<p> Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present different needs to special education teachers in school today. Without the proper supports and preparation, 75% of special education teachers will leave the field of special education within the first ten years of teaching, with most of the teachers leaving the field within the first three years (Council for Exceptional Children, 2014). Without appropriate interventions, children with ASD are at risk of falling behind their same-aged peers throughout school or making progress towards IEP goals (Lovaas, 1987; Leaf &amp; McEachin, 1999). This study explores the types of preparation: 1) formal education, 2) experiences with people with ASD, and 3) support from administration or an expert in the field of ASD and how it may impact special education teacher self-efficacy. Through the lens of Bandura&rsquo;s (1977) self-efficacy framework and applying it to special education teachers, a survey design study was employed. The on-line survey, adapted from the ASSET (Ruble, Usher, &amp; McGrew, 2011), teachers were asked to rate their level of confidence to thirty questions specifically related to needs of students with ASD and how they feel they were best prepared for that skill between formal education, experience and support. Fifty-six responses were received but only 36 surveys were used due to completeness. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to find the mean differences on the global self-efficacy scores of special education teachers and the mode of three types of preparation. No statistical significance was found to be a greater predictor of special education teacher self-efficacy. However, some descriptive data provided information on differences between special education teacher high and low self-efficacy, skills that are better prepared by various types of preparation and recommendations on how to apply Bandura&rsquo;s (1977) social learning theory to help support special education self-efficacy during beginning teacher induction.</p><p>

This study investigated the question of whether an adaptation of documentation as practiced in the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, can be successfully utilized in the United States. If documentation is successful, connections, extensions, and projects will develop as a result of the documentation process. A case study approach was used. Four teachers were given seven training sessions dealing with the theory and application of specific documentation techniques. These teachers were observed and interviewed to determine whether they used documentation more effectively in the classroom than at the start of the study. They were compared with other teachers who had not received instruction in the documentation process.

This study examined the demographics, self-perceived autonomy and isolation of the work, and level of burnout of the family child care provider. This was done by surveying the 249 licensed small group family child care providers of New Hampshire. The analysis is based on 71 participants who represented a 28.5% return. The Family Child Care Provider Work Conditions Survey assessed her self-perceptions of the autonomous and isolating factors of the job. Levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment and burnout ranking were measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey. Demographic information was gathered. Participants were female, European American and married. Most were 31 to 50 years old, 71.8% had some to four years of college, and 46.4% had children of their own under 10 years old. They worked for an average of 12.78 years with a span of one to forty years. Their workday ranged from 3 to 12.5 hours with an average of 10 hours. The characteristics of this sample were contrasted to Kontos' 1992 review of the family child care provider literature. Results demonstrated that the majority reported low burnout profiles. Correlations were evident between several of the perceptions of autonomy and isolation and the burnout subscales. Those participants reporting moderate to high emotional exhaustion were more likely to feel lonely, wish for more contact with other providers, to share responsibilities with other adults and for more time to themselves during the day. Participants reporting moderate to high depersonalization were also likely to report this. Those with high feelings of personal accomplishment were more likely to report rarely feeling lonely, and scored high on the degree to which they liked being their own boss. Those providers reporting a high sense of accomplishment were also those likely to be experiencing little role conflict and an internal locus of control. Results were also discussed in terms of what factors of their work may be moderating the high demands of this job. Implications included suggesting research into understanding when and how the family child care provider chooses to define her work as a career choice.

This study investigates teacher attitudes about language and education. The purpose of the study is to help program designers develop professional development efforts that successfully address some of the major identified challenges teachers face when transitioning into Mother Tongue Based Multi-Lingual Education (MTBMLE), including negative attitudes. It also suggests protocols and issues that trainers should consider when designing professional development for MTBMLE teachers. The research question guiding this study is: (1) Do teachers' attitudes towards and knowledge about mother tongue-based instruction change after they participate in professional development that is consistent with good professional development practice? (a) What were teachers' knowledge and attitudes about MTBMLE before the professional development program? (b) Did teachers' knowledge and attitudes change after participating in the professional development program? (c) Why did teachers hold particular attitudes towards MTBMLE prior to professional development and what factors influenced their change? I conducted this research during a three-month MTBMLE professional development program with a group of indigenous first grade teachers and their school principals in Save the Children's outreach areas in rural Mindanao in the Philippines. I used a Q sort methodology for initial interviews conducted with a subset of five first grade teachers followed by a second interview after the professional development program. The interview data showed that teachers came into the trainings with two distinct viewpoints; mother tongue supporters and one mother tongue resister. After the professional development program, however, teachers were all more positive about using the mother tongue as the language of instruction. Interviews revealed that teachers were more positive and confident in teaching the mother tongue when they had the opportunity to: (1) spend time learning about their own language, (2) create mother tongue teaching and learning materials, and (3) reflect on their early learning experiences and experience what it is like to learn in a language that is not familiar. This paper will discuss the research findings in depth and will provide a clearer picture of how to train and support teachers who are transitioning into MTBMLE.

