The focus of this study is the phenomenon of beginning teacher competence. In Queensland, the context for the research presented here, the competence of beginning teachers is appraised by their supervisor (usually the principal) at the end of their first year of full-time employment. This appraisal is conducted on behalf of the Queensland Board of Teacher Registration and a positive outcome enables beginning teachers to achieve full teacher registration. Although there exists research suggesting that principals bring to the appraisal process their conceptions of competence, there is a dearth of knowledge about beginning teachers' conceptions of their own teaching competence. The research presented here adds to the debate about competence by including the voice of the beginning teacher. This focus, located within the context of local issues, is used to explore important themes that are relevant to other systems of beginning teacher appraisal. The selection of phenomenography as the research approach adopted for this study is based on its appropriateness to the investigation of a phenomenon such as competence. Phenomenography aims to describe, analyse and understand the ways in which people experience aspects of the world around them. The point of departure that sets apart this approach from many others, is the principle that phenomenography seeks to investigate neither the phenomenon, nor the people who experience the phenomenon, but the relation between the two. The results of a phenomenographic study are presented as a description of all of the possible conceptions that a specific group can have about a particular phenomenon. For the research presented here, eighteen beginning teachers were interviewed individually in order to identify and describe the variation in their conceptions of competence. Research participants representing State, Catholic and Independent school systems were drawn from preschools, special, primary and secondary schools of one provincial city, in one regional area of South East Queensland. Two major outcomes emerged from the research presented here. Firstly, beginning teachers were identified as experiencing competence in a number of ways. Although these conceptions were varied, their number was quite limited. Six distinct conceptions of beginning teacher competence were identified, with a further finding that individual beginning teachers were not limited to one conception, but conceived of competence in multiple ways. Because the relational nature of competence demands that it be investigated within the context in which it is experienced, this study also identified five different approaches to competence appraisal, as understood by the beginning teachers who had undergone the appraisal process. Comparisons of both conceptions of competence and approaches to appraisal were then compared to existing research in this area. This thesis presents an alternative view of competence and appraisal that may be used to further develop the process of appraisal and indeed, the professional development of beginning teachers.

<p>När elever börjar i årskurs 1 på gymnasiet kan det förekomma att deras förkunskaper i matematik undersöks med någon form av diagnostiskt test. Syftet med min undersökning är att få veta i vilken utsträckning det förekommer diagnostiskt test, och om dessa test prövar kunskaper baserade på kursmålen i grundskolans årskurs 9.</p><p>I samband med detta vill jag också försöka få svar på om tillvägagångssättet att inhämta information skiljer sig mellan lärare beroende på ålder, yrkeserfarenhet eller andra faktorer.</p><p>För att få svar på mina frågor har jag valt att använda mig av kvantitativ metod i form av enkät, och en kvalitativ dokumentanalys på ett urval av diagnostiska test. Enkäten skickades ut till samtliga matematiklärare på kommunala gymnasieskolor i tre kommuner, totalt 76 stycken.</p><p>Svaren visar att en majoritet av lärarna anser att det är viktigt att inhämta information om sina kommande elever och att detta vanligtvis sker vanligast med hjälp av skriftliga diagnostiska test. De diagnostiska tester som lärarna har utformat provar ett begränsat antal områden och delar av kunskapsmålen får årskurs 9. Min undersökning pekar inte på att något annat än att just detta prövas.</p> / <p>In many cases during the first year of upper secondary school the mathematical knowledge and skills of the students are investigated by using some form of diagnostic test. The purpose of this study is to find out to what extent the knowledge of the students is being tested diagnostically, if these tests are based on the aims of grade 9 of compulsory school and how the teachers gather that information.</p><p>Along with this I am also trying to answer the question whether the ways of gathering information differ depending on the age of the teachers, their experience or other factors.</p><p>To answer these questions I have chosen a quantitative method using a questionnaire and also a qualitative method to analyse a sample of tests. The questionnaire was sent to all teachers in mathematics at municipal sixth-form schools in three municipalities, in total 76 teachers.</p><p>The answers show that a majority of the teachers think it is important to gather information about their students to be and that most commonly, the information is gathered using written diagnostically tests. The diagnostically tests analyzed in this essay tests certain parts and areas of the goals of year 9. This study does not indicate that anything but these goals are tested.</p>

