A new plant cultivar, Fast Plants (Brassica rapa), originally developed for research purposes, shows great potential for improving science teaching and learning. The extremely short life cycle and petite size of the material, plus easy classroom maintenance procedures, suggest that Fast Plants may be an important vehicle for changing attitudes toward plants and plant study, and for changing classroom practice. This study has been undertaken to assess the usefulness and effectiveness of Fast Plants to middle and high school science teachers. A group of middle and high school teachers were introduced to Fast Plants at a one-day workshop. 22 of those attending volunteered to use Fast Plants in their classrooms during the subsequent school year. Although teachers were not specifically asked to continue work with Fast Plants after the first year, their use of the innovation was documented through the three years of the study. Teacher response to the material was assessed using questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observation during the three years. The final summative evaluation made at the end of the study indicates that the material was very useful in the classroom and a highly effective teaching tool. Teacher use of Fast Plants increased during the three years, with an expansion both in the numbers of classes in which the innovation was used, and in the ways the material was used. Increases in the time spent on plant study, in student use of live plant material, and in student learning as judged by their teachers were seen. The innovation had a positive effect on both students and teachers.

This dissertation describes the design, implementation and assessment of a staff development project to develop a cooperative whole language approach. The foundation for this staff development project for elementary school was the recognition that language development is crucial to a child's ability to succeed in the school environment. The educational objectives of this project were to motivate and encourage students of low income, African American families to write imaginatively and productively, and to teach writing to those same students to help them develop their own stylistic competence. These objectives necessitated the organization of three components. First, a staff development program focused on a whole language approach so teachers could share cooperative learning strategies for improving selected aspects of writing instruction. Second, a language experience approach in which the language, experience, and feelings of minority students could be used to advance motivation, accuracy, and pride. Third, the creation of a positive school climate to help students overcome difficulties in communicating in standard English by developing a "school way of communicating" without forcing the student to conclude that the way the family converses at home is wrong. Cooperative learning staff development sessions, predicated on a whole language approach, combined five underlying principles: (a) Distributed Leadership; (b) Heterogeneous Grouping; (c) Positive Interdependence; (d) Social Skills Acquisition; and (e) Group Autonomy. These prompted the preparation of writing activities for the African American students in all aspects of the curriculum. Ongoing monitoring of students' progress and completed tasks were compiled in both a group and individual portfolios. Basic to the success of this project was overcoming six beliefs: (a) a single set of subcultural customs shape the behavior of African American members of our society; (b) language programs should involve only instruction in using standard English; (c) all African American children are apathetic and their classes are seldom exciting; (d) discipline is a unique problem in the African American classroom; (e) African American learners cannot become involved in inductive, inquiry centered learning; and, (f) staff development sessions are not required for teaching English to the African American child. The proposed goal of this effective staff development project was not to change, but, to add a new dialect to an existing one by using a child centered, whole language, cooperative learning approach. By mixing the students' own experiences and the presentation of new experiences, a new dimension was introduced. The students were meeting established norms of success and were eager to accept additional challenges. Class improvement was clearly visible in a low income, urban elementary school.

The major focus of this study is to identify the effect of teacher's verbal expression on children's learning during the free-play period. The verbal expression of teachers was identified as a form of the adult's reinforcement of the child's performance during the free-play period. This reinforcement of the primary learnings which are the children's on-going activities, lead to the elaboration of learning into associate and concomitant learnings. Fifty four-year-old children in ten classrooms were selected and observed. The Child Activity Observation Form designed for 40 minute observations and adapted from Day and Weinthaler (1982) was used to collect the data. A videotape of two classrooms was used for training twelve teachers for inter-observer reliability. The researcher and the twelve teachers observed the tapes and recorded observations. The observation results were correlated with each other to identify the percentage of agreement amongst the thirteen observers. The percentage agreement for all variables was calculated for the activities observed. Findings indicate average percentage agreement amongst variables in two activities ranged between 84% and 94%. SPSS/PC+V.3.1--Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (1988) was used to analyze the data. Contingency table analysis was used, which showed the frequency distribution and crosstabulations. The analysis of the results indicate that there was no significant difference between teacher and child on "who initiated activities." The teacher initiated in 61 activities while the child initiated in 53 activities. In looking at the effect of teacher interaction on the child's achievement of elaborated learnings, results revealed significant differences in the roles of the teacher and the frequencies of both associate and concomitant learnings. Results show that teachers were observing in 43 percent of all the activities, directing in 28.9 percent, participating in 17.5 percent and absent in 10.5 percent. There was no observed associate learnings in 61.4 percent of all activities and no observed concomitant learnings in 57.0 percent of all activities.