Through observations, life history research, and qualitative data analysis, this study seeks to answer the question: Who and what influences elementary school teachers to ultimately use or not use art in their current classroom practice? This study examines the personal histories of nine elementary school general education teachers in the United States and Japan. Through reflections upon life history, pre and post teacher education this study investigates what influences the use of the arts in teaching practice and what influences the recognition of the arts as a vehicle for learning in a cross cultural context. In order to have a deeper understanding of this study investigated what ultimately contributed to the shaping of trajectory and developing these beliefs which influence self-efficacy in the arts before entering into a teacher education program. It is with this self- efficacy already in place that teacher education programs make a mark on pre-service teachers' beliefs about arts integration, which ultimately leads to a new teacher's decision whether or not to practice using an arts integrative approach to teaching. This is a Cross-Cultural Comparative Ethnography. Using phenomenological based interviews and observations. The data was analyzed through a recursive analytic process which included both a deductive and an inductive approach. The study found four central concepts which reoccurred across the data sets. They are influences, self- efficacy, teacher education, and agency. The findings make explicit the similarities and differences across two cultures of how teacher's education, teacher's practice, and student learning are all influenced by the recognition of the arts within academic content areas.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the potential of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) pedagogy to support English language learners (ELLs) in enhancing their meaning making potential as they engage in persuasive writing practices within academic contexts. The dissertation results from a teacher action research project in which the teacher researcher (the author) constructed qualitative case studies focusing on the teaching practice of a veteran ESL teacher (the researcher) and the persuasive writing practices of three middle school beginning level ELLs. Through data analysis methods drawing on SFL and intertextuality, the study illuminates connections between the SFL based teaching practice and the expanding linguistic repertoire of ELLs as they enact the genre of persuasive argument in the context of producing persuasive music reviews. Research methods are qualitative in nature and designed to attend to both the sociocultural context of teaching and learning as well as a linguistic analysis of written texts. Through a qualitative case study approach focusing on the literacy practices of three emergent bilingual middle school students and the reflective teaching practices of their veteran ESL teacher, the teacher researcher highlights how SFL pedagogy created space for urban middle school ELLs to participate in high interest language learning activities designed to increase their control over the semiotic resources needed to construct persuasive texts. The subsequent SFL and genre analysis of students' texts analyzes changes in the schematic structure and register variables of student texts aims to explore the intertextual connections between these changes and the SFL pedagogical practices described in the study. Data derive from multiple sources including student texts, videotaped interactions among classroom community members, field notes, lesson plans and instructional materials. The study offers important new directions in language teaching and learning as it demonstrates how SFL-based pedagogy can draw on the cultural and linguistic resources of ELLs to create a culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and permeable curriculum (Dyson, 2003) that both challenges the conceptualization of ELLs as students with a "deficit" and repositions them as skillful language users and text analysts.

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the effects that multicultural and diversity training had on preservice teacher perceptions with low-socioeconomic minority and urban students on the secondary (middle and high school) level. Eleven middle- and high- school student teachers of disadvantaged or minority students were purposefully selected as participants. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, direct observations, detailed field notes, and reflective journals kept by participants. Document data such as lesson plans, student work samples and classroom and district curricula were also collected. All data, including field notes and reflective journals, were analyzed according to Strauss and Corbin's (1990) grounded theory method. Responses for each research question were coded and categorized inductively. Results are discussed in light of literature on the effects multicultural and diversity training has on preservice teacher perceptions and dispositions with culturally diverse and minority youth on the secondary level. These findings have implications for informing new directions in teacher education, multicultural education, teacher preparation and teaching effectiveness.