När elever börjar i årskurs 1 på gymnasiet kan det förekomma att deras förkunskaper i matematik undersöks med någon form av diagnostiskt test. Syftet med min undersökning är att få veta i vilken utsträckning det förekommer diagnostiskt test, och om dessa test prövar kunskaper baserade på kursmålen i grundskolans årskurs 9. I samband med detta vill jag också försöka få svar på om tillvägagångssättet att inhämta information skiljer sig mellan lärare beroende på ålder, yrkeserfarenhet eller andra faktorer. För att få svar på mina frågor har jag valt att använda mig av kvantitativ metod i form av enkät, och en kvalitativ dokumentanalys på ett urval av diagnostiska test. Enkäten skickades ut till samtliga matematiklärare på kommunala gymnasieskolor i tre kommuner, totalt 76 stycken. Svaren visar att en majoritet av lärarna anser att det är viktigt att inhämta information om sina kommande elever och att detta vanligtvis sker vanligast med hjälp av skriftliga diagnostiska test. De diagnostiska tester som lärarna har utformat provar ett begränsat antal områden och delar av kunskapsmålen får årskurs 9. Min undersökning pekar inte på att något annat än att just detta prövas. / In many cases during the first year of upper secondary school the mathematical knowledge and skills of the students are investigated by using some form of diagnostic test. The purpose of this study is to find out to what extent the knowledge of the students is being tested diagnostically, if these tests are based on the aims of grade 9 of compulsory school and how the teachers gather that information. Along with this I am also trying to answer the question whether the ways of gathering information differ depending on the age of the teachers, their experience or other factors. To answer these questions I have chosen a quantitative method using a questionnaire and also a qualitative method to analyse a sample of tests. The questionnaire was sent to all teachers in mathematics at municipal sixth-form schools in three municipalities, in total 76 teachers. The answers show that a majority of the teachers think it is important to gather information about their students to be and that most commonly, the information is gathered using written diagnostically tests. The diagnostically tests analyzed in this essay tests certain parts and areas of the goals of year 9. This study does not indicate that anything but these goals are tested.

<p>During Apartheid, South African education policies were largely based on a system of&nbsp / racial segregation, resulting in unequal educational opportunities between black and white students.&nbsp / Current education policies centred on Access and Equity have been ratified to address the education issues of the past. However, there still remains a concern about the poor performance and&nbsp / consequently, the high drop out rate, particularly amongst black South African university students. The findings of various studies have shown that the factors that contribute to poor academic performance range from inadequate pre-university schooling and financial issues to poor language proficiency, inadequate social support and insufficient social integration. The present study employed a qualitative approach to explore first-year students&rsquo / perceptions of the influence of social integration on academic performance. Tinto&rsquo / s Student Integration Model provided the conceptual basis for the conduction of the study. Three focus groups were used to collect the data which were analysed according to thematic analysis procedures. The main finding of the study&nbsp / was that academic and social experiences were intrinsically linked in the first year of study. Moreover, the findings indicate that friends, belonging to nonacademic organisations and lecturer-student interaction (as three indicators of social integration) influenced first-year students&rsquo / academic performance. South African contextual factors such as socio-economic status and language&nbsp / were found to be a potential hindrance to good academic performance. The implications of these findings are discussed.</p>

