In 2012 the Cleveland Metropolitan School District undertook a major reform effort known as the Cleveland Plan. The foundation of the Cleveland Plan is the transition from a traditional district structure to a portfolio management model. With this major change also came the new Teacher Development and Evaluation System (TDES). This system was designed as a tool for transformative staff development as well as evaluation, but as the early years of TDES implementation focused on understanding and using the new evaluation rubric, the developmental focus took a back seat. Now in the third year of TDES districtwide implementation, district leadership has established staff development as a priority. The portfolio model has unique implications for instruction, central office organization, and instructional leadership, all of which must be considered to create a comprehensive staff development plan. In this capstone I describe my residency in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and my work with a cross-departmental design team to articulate a professional development strategy for the district. I explain the benefits and challenges of engaging teachers and central office staff in strategy development and execution. I conclude with recommendations to keep Cleveland schools on the path toward improved staff development and with lessons for other portfolio districts seeking to improve teaching and learning.

Argumentation skills are essential to individuals’ career prospects in future economies (National Research Council, 2008) and to the success of our democracy. Unfortunately, these skills are often challenging to teach, and there is a dearth of studies addressing “the teacher’s use of specific instructional methods” (Newell, et al. 2011) to promote argumentation skills over time. In my dissertation, I examine how urban public middle school teachers promote text-based argumentation skills in classroom discussion. I draw on data from the Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate (CCDD) research project. Specifically, I look at transcripts from enactments of lessons in the Social Studies Generation curriculum, one of the four Word Generation curricula used as an intervention in the larger CCDD study. In the first study, I compare how two co-teachers help small groups of students prepare to argue in a classroom debate. I find that both teachers help students generate claim-evidence connections and counterarguments with “supportive prompting,” but they differ in how they engage with student-generated arguments. In the second study, I examine three different teachers facilitating a classroom debate on the same topic. I identify episodes of talk containing dialogic argumentation during debates and look across classrooms for patterns of teacher actions during these episodes. I find that teachers offer a series of four moves that help students sustain dialogic argumentation. In the third and final study, I investigate what students do in classroom debates in the context of an argumentation-supporting curriculum – what moves they make, what supports they use, and what other strategies they deploy. I find that students use evidence and explain how evidence supports their claims more than what might be expected given previous studies on argumentative classroom discussions. I discuss implications for practice and research in each study.

Pygmalion est-il une realite dans les ecoles, comme le suggerait la recherche de Rosenthal et Jacobson, parue en 1968, "Pygmalion in the classroom. Teacher expectations and pupil's intellectual development"? Une synthese de la litterature qui a porte sur les attentes des enseignants et les effets de ces attentes sur le developpement des eleves a ete entreprise dans le but de repondre a cette question. Les resultats de deux cent trente-deux (232) recherches nord-americaines qui ont etudie les attentes des enseignants aux niveaux elementaire et secondaire ont ete analyses. Les recherches ont ete regroupees antour de trois grands aspects qui ont ete consideres par les chercheurs, a savoir la formation des atentes des enseignants, la communication de ces attentes dans la relation educative et les effets de ces attentes sur le developpement des eleves. Comme methode d'analyse des resultats des recherches, nous avons utilise une approche criteriee, fondee sur le pourcentage de recherches dont les resultats convergent. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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A la fin des annees cinquante et au debut des annees soixante, la province de Quebec etait confrontee a l'imperieux probleme d'adapter son systeme scolaire aux nouveaux besoins de son industrie et de son commerce. Une commission Royale d'enquete sur l'etat de l'enseignement dans la province du Quebec ou Commission Parent etait chargee d'etudier l'etendue du phenomene et de proposer des solutions. Au terme de son mandat la Commission Parent (1961-1966) recommandait aux responsables politiques de la province de Quebec de faire de l'enseignement polyvalent la cle de voute du renouveau scolaire. La recommandation centrale de la Commission Parent s'accompagnait de nombreuses propositions d'accompagnement et de soutien. Les commissaires recommandaient, tout d'abord, de faire de l'objet technique, du projet et de l'option l'unite d'apprentissage autour desquels s'articuleraient une mosaique de notions, de concepts et de principes; scientifiques, techniques, artistiques et linguistiques de difficultes varies. Ensuite, les commissaires recommandaient de faire du groupe-option ou groupe-matiere l'unite pedagogique stable dans laquelle se cotoieraient des apprenants de plusieurs branches, profils, filieres et voies. Enfin les commissaires recommandaient d'amener les meilleurs apprenants dans les ateliers et les laboratoires de l'ecole secondaire polyvalente afin qu'ils y acquierent une solide formation humaniste, technique et democratique. Une formation de producteur, de cooperateur, de consommateur, de citoyen et de gentilhomme chretien. La mise en oeuvre de ces recommandations exigeaient comme prealables a toutes initiatives: (a) un decloisonnement complet, des sacteurs, des programmes, des niveaux et des matieres existantes; (b) une selection des objets techniques qui devaient former l'infrastructure du programme d'etudes institutionnel polyvalent; (c) une selection des valeurs a vehiculer dans l'enseignement. La mise en ouvre de cette reforme du systeme scolaire quebecois exigeait aussi: de l'argent, un corps professoral forme aux methodes actives, au tutorat et a l'orientation des apprenants; un corps administratif familiarise avec la gestion des ecoles polyvalentes et cooperatives; des ecoles et des locaux adaptes a l'enseignement polyvalent. Cette recherche qui est une analyse evaluative sommative vise a mettre en lumiere: (a) l'objectif des reformateurs Quebecois, (offrir a tous, les elements d'une culture humaniste et technique); (b) le but atteint par la reforme, (un enseignement humaniste offert au plus grand nombre); (c) les defis de l'avenir, (offrir a chacun les elements d'une culture humaniste et technique adaptee a ses gouts, a ses talents et a son rythme personnel d'apprentissage). Cette evaluation sommative fondera son opinion critique sur l'analyse systhematique des ecrits et des faits saillants qui ont marque la naissance, l'implantation et la mise en oeuvre des caracteristiques de l'enseignement polyvalent de niveau secondaire au Quebec. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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No description available.

