Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Language Education, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 26, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2057. Adviser: Jerome C. Harste.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, School of Education, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 27, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2123. Adviser: Barbara A. Bichelmeyer.

Physical education (PE) teachers are expected to learn throughout their careers in order to effectively educate their students. However, researchers have stated that the methods used to ensure continuous learning amongst PE teachers are inadequate because they do not meet the needs of experienced teachers (Fullen & Stiegelbauer, 1991; Johns, 2003). Within such a context, the present study was motivated by the need to better understand the adaptation process for experienced PE teachers. Thus, the purpose of this study was to understand how experienced PE teachers perceived the process of adapting to a new curriculum. Using an interpretative approach, this study examined the facilitators and inhibitors that affected the adaptation process for PE teachers during the major 1999 Ontario curriculum change. Bechtel and O'Sullivan's (2007) study and Fullen, Bennett and Rolheiser-Bennett's (1990) conceptual framework were used to guide the interpretation of the facilitators and inhibitors experienced by the participants. Data were collected from ten experienced PE teachers from high schools in Ottawa, Ontario. Results spawned the categorization of the perceived facilitators and inhibitors into the Pyramid Model, comprised of four levels: the Personal Level, School Level, School Board Level, and the Upper Level. The specific effect of experience on the adaptation process appeared to mainly affect the confidence of the participants; and this increase in confidence was found to facilitate the adaptation process. Results from the study suggest a need for a bottom-up approach to curriculum design, whereby aspects from the Personal Level are taken into account during the planning and implementation phases of curricula. Furthermore, the results suggest that schools, school boards, and ministries should offer direction and resources, and should provide opportunities for support and collaboration to facilitate the adaptation process of experienced PE teachers to a new curriculum.

L'école a pour but la réussite de tous les élèves. Depuis déjà plusieurs années, le ministère de l'Éducation de l'Ontario prône l'inclusion en classe régulière de tous les élèves y compris ceux ayant des besoins particuliers. Parmi ceux-ci, on retrouve les élèves ayant un trouble de déficit d'attention avec hyperactivité (TDAH) dont l'inattention, l'hyperactivité et l'impulsivité les empêchent de fonctionner de façon globale comme leurs pairs. Ces caractéristiques entraînent souvent des conséquences aux plans personnel, social et scolaire. Au plan scolaire, plusieurs d'entre eux rencontrent des difficultés ou fonctionnent à un niveau inférieur à leurs capacités intellectuelles et posent tout un défi pour le personnel enseignant qui est souvent peu outillé pour répondre à leurs besoins particuliers en lecture. Ne pouvant étudier l'ensemble des répercussions de ces difficultés sur la réussite de ces élèves, la présente recherche se limitera aux stratégies d'enseignement de la compréhension de textes utilisées par le personnel enseignant. Ce choix repose sur le fait que l'apprentissage de la lecture a des répercussions sur l'ensemble des apprentissages des élèves. La recension des écrits a permis d'identifier des recherches portant sur les stratégies d'enseignement de la compréhension de textes pour les élèves en général mais peu d'entre elles se sont intéressées aux stratégies spécifiques pour les élèves ayant un trouble de déficit d'attention avec hyperactivité. En général, les auteurs suggèrent que le choix de stratégies d'enseignement aurait un effet bénéfique sur la réussite des élèves. Afin de savoir si le personnel enseignant les utilise, la présente recherche tentera de répondre à la question suivante: quelles sont les stratégies d'enseignement de la compréhension de textes utilisées par le personnel enseignant de l'élémentaire auprès des élèves présentant un trouble de déficit d'attention avec hyperactivité de type mixte? Cette recherche a pour but d'identifier les stratégies d'enseignement de la compréhension de textes utilisées par les enseignants auprès des élèves ayant un TDAH, les raisons pour lesquelles elles sont utilisées et le contexte dans lequel elles s'insèrent. La méthodologie est de type qualitatif et consiste en des entrevues menées auprès d'une dizaine d'enseignants de la région d'Ottawa. Dans le présent document le genre non marque, c'est-à-dire le masculin, quand il est employé pour désigner des personnes, renvoie aussi bien à des femmes qu'à des hommes.

This capstone examines how a newly formed senior-level team worked together to complete a complex task, while driving towards a larger goal of becoming a learning organization. For the 2014-2015 academic year, central office leaders in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) worked to develop a new approach to the execution of their strategic plan, “Impact Learning. Impact Lives.” In a continued attempt to decrease SFUSD’s persistent achievement gap and to increase academic performance of all students, district leaders renewed their commitment to deeper levels of implementation for the strategic plan. During a series of senior-level team meetings in the spring of 2014, central office leaders realized that a number of district departments were inadvertently working at cross-purposes or duplicating efforts. Likely reinforced, in part, by previous and current SFUSD organizational systems and structures, district departments had become accustomed to working in silos, which, in turn, required limited system-level interdependence. Given the SFUSD senior leadership’s desire to shift their organizational culture to one of learning together, this capstone explores the district’s transition from silo driven work to cross-departmental teaming. The research section of this capstone outlines the principles of effective strategy execution and teaming. The analysis section describes the impact of the district’s organizational culture on the application of these principles. The implications section identifies important components - communication plans, cycles of inquiry, teacher and leader voice that are needed to ensure effective strategy execution in large, urban school systems. This capstone concludes with an acknowledgement of the challenges associated with organizational change and calls for continuous reexamination of strategy execution guided by research and reflection.

Developments in the last century – the global economy, unprecedented migration patterns, and the digital revolution – have forced a challenging shift in the way we think about what matters most to learn. As traditional systems of learning are substantially challenged and reshaped, consensus is building around the importance of educating for global competence. While much investment has gone into creating frameworks, curricular materials and activities for educating young people for global competence, there are few, if any, assessment tools for assessing students’ global competence that are viable for everyday classroom use. My qualitative study addressed this gap by testing the extent to which thinking routines – micro-interventions that focus attention on specific thinking moves that build global competence – might function as a viable instrument for supporting young people in developing more expert patterns of thinking when engaging with complex issues like climate change. Using a structured protocol with a group of 6 experts and 6 novices, I explored their patterns of thinking as they engaged with a scenario on climate change using two thinking routines. My study revealed that the experts differed from the novices in three principal ways: (1) the experts characteristically viewed climatic events and phenomena through geological time scales, which has important implications for supporting students to understand the shifting baselines for measuring change that tend to be at the heart of controversial and often bitterly contentious issues; (2) the experts reasoned from their identity and worldview as scientists with a moral responsibility to not only provide scientifically accurate information to the public, but also to do so in a responsible way; and (3) they recognized the provisional nature of knowledge, and engaged in cognitively effortful processing of information that relied less on heuristics and more on culturally specific knowledge. My study also found the thinking routines to be effective as a teaching tool: they extended the novices’ substantive attention to the issues, and scaffolded them towards more critical reasoning and complexity in their thinking. The thinking routines also worked well as assessment tools, revealing trends in the novices’ thinking that a general prompt did not.

Skills associated with collaborative problem solving (CPS), especially in STEM-related disciplines, are increasingly regarded as essential for success in work and life. In the last decade, simulation-based games have emerged as rich environments for the situated learning of such skills, and are instrumental in the study of CPS because they provide rich data for detailed analysis of discourse and social interaction. One type of social interaction, Academically Productive Talk (APT), has been found to support collaborative activity, encourage knowledge integration, and promote academic gains for individuals. However, little is known about the relationship between APT and how groups develop complex STEM thinking. Additionally, despite evidence that students’ attitudes affect social interaction during collaborative activity, little is known about how collaborative social interaction may affect students’ attitudes. The primary goals of this study were to examine CPS discourse in order to: 1) investigate the relationship between the qualities and characteristics of how groups talk and what groups talk about; and 2) understand whether how groups talk effects a change in students’ attitudes. To meet these aims, this study paired conversation analysis with an innovative analytical methodology, Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA), to study groups’ endogenous use of APT and its relationship with substantive qualities of group discourse in the virtual simulation of professional practice in engineering, Nephrotex. This study presents empirical evidence that, (1) specific APT-style contributions were effective for introducing critical, domain-specific evidence into student discourse, and (2) more use of APT in group discourse resulted in better knowledge integration of human-centered design constraints (i.e., their client’s needs; their consultants’ interests) and data analysis. These findings varied in terms of how, when, and what type of, integration occurred. No evidence was found to suggest that students’ participation in groups that engage in more APT affects a positive change in their attitudes. A better understanding of the effects of APT in a simulation-based game environment can be used to inform the ongoing research and development of technologies capable of shaping and observing discourse as it occurs in virtual environments for learning, and that support students’ development of CPS skills.

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