This study addressed two questions: (a) In what ways do elementary school teachers describe the interaction of their personal lives and teaching careers over time, and (b) what aspects of their job structure do elementary school teachers identify as affecting their personal-life/career interactions. Eighteen experienced elementary school teachers (a physical education specialist, a specialist from another subject area, and a classroom teacher from each of six different schools) participated in two sixty-minute interviews. To aid in reflection, participants completed two graphic assignments (a "rainbow" of life roles and a teaching timeline) prior to the initial interview. In the first session, they were asked to tell the stories of their lives and careers. During the second interview, they were asked to respond to a series of open-ended questions, designed to clarify and extend information from the first interview. Audio-tapes of the interviews were transcribed, the data were unitized, and categories were developed to reflect the content of each unit. Using the categories, themes were identified which displayed aspects of life/career interaction which were shared by all teachers, which differentiated among the three groups of teachers, or which were unique to particular groups. The most salient personal-life/career interaction themes drawn from all teachers included: (a) work spillover, (b) limited financial resources, (c) increased understanding of children through parenting, (d) changes in teaching due to personal growth, (e) valuing time with family, and (f) job security. Themes common to all specialists included: (a) career choice based on attraction to subject matter as well as to teaching, (b) valuing the opportunities to teach all students in the school and to teach each student over the course of several years, (c) frustration with class scheduling, and (d) lack of collegial respect for their educational contributions. Physical educators were also frustrated by physical elements such as weather and facilities, as well by having to cope with the poor teaching of colleagues. Themes unique to classroom teachers included (a) pressure to produce good test scores, (b) frustration with short-lived educational reforms, and (c) the large amounts of time spent grading papers. These data offer new perspectives on elementary school teaching and provide support for specific changes in preservice education, inservice education, and elementary school structure.

Since the 1970's collaborations, partnerships, and networks between schools and universities have been increasing. As Goodlad points out we no longer have to justify the value of school/university partnerships, but it is the descriptions of the processes that are lacking (Goodlad in Sirotnik & Goodlad, 1988). I have studied a partnership among a public elementary school, a university school of education, and two cultural institutions. The focus of the partnership was on the arts as the entry point to broader and deeper approaches to teaching and learning. A review of literature related to school/university partnerships and artists in the schools and the integration of the arts in the curriculum provides a foundation for this study. The case study design using in-depth and informal interviewing and participant observation was developed from a review of the nature of the phenomena to be studied. This inquiry was guided by the question: What factors, circumstances or environments within the partnership process foster the development of all participants as learners? The study examines the planning year and one year of implementation. During the planning year of this study I focused on an overview of the development of the three year art partnership plan and the efforts to lay the foundation for implementation of the plan. A description of the work with artists, university consultant, and the Cultural Education Collaborative's summer institute in the arts serves to show how that foundation was built. During the year of implementation the study focuses on the process of two pilot teachers as they interfaced with the components of the partnership program: the infusion of the arts in the curriculum, modeled by artists in residence, and experiential learning opportunities aided by interns and a consultant from the University School of Education partner. Conclusions drawn from the data indicate that the school community was energized by the involvement of community resources such as artists, consultants, interns et al. when their involvement was relevant to the interests and stated goals of the participants. This school/university (school of education) partnership provided a way for teachers and interns to reflect on their practice at their own pace. When participants come together open to ideas different from their own, and open to experiences new to them, personal and professional growth occurred. The arts were a vehicle for getting in touch with their creative potential. Recommendations for further research are presented.