ABSTRACT FINDING THEIR WAY: A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF FIVE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN EDUCATORS’ EARLY EXPERIENCES TO DEVELOP INTO CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEGAGOGUES by Rachel Beatrice Dunbar Teacher education programs have been charged with the responsibility to equip all teachers to work successfully in increasingly diverse elementary classrooms around the nation (NCES, 1996). However, the composition of the nation’s teaching force has not kept pace with these changes. Additionally, there is concern that many Pre-service teachers are ill prepared to work with culturally diverse students, partly because teacher education programs (TEPs) often adopt a monocultural, one-size-fits-all approach to preparation, ignoring race, class, and gender considerations (King & Castnell, 2001). African American women who seek preparation are greatly impacted by this singular approach to teacher education, which influences the way in which they experience their training. Consequently, they are often underserved in TEPs (Cozart & Price, 2005). It has been argued that TEPs will have to broaden their approaches to preparation by using a culturally relevant approach to teaching (Gay & Kirkland, 2003). Given the necessity for teachers to be equipped to meet the needs of culturally diverse learners in the classroom, it is imperative that TEPs are designed to cultivate culturally appropriate practices within Pre-service teachers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the nature of the diversity preparation of five African American women and their teaching experiences following the completion of their teacher education training. The critical ethnographic case studies that developed were theoretically framed in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 1990), and Womanism (Phillips, 2006). Data were collected from classroom observations, individual, and group interviews. Using a system of open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), data analysis resulted in the emergence of three overarching themes: a) the formal diversity preparation offered by the university, b) the women’s individual perspectives of cultural relevance, and c) the ways in which the women incorporated their perspectives into their classroom practices. The experiences the young women encountered significantly influenced their understandings of culture and its impact on learning for diverse student populations. The results of this study suggest the need for teacher educators to reconsider how TEPs are structured to better prepare minority Pre-service teachers in the future to teach culturally diverse students.

As fully online course offerings continue to grow at colleges and universities around the country, we are faced with the challenge of preserving what we value in first-year writing while making the affordances of online environments work for our students. This dissertation explores how the online writing instructor, guided by feminist pedagogy and civic rhetoric, can begin to shift the center of power within the course, allowing students to become co-teachers and promoting the social construction of knowledge central to first-year writing. Facilitated by computer-mediated communication technologies, this approach relies on online activities that invite ongoing contributions from students, promote interactivity within the course, and facilitate a collaborative learning environment that can foster student success in online distance learning. Having studied the effects of these feminist moves on two sections of online first-year research and writing courses, I examine in this text their impact on the development of community, students’ impressions of their place within the community, and the decentering of the virtual learning space. Specifically, I explore how students can write to shape and to change our online community and how students tie their work within the course to their development as writers and critical thinkers. Ultimately, in combining the goals of feminist pedagogy, first-year writing, and civic rhetoric in our design and delivery of online writing courses, we can begin to fulfill our vision for significant learning experiences for our students that will be as good as or better than their experiences in the traditional classroom.

The aim of this study was to scrutinize perceptions, expectations and concerns of pre-service early childhood education (ECE) teachers before they start their careers and their challenges in their first year as they became beginning teachers. This study also focused on documenting public school contexts where beginning teachers have been either supported and given the opportunity to develop as successful teachers or discouraged and left alone with the challenges in their first year of teaching. In order to investigate this phenomenon, 16 pre-service early childhood education teachers studying at the same teacher education program were interviewed about their perceptions, expectations and concerns on their future profession immediately before their graduation. Participating teachers started to teach in public schools at different cities after their graduation. They were interviewed at the end of the first and the second semester they taught about their experiences and difficulties, and positive aspects of working in public schools. Moustakas&rsquo / s phenomenological analysis was utilized to analyze data from interviews in which beginning teachers reflected on their experiences in teacher education program and of being new teachers in public school context in Turkey. Findings have revealed that pre-service teachers were aware of many difficulties in public schools and ready to contend with those difficulties, yet some of the challenges they faced were beyond their initial anticipation. All those challenges were originated from teacher education program, Ministry of National Education&rsquo / s system itself, and local condition where beginning teachers were appointed. Suggestions for teacher education programs, Ministry of National Education, and administrators were proposed.