The focus of this study is to explore the implementation of a proposed self-assessment framework in grades 6, 7 and 8. Educational assessment literature proposes a number of advantages regarding the use of self-assessment. Assessment experts recommend that it provides an excellent way of familiarizing the students with the proposed learning standards as both students and teacher must have similar understandings of the assessment criteria. Others suggest that students are also able to participate more responsibly and enthusiastically in the learning process if they have a deeper understanding of the learning goals and related standards for performance. Although self-assessment is recommended with enthusiasm in the professional teaching literature, there is little scientific research that supports its use as an assessment process in the elementary grades. The present study is exploratory in nature and examines the self-assessment process by investigating the implementation of a researcher-proposed framework for student self-assessment. Six teachers participated in this study and worked with their students to develop rubrics that were used for student self-assessment in paragraph writing. The framework included implementational steps as well as checks to ensure the validity and reliability of the process. The self-assessment process undergone by these six classes is documented and the assessment results are analyzed to determine levels of validity and reliability. In addition, the researcher has identified important factors which can impact the validity and reliability of the results. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

While government agencies and numerous education specialists have, for most of this century, tried to promote the use of integrated curricula, the application of this innovation has remained scattered and unfocused. Their lack of agreement concerning its purpose and practicality appears to be a central cause of this problem. With an unclear perception of what this innovation is, many educators find it difficult to implement and resistant to effective and widely-accepted definition and evaluation. The Ontario public school system reflects this problem. The Ministry of Education has directly promoted various forms of curriculum integration in successive stages since 1937. However, each of these initiatives has been followed by a period of retrenchment to disciplinary curricula. A trend emerges from this repeated cycle of advocation, resistance, and then reversal. To many who have implemented this innovation, curriculum integration comes to appear as a worthy endeavour in theory, but inapplicable and unworkable in practice. Nevertheless, its underlying premise, capable of being transferred into a multitude of potential benefits, remains attractive enough that the initiative is repeatedly resurrected. The objective of this thesis is to develop a more precise representation of the dynamics that affect the process of defining and implementing curriculum integration within the framework of the Ontario school system. This will be represented by an examination of both the perspectives of the Ministry, and of school administrators and teachers. This research will be undertaken through a two-phase study, coordinated through a series of innovation profiles (based on the work of Leithwood & Montgomery, 1987; and Scheirer, 1994), and will focus on the "Middle School Years" (grades 7 & 8).

The effects of the international knowledge system, the largely political internal mechanisms influencing textbook policy, and the justification of indigenously published textbooks impact on the amount of indigenous content found in textbooks. These issues do not stand alone, isolated from other conflicts and compromises over power and control. The pedagogical decision of imported or indigenous textbooks is framed by the social, historical and political climate. This study examined the differences in indigenous content between imported and indigenously published 'BRC textbooks' used in Belize. BRC language textbooks presented more Belizean culture than Nelson's New West Indian readers. BRC mathematics textbooks presented more practice exercises and fewer new concepts per lesson than CPM textbooks. The BRC textbooks are both a statement of a particular ideological perspective in a political debate over legitimate knowledge, as well as the material expression of a different educational approach and content from that of the MOE. Notably, the BRC struggle is symbolic of the debate over education as a system of reproduction or contestation of legitimate school knowledge.