιών. Συζητήθηκαν τα αδύνατα σημεία και έγιναν προσπάθειες για τη βελτίωση τόσο των δραστηριοτήτων που προηγήθηκαν όσο και αυτών που θα αποτελούσαν το επόμενο σχέδιο μαθήματος. Οι εμπειρίες και τα ευρήματα της εργασίας αυτής αναδεικνύουν την αξία της συνεργασίας των εκπαιδευτικών καθώς και ποια είναι τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά που έχουν σημασία στη διδασκαλία των λόγων και των αναλογιών. / The present study aims to investigate in what way and extend the teaching and professional development of educators can be improved through the research procedure of a Lesson Study. Additionally, another thing that is explored is the educators’ cooperation as an investigating team and how this can work in the creation of lesson plans in ratios and proportions. More specifically, as far as teaching of ratio and proportion is concerned, which activities are appropriate for the targets of every teaching, how effective or not they are and how they can be reformulated after the team’s reconsideration. Furthermore, we research which misunderstandings appear in the class where ratios are taught and how they can be dealt with. Also, which strategies are chosen by the students, how effective they are and in what ways they change. We chose to investigate the specific concepts of ratio and proportion as they are considered to be not only two of the most difficult concepts to be taught but also two of the most demanding in cognitive context and essential for success in Maths. The special characteristic of ratio and proportion is that they are easily approachable despite their difficulty. The meetings of the team took place before the teachings in order for them to be planned. During the meetings, the video recordings of the previous teachings were watched and the critical points were discussed. Various data were collected from the team meetings as well as the teachings. All the teachings and the teachers meetings were videotaped and recorded and all the students’ working sheets were collected. The teachings’ critical points concerning the students’ misunderstandings, the teacher’s management, the effectiveness of the activities chosen by the group, the students’ strategies and reasoning emerged during the reconsiderations. The team often reformulated the aims of the following teaching and the activities based on the data collected by watching the recorded teachings. The weak points were discussed and efforts were made to improve the previous activities as well as the the ones of the following lesson plan. The experiences and findings of this study show the value of the teachers’ cooperation and point the main characteristics that matter in teaching ratios and proportions.

No description available.

This thesis centres on a narrative inquiry of the life stories of teachers in Post Compulsory Education with the aim of exploring how the ‘self’ is constructed within discursive environments. The study adopts a dialogical approach to narrative identity formation as an ongoing process of becoming within the life course. Grounded in social construction theory (Gergen 2009), the study acknowledges that identity is fluid and determined by context; self-creation is therefore both a collective and individual endeavour situated within the social and cultural context. The research design centres on an in-depth study of four teachers in the exploration of the meanings constructed from autobiographical memories; in addition, the study explores how narrative meanings are mediated within the organisational and political context of being a teacher. The study adopts a psychosocial perspective (McAdams 2006) to life stories and the analysis of narrative construction is conducted through the lens of dialogical self theory with the aim of exploring the multivoiced nature of the self based on a diversity of self-positions (Hermans 2001). Narrative identities are therefore viewed as relational, individuals position themselves within the stories they tell in relation to a particular audience; individuals are also positioned by the social and cultural environment in which they are embedded. The study contributes to current knowledge in relation to the crucial role emotions play in the dialogical construction of the self; findings indicate that early emotionally charged autobiographical memories play a significant role in defining individuals’ moral educational values within their teaching role. Emotions were also central to placing individuals in a field of tension in reconciling their personal values within the current organisational and political environment that imposes constraints on teachers’ professional practice. The study concludes that in order to sustain the moral purpose of teachers’ professional practice, there is a need for the dialogical renewal of the self through transformative discourse.

The introduction of learning mentors into the secondary schools in 1999, as part of the Excellence in Cities initiative, was viewed within two years as a successful strategy for aiding pupils in inner city schools to develop positive attitudes towards school. As a result, the provision of learning mentors was extended to the primary sector. Although guidance on this new workforce was provided to schools it was expected that schools develop learning mentorship responsive to their own needs. This thesis begins with an overview of the introduction of learning mentors into the primary school and leads onto a consideration of one school’s interpretation of the role in practice. An evaluation of this interpretation led to a case study, carried out over one academic year, into the evolution of the role, leading to improved practice in the primary school at the heart of the research. The case study explored how the school’s provision of learning mentorship evolved over one academic year, from the introduction of a team approach based on the ideals of a nurture group, through an interim review and onto a final evaluation of practice and effectiveness. The case study was carried out with respect to the feminist approach to research, resulting in the collection and consideration of a wide range of data, including contextual data, to tell the story of the setting; indeed this notion of telling the story led to the research being reported as a narrative. Due regard was given to the researcher also being the acting headteacher of the school; the report acknowledges how the potential impact of this familiarity was addressed within the research. Due to the changing nature of the school as a society, the socialisation of children became the focus for the development of effective learning mentorship. Through this, conclusions were drawn that considered how staff, particularly senior iii staff, influenced the school society and how children may need the specialist support of trained learning mentors to adapt to the new society. The delivery of this specialist support was then outlined, with suggestions made for how the results of this case study could be used within other primary schools. A final consideration was given to the timing of learning mentorship for the individual child and the process needed to withdraw this specialist support from the child.