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The efficacy of two online instructional methods, guided inquiry and video, were experimentally examined for learning and change of misconceptions regarding learning styles; the relationship of student characteristics to outcomes was also examined. Learners’ mindset interacted with instructional method for learning; additional learner characteristics also indicated some relationship to the efficacy of these instructional methods for learning. Misconceptions, however, were generally resistant to change. Implications for online instruction and future directions for research are explored

The purpose of the study was to discover how teachers learn to teach. This was done through the process of answering the question "How does a teacher acting as a co-researcher come to understand the learner-centered integrated literacy approaches in an English classroom in Malawi?" The learner-centered integrated literacy approaches is a concept derived from a constructivist philosophy of teaching. English is an important language in Malawi because it is the official language (Kayambazinthu, 1998). For that reason children are motivated to learn it as a second language. However, their achievement in English is critically low (Banda, Mchikoma, Chimombo, & Milner, 2001;Kishindo, Susuwere, Ndalama & Mwale, 2005; Williams, 1993). According to Ministry of Education and UNICEF (1998) and Williams (1993) teachers' complete reliance on traditional teacher-centered approaches was believed to be one of the major causes of school children's failure to acquire English as a second language for their literacy development in Malawi. The assumption was that improving teacher practice by introducing constructivists-based, learner-centered, integrated literacy approaches, which are believed to be more effective for second language learning, than the former, would illuminate how teachers learn and ultimately improve teacher education practices and consequently teacher English teaching in the classroom. Data were collected from pre- and post-study interviews, a series of audio taped lesson planning and lesson reflections, lesson observation summaries, and a researcher's journal. Data analysis and interpretation suggested that teacher learning is a gradual developmental process that depended very much on other interlaced processes of collaboration, inquiry, and reflective practice. It also demonstrated that the learner-centered integrated literacy approaches of the constructivism-based philosophy, which are also included in the Malawi curriculum but implementation is still a challenge in the primary classes, are possible. The results and process of the study could be used to improve teacher learning in Malawi. Finally, the study experience has illuminated the need for more exploration in the new areas of growth in English literacy. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to investigate the practice of scientific inquiry in two secondary biology classes and one agriculture class from different schools in different communities. The focus was on teachers' interests and intentions for the students' participation in inquiry, the voices contributing to the inquiry, and students' opportunities to confront their conceptions of the nature of science (NOS). The Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP) served as the context by providing students with opportunities to design and conduct original experiments to help elucidate the function(s) of a disabled gene in Arabidopsis thaliana. Transcripts of teacher and student semi-structured interviews, field notes of classroom observations and classroom conversations, and documents (e.g., student work, teacher handouts, school websites, PREP materials) were analyzed for evidence of the practice of scientific inquiry. Teachers were interested in implementing inquiry because of potential student learning about scientific research and because PREP supports course content and is connected to a larger scientific project outside of the school. Teachers' intentions regarding the implementation of inquiry reflected the complexity of their courses and the students' previous experiences. All inquiries were student-directed. The biology students' participation more closely mirrored the practice of scientists, while the agriculture students were more involved with the procedural display of scientific inquiry. All experiences could have been enhanced from additional knowledge-centered activities regarding scientific reasoning. No activities brought explicit attention to NOS. Biology activities tended to implicitly support NOS while the agriculture class activities tended to implicitly contradict NOS. Scientists' interactions contributed to implied support of the NOS. There were missed opportunities for explicit attention to NOS in all classes. The major voices contributing to the inquiry in all classrooms included those of teachers, students, technology, scientists, textbooks, and mandated standards; however, they were more prevalent in the biology classrooms than the agriculture classroom. The powers influencing the voice frequency may be related to the teachers' own teaching and research experiences, as well as the alignment of the expectations and values of students' participation in scientific inquiry and those associated with the school-classroom communities and the students' identities. / Ph. D.

This dissertation looks at the role narratives play in addressing organizational challenges by facilitating a collective assignment of meaning to those challenges that allows for problem solving, or at least a way to cope with the challenges. Specifically, the research examines how informal knowledge is embedded in organizations in the form of narratives, and how narratives are used to transfer knowledge across the organization. The dissertation develops the concept of narrative, and the qualities of the narratives used in this dissertation, focused on events, focused on people, focused on values, and it develops an understanding of knowledge transfer as the collective assignment of meaning to challenges that are constantly emerging. In this case study, three means, or tools emerge as facilitating the assignment of meaning. These tools are superstars, indexing, and knowledge objects. This research will enrich the public administration and nonprofit literature by utilizing narrative inquiry to examine the transfer of knowledge in a nonprofit social service organization that serves a vital public purpose under contracts with various levels of government. / Ph. D.