The assertion that knowledge of architecture is not an objective canon, but rather the knowledge of its practice, requires an inquiry into its personal dimension, which cannot be articulated completely. The investigations on the inarticulate (tacit) portion of knowledge in Polanyi&#039 / s works enable an inquiry into the act of comprehension with its cognitive value. This inquiry regards architectural knowledge as personal and acquired through experiences of comprehending meanings in personal problem solving processes like designing. The reorganization of knowledge through articulation is explained to be possible by comprehending the meaning transmitetd through the articulate. Continuity is viewed through the idea that, the comprehended meaning irrevocably enlarges personal knowledge and contributes to the comprehended meaning in the upcoming experiences of the individual. This approach to continuity is the account for regarding architectural education as a self conducted act that lasts as long as the individual continues comprehending. The first year architecture education is regarded as a time limited external support for preparing the students for this continuous self-education. The discussion of the thesis is structured around the depicted polar tension of the first year design studio / between the conformist tendency of the students and the instructors&#039 / attitude to enable students&#039 / creative experience. The first year of institutional education on architecture is significant for the opportunities it provides for the students&#039 / transition form confomism to creativity. The aim is to illustrate how it functions for transition to reintroduce the students&#039 / personal dimension into their articulations in the first year design studio practice. This attitude is displayed by exemplifying the setting designs and practices for students&#039 / reorganization of knowledge through the creative act of articulation. The thesis adopts in its discussions that the design exercise is a task handled not only for design learning but also for learning how to learn from the design act, which enables the development of creative skills.

This dissertation presents the findings of an on-line survey completed by 222 FYC (First Year Composition) instructors at universities and community colleges across the United States along with supplemental information derived from multiple open-ended interviews with seven FYC instructors in Arizona. Both survey and interview questions were designed to accomplish three primary goals: to determine which conventions of academic English FYC instructors identify as most important; to understand the common problems encountered by instructors in teaching those conventions, and; to solicit instructors' perceptions about ways in which learning outcomes might be improved. Results indicate general consensus among FYC instructors on which skills are both the most critical to academic English proficiency and the most difficult for their students to learn. At the same time, the survey and interview responses reflect widespread dissatisfaction with the ways in which academic English sequences are currently structured, apparently related to the instructors' common perception that the sequences are only "somewhat" successful in terms of preparing students for successful academic writing. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of FYC instructors suggest changes for increasing the effectiveness of their programs; however, there is surprisingly little agreement among them on what those changes should be. The concluding section of this study presents pragmatic suggestions - congruent with a number of the instructors' observations - for reconfiguring FYC sequences. Additionally, it is argued that, aside from the targeted skills addressed by the instructors, the survey and interview responses indicate that academic English has been implicitly invested with culture-specific values which should be made explicit in instruction and which, given the gatekeeping status of FYC courses, the increasing diversity of student populations and the growing divide between the academic and wider cultures, require critical examination.

Having different kinds of literature is an important part of the education in school and schoolbooks, in shape of reading-books, are common in the first year of primary school. The texts pupils encounter in school are important for how they form their identity and thoughts about what is right or wrong and what is natural or unnatural. People of other ethnicity than Swedish, or with another skin colour than white, have often in the past been portrayed negatively in reading-books as if they are of less worth. According to the Curriculum for the Compulsory School System (Lpo94) the school shall act for understanding of all people and every person’s equal value. The study analyses how ethnicity is portrayed in reading-books for pupils in the first year of primary school. I have also compared these books to see if they differ from each other and, if this is the case, how they differ. In addition, I have investigated if the books follow the curriculum of the Swedish school system according to ethnicity. The books I have chosen to analyse are four different schoolbooks published 1995-2008 which are used in Swedish schools in a specific community. The method I have used is text analysis. My results show that some reading-books still portray people with ethnicity other than Swedish in a demeaning way and that “white” people often are shown as the norm. The study also shows good examples of a more diverse inclusion of different settings, characters with other ethnicity and their role in the reading-books. The diversity gives the possibility for a more individual interpretation and gives room to show the multicultural society as the new norm.