This study is a descriptive analysis of the perceptions of selected first and second grade teachers on the design and implementation of writing-portfolio assessment. The literature supported the need to examine alternative writing assessments that include both product and process-oriented information about developing writers. Writing-portfolio assessments focus on day-to-day interactions in the classroom and provide on-going diagnostic information about students' writing development and involvement with various instruction processes and procedures from one month to the next and from one year to the next. Two first grade teachers were chosen for an indepth investigation of their portfolio assessments of the early writer. Data were gathered using indepth interviewing, field observations and the analysis of student portfolios. The data collected were analyzed around categories derived from five main areas of investigation: (A) Changes in writing instruction. (B) Instruction and assessment. (C) Reporting procedures. (D) The Changing role of the teacher. (E) Support for teachers. Data gathered in this study indicated that as changes in writing instruction occurred in teachers' classrooms, a need for alternative assessments developed that would focus on a closer analysis of students' writing strengths and needs and would "capture" writing process opportunities and self-assessment activities in the classroom. As student portfolios were analyzed, teachers were able to outline patterns of strengths and needs that led to designing specific goals and implementation plans with individual students and the class as a whole. The specificity of the assessment allowed teachers to include students in self-assessment processes that focused on their development. Reporting portfolio assessment results to parents, future teachers, administrators and students themselves proved to be positive and informative. Teachers implementing writing-portfolio assessments needed time and opportunities to discuss and define good writing, determine the kinds of information to collect, articulate realistic writing goals and expectations, design appropriate implementation plans and writing strategies and organize necessary record-keeping that would document and report on progress in students' writing portfolios. Student writing-portfolio assessments documented students' development as writers, informed instruction and provided a "window" into the classroom. They offered teachers a greater potential in understanding and supporting their students' literacy development.

The NCTM Standards have established new directions for math teaching and learning. The problem of implementation, particularly in urban school systems remains. This study focuses on an urban school system in Western Massachusetts. Of particular interest to the researcher is the lack of success of students in Algebra I. This particular course has traditionally been the pivotal course that determines if a student gets into and remains in the "College Preparatory" sequence. The fact that too many minority and women students are left out of these choices due to lack of mathematics preparation can be traced back to being left out of algebra in high school. What happened to these students? Why were they left out? Why is the failure rate nearly 45 percent in Algebra I in this public school system? Teachers working in the traditional classroom structure of the current school setting are isolated without opportunities to work in cooperation with other teachers. Without a process for sharing ideas and a method to support new teaching strategies, it will not be possible for the vision of the Standards to become a reality. The challenge for a supervisor is to bring the message of the Standards to the secondary mathematics teachers in an urban school system. This study develops and tests a supervision model, based on peer supervision, for the implementation of teaching strategies recommended in the Standards. The findings of this study show that peer supervision can help school systems bring new teaching strategies, like cooperative learning and hands-on activities, into its Algebra I classrooms.