Teachers encounter numerous challenges within their first years of teaching. More support needs to be provided to assist novice teachers with navigating challenges that have been persistent in the literature on novice teachers. This study considered how engaging in guided reflective inquiry could support novice teachers' abilities to notice and respond to the challenges they encounter. In particular, this study explored the different identities from which novice teachers can draw inspiration to understand how they may support or constrain the process of responding to challenges. Participating in guided reflective inquiry encouraged novice teachers to explore their responses to individual "wobble moments" (Fecho, 2011) and view those uncertainties as moments of growth. The theories of dialogism (Bakhtin, 1981) and dialogical self theory (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010) provided a lens through which meanings were created from the generated data. This study focused on six novice teachers within their first three years of full-time teaching and implemented elements of transactional analysis (Stewart, 2011) to analyze the narratives, memos, reflections, and interview discussions generated from the participant and researcher. The ways in which novice teachers noticed the challenges they encountered, used the concept of wobble to engage in dialogue with those challenges, and considered how the exploration of one's identity supported or constrained that process were examined in this study. Three generated understandings indexed the importance of enacting approaches to teacher induction that better support novice teachers: (1) challenges encountered by the participants aligned with persistent struggles that have been well-documented in the literature on teacher challenges, (2) participant responses to wobble moments involved a two-step process of an initial reaction and a decided-upon action, and (3) participant developing teacher identities were influenced by numerous aspects of their dialogical self. The implications of this study point to the need to enact approaches to teacher induction that use guided reflective inquiry as an adaptable structure to support novice teachers' abilities to bring their identities into dialogue with the tensions from challenges they experience in their individual teaching contexts. / Doctor of Philosophy / The purpose of this study was to examine ways in which novice teachers can be better supported through the challenges that are often within the first years of teaching. This study employed the theoretical frameworks of dialogism (Bakhtin, 1981) and dialogical self theory (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010) to consider how engaging in guided reflective inquiry could support a novice teacher's abilities to notice and respond to the challenges encountered. An in-depth exploration of the novice teacher's identity supported the process of examining influences on their responses to challenges. Six teachers participated in this study after meeting the criteria of being employed as an English or Language Arts teacher, teaching students within secondary 6th-12th grades, and being within their first three years of full-time teaching. The study involved three stages: an intake interview, three rounds per participant of submitting a wobble narrative and then discussing the wobble moment via Zoom, and a final reflection and interview. Transactional analysis (Stewart, 2011) assisted in the process of coding and analyzing the data to develop three generated understandings: (1) challenges encountered by the participants aligned with persistent struggles that have been well-documented in the literature on teacher challenges, (2) participant responses to wobble moments involved a two-step process of an initial reaction and a decided-upon action, and (3) participant developing teacher identities were influenced by numerous aspects of their dialogical selves. The implications of the understandings promote the necessity for teacher induction to implement guided reflective inquiry as a way to better support novice teachers through the challenges they encounter.

The COVID-19 pandemic, known as the coronavirus, was declared as a national pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020 (Cucinotta and Vanelli, 2020). Following the declaration of a national pandemic, institutions across society were forced to respond. Among those most immediately impacted, were colleges and universities. Higher education faculty and administrators transitioned in-person courses to an online format to adjust to the restrictions of coronavirus. As a result, college students around the world experienced a sudden shift to taking an entire semester of courses in an unfamiliar online format. The pandemic served as a catalyst to a trend over the last 2 years to provide access to a growing number of online courses. Given this drastic change and the unprecedented future of higher education during uncertain times, it was imperative to further study the nature of quality in online courses. While research on quality in higher education is extensive, a significant gap in literature exists related to students' perspectives of quality, particularly in online courses. To address this gap, I used the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, 2000) and related survey to explore aspects that contribute to perceptions of online education quality. The study investigated how undergraduate students at a large public research institution perceived the importance of elements of the CoI Framework. The data analyses included independent sample t tests, one-way ANOVAs, and regression. The results revealed that course pedagogy does affect students' perceptions of online quality. However, student characteristics do not affect students' perceptions of quality for online courses in Higher Education. / Doctor of Philosophy / It is important to understand quality in higher education because of its economic and social value. Gaining a deeper understanding into how students perceive quality is crucial, since they are the main consumer group of higher education. As a result of COVID-19, which was declared a national pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020 (Cucinotta and Vanelli, 2020), all higher education institutions were forced to transition courses to an online format. Due to the prevalence of online courses, quality of online courses became a primary focus for educational leaders. This study sought to better understand how students who are members of a single academic college at a large public university perceive the quality of online courses. The 145 participants in this study completed the online Community of Inquiry survey, which had an estimated 10–15-minute completion time. The survey contained 34 Likert scale questions related to students' experiences in an online course they have taken within the past academic year. This quantitative study utilized the Community of Inquiry framework which creates a deep and meaningful quality learning experience in online courses. (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, 2000). The results of this study revealed that course pedagogy does affect students' perceptions of online quality. This study also found that student characteristics do not affect students' perceptions of quality for online courses in higher education.

Yes / In this paper, I would like to share some thoughts provoked by the idea of establishing ‘dialogue studies’ as a distinct academic field, as suggested in the inaugural call for contributions to the new journal. These are not meant to be exhaustive of all the relevant questions that could be considered under this heading. I do not, for example, consider the question of disciplinary contributions or boundaries. My emphasis, rather, is on questions to do with ethos and coherence. In particular, I am interested in exploring the possibility, and the challenges, of cultivating a dialogic approach to the study of dialogue itself. My reflections begin with a look at the tendency, within academia, to privilege debate as a form of communication and the question of whether we might conceive a Journal of Dialogue Studies as a forum for a different kind of exchange. I then reflect on some of the difficulties of studying dialogue itself, particularly where this involves outside observers. The final section raises some issues around ‘studying dialogue’ in relation to teaching, learning and assessment. My overall intention here is to share some current, tentative thoughts in the hope that this contributes to a dialogue on the idea, and perhaps the practice, of ‘dialogue studies’.

The General Engineering Program exists at Virginia Tech to provide curriculums that engage, challenge and support entry-level engineers. One important part of this initiative is helping students identify with a specific engineering branch, and overtime develop an identity within it. Yet, there exists little research on what entry-level engineers believe it means to be an engineer, especially during these stages of early formation and continual shifting. In order to generate insight on this topic we