In the early 1980?s teacher induction programs were introduce widely in the US in order to support novice teachers, and to stem the rising trend in teacher attrition. However, 9.5% of all teachers continue to leave teaching within the first year, and up to 50% leave within five years. Mentoring is the basis of most induction programs therefore, in order to understand the impact of induction programs, it is important to understand the role of mentoring within induction. Induction programs tend to be generic in their approach and do not specifically, and intentionally acknowledge the individual and diverse needs and expectations of novice teachers as autonomous, rationale self-directed adult learners. This phenomenological case study research utilized adult learning as the theoretical framework to explore novice teachers? perceptions of mentoring supports as they learned to teach. This research focused specifically on their perceptions of the formal and informal mentoring and interactions that they experienced in their first four months of teaching. The analysis revealed that the supports received by novices could be conceptualized as a mosaic of mentoring interactions that take place in a number of conceptual spaces, two formal (formal induction programs and schools as ecological systems or school ecologies) and one informal (informal networks and interactions within and between two formal conceptual spaces). The analysis also revealed that each conceptual space comprised three levels where mentoring took place namely, the macro (systemic and institutional) level, the meso (departmental and school geographic) level, and the micro (individual or interpersonal) level. The findings indicate that induction is a multi-faceted process that should include all stakeholders, both district and school, in order to provide initial and sustained support to novices. School ecology is an untapped resource in providing support to novice teachers. The strategic use of physical space, the physical presence of people and systematic organizational inclusion of strategies such as creative scheduling, all provide additional organic support for novice teachers. Both formal induction programs and school ecology should be strategically structured to allow informal networking to occur, as these networks emerged as the most effective ‘mentoring’ support experienced by the participants.

This study explores the process of planning, implementing, and following-up teacher professional development programs (TPDPs) in Palestine focusing on the programs that are directed to mathematics teachers. It also describes teachers’, supervisors, principals’, and policy makers’ beliefs about mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning, and the beliefs that TPDPs have about mathematics teaching and learning. The study used qualitative methods, including interviews and document analysis, to collect data. The participants were chosen from two district areas in West Bank and included five policy makers, eight supervisors and training developers, four principals, and six teachers. In addition to interviews, training materials and policy documents related to teacher training and supervision were studied for the purpose of this study. The data obtained from these documents integrated and validated the data which were collected through the interviews. The findings of the study suggest the necessity to improve the methods used in teacher training in a way that activates the role of the trainee teachers and reflects the content of the training in the process of teacher training. In addition, there is a need to provide teachers with better follow-up methods through and after their participation in TPDPs. Most importantly, TPDPs should be based on a clear vision of their objectives that is based on understanding the problems in student learning and current teaching practices as well as the desired behaviors and actions that help to mitigate problems. The findings also indicated that most of the participants hold the instrumental view of mathematics where mathematics is viewed as a body of facts and procedures. Furthermore, their views about mathematics teaching and learning and the curriculum correspond with the instrumental view or with the content-focused approach in teaching mathematics. The researcher concluded that there should be more emphasis on TPDPs that are planned on the district and schools level or what is called job-embedded professional programs. In parallel, trainers’ competences should be upgraded so that they are more able to respond to teachers’ needs in their contexts. Improving the way in which TPDPs is planned and implemented will have a greater influence on teachers’ beliefs and practices.

This study documented the process of creating, executing, and assessing, a cost-effective, school based, researcher conducted staff development program which included one African American seventh grade social studies faculty member, one European American tenth grade faculty member, and one European American Chapter I reading teacher, at Roosevelt Junior Senior High School, Roosevelt, New York, during the 1989-1990 school year. The objective was to obtain more information about increasing school effectiveness in low income school districts. Staff development efforts were aimed at broadening faculty members' preparedness in developing reading instruction strategies used in the content area of social studies, which conform more concisely with urban African American students' range of reading levels in three homogeneously grouped classes. The goals of (a) improving students' academic performance, (b) attending to individual needs, and (c) providing the tools needed to control learning, are addressed. Five collaboratively designed staff development workshops on developmental reading instruction strategies in the social studies content area enabled members of the faculty to: (a) reevaluate perceptions of teaching reading in the social studies classroom, (b) develop the techniques needed to enable students to independently evaluate the many types of printed material, and, (c) professionally incorporate a concern for teaching the "what" of content, and how the student may obtain the content. Informal and formal discussions, realization of self-concepts, interests, attitudes, completion of evaluations, diagnosis and prescription, conferencing, and observations, led the researcher to the determination that members of the faculty: (a) developed a unified strategy for teaching students how to read their social studies texts with fluency and efficiency, (b) collaboratively planned lessons stressing reading skills without loss of social studies content, (c) realized that content was naturally acquired as a result of improved reading skills, (d) regarded the process of reading as a necessary component in the curriculum, a skill that opens the door to higher level thinking, and, (e) viewed reading not as an isolated skill but rather as a means of enhancing and enriching the social studies curriculum. The students in this study: (a) demonstrated improved reading skills, for example, increased levels of comprehension, (b) learned how their textbook was organized and how to make the best use of all its parts, (c) increased their vocabulary, (d) obtained a better idea of their own interests in social studies, and, (e) acquired techniques to improve study skills which included taking notes and studying for and taking tests. Indications of increased school effectiveness imply that staff development is practical in low income school districts where there is evidence of a corroborative Board of Education, administrative team, faculty, and curriculum and instructional designers.