Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

This thesis is a cultural study of how pre-service teachers respond to representations of traumatic histories and how this work emerges as being intimately tied to their own self-identifications as teachers in training. In studying reading practices, I examine identity performances through the interpretation of literary response in relation to the making of the self as a teacher of adolescents. The thesis asks, first, how do teachers read juvenile historical fiction, and, second, why does reading reading like this matter to education? Incorporating mixed methods qualitative research including ethnography, psycho-stylistic analysis and genre analysis, this inquiry includes 12 students becoming teachers. Responses to their readings of two juvenile historical fictions, There Will Be Wolves (Karleen Bradford, 1992) and The Midwife's Apprentice (1995), are gathered through interviews, a focus group discussion, and methods and insights derived from psychoanalytic accounts of identity performances through reading practices. The participants' readings are understood to be of individuals attaching themselves to the identity of teacher and the collective identity of English/Language Arts teaching in Ontario, Canada. This study also inquires into my own identificatory processes as researcher, reader and teacher. Methodologically, I rely on tracing the significance of rhetorical frequencies that repeat through the individual and collective responses. These frequencies signal the affects that specific reading or response moments within the research dynamic are having on the reader and reveal movements of desire through language and experience. Factored into the analysis is a consideration of the specific modes of address of melodramatic form in juvenile historical fiction. What characterizes the literary formation is a fantasy dynamic of rescue, as the participants wish the world well through their teaching of literature. I argue that this impulse to rescue functions in the larger social logic of both aesthetic form and the emancipatory vision of education. This thesis points to how pedagogical dynamics and literary narratives have the capacity to evoke psychological struggle for beginning teachers. Through this study's investigation, I present the significance of creating the time and space in teacher education to engage analytically in this struggle with fiction written for adolescents that English teachers use to teach others to learn.

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.

No description available.