The recent growth of Teach For America (TFA) has enabled it to substantially expand the teacher labour supply in many rural Southern communities, one of its largest and fastest-growing partnership subsets. Though it is generally accepted that these areas face more severe teacher shortages than most other regions in the country, there is little research as to how these staffing challenges arise or how they might be resolved; TFA’s potential to grow the rural Southern teacher supply thus signals a promising opportunity in need of further research. This work offers a case study of teacher labour outcomes in the Mississippi-Arkansas Delta, TFA’s oldest and largest rural Southern partnership site. In this region, local schools have experienced a 600 per-cent increase in corps member presence since 2008; consequently, TFA provided anywhere from a quarter to a half of the area’s new teacher labour supply each year from 2008 to 2010. A mixed-methods analysis illuminates both the causes of Delta teacher shortages and TFA’s potential to address these vacancies. Within the Delta, local schools face chronic teacher shortages because the communities they serve are overwhelmingly poor, geographically isolated, and racially segregated. TFA appears to have targeted the Delta communities where teacher labour policies have systematically fallen short, as it partners with districts bearing the greatest share of the region’s aggregate teacher vacancies. Additional statistical testing reveals that amongst these hard-to-staff districts, TFA has further focussed its resources into the schools that serve more rural, less educated, and/or predominantly African American populations. In this way, TFA funnels its corps members into the very districts where state reform efforts have struggled most, thus serving as a powerful resource for realigning ‘sticky’ outcomes in the most hard-to-staff Delta school districts. These findings notwithstanding, closer examination reveals significant drawbacks and limitations to current TFA outcomes in the rural Southern Delta. TFA does not saturate hard-to-staff school districts enough to produce statistically significant changes in local teacher vacancy rates. Instead, the programme appears to have established an unofficial threshold for the number of teachers placed per district; once this ceiling has been reached, additional corps members are funnelled into a new area regardless of the original district’s remaining need. Additionally, there is no long-term ‘exit strategy’ to help Delta districts employing TFA corps members to eventually cultivate their own high-quality teacher labour supply, thus leaving them perpetually dependent on TFA to staff their classrooms. Preliminary evidence suggests that state governments could address these shortcomings through 1) increased financial support for TFA to fully saturate vacancies in current partnership districts, as well as 2) the simultaneous development of grow-your-own teacher certification programmes in rural Delta districts. The evidence suggests that these two strategies would improve TFA as a targeted teacher recruitment strategy for hard-to-staff communities both in the Delta and across the programme’s nine other rural Southern partnership sites.

<p> Working in school settings can present school social workers, teachers, and counselors with multiple risk factors that increase their likelihood of experiencing burnout. Providing direct services to students on a regular basis can have a negative impact on their overall sense of well-being along with other factors associated with being employed as a social service provider. Promoting Resilient School Personnel project (PRSP) consists of a series of on-site mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) workshops aimed at providing school social workers, teachers, and counselors at a public school in Los Angeles County with the resources to understand and help prevent burnout, the opportunity to learn and practice different mindfulness-based techniques, and strategies to establish long term self-care habits that promote a high sense of well-being. A potential funder was identified, although actual funding and submission of this grant proposal were not requirements for the successful completion of this project.</p>

<p> Advanced Placement Statistics Teaching Knowledge Assessment Increasing student enrollment in high-school level Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics courses necessitates the need for teachers who are knowledgeable in the subject-area. However, no benchmark has been established that describes the amount or types of teaching knowledge that is required, or even desirable, of AP Statistics teachers. More specifically, there does not exist a criterion of reference to determine if an AP Statistics teacher does or does not possess the content-specific knowledge necessary to teach the subject. Therefore, a teacher may possess sufficient knowledge to teach mathematics but be deficient in the subject-specific knowledge necessary to teach AP Statistics. </p><p> This study had two main research goals. The first was to design an Advanced Placement Statistics Teaching Knowledge (APSTK) online assessment to investigate the content and pedagogical knowledge of secondary-level, in-service AP Statistics teachers. The second goal was to explore the relationships among individual teacher assessment scores and teacher characteristic variables including educational background, years of experience teaching AP Statistics, and a self-reported percentage of student success on the AP Statistics exam. </p><p> There were three primary methodological phases included in this study. Phase I consisted of item development and item-level analysis based on responses from a national sample of current AP Statistics teachers. Phase II consisted of completing a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to evaluate the results of a measurement model and structural model using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Phase III consisted of a multiple regression analysis to determine which teacher characteristic indicator variables predicted APSTK latent variable score (LVS). </p><p> Phase I resulted in a modified assessment with nine AP Statistics Content Knowledge (APSCK) and five AP Statistics Pedagogical Content Knowledge (APSPCK) multiple-choice items. Phase II produced a measurement model with acceptable fit, and proved that items designed to measure APSCK and APSPCK fit well within the model. In addition, a structural model produced good fit, and showed evidence that APSCK was a more reliable construct than APSPCK. However, APSPCK was found to be a stronger predictor of overall APSTK. Phase III concluded that a linear combination of teacher characteristic variables was a significant predictor of APSTK LVS. Specifically, the self-reported "Student Success on the AP Statistics Exam" variable was the only statistically significant variable in predicting APSTK LVS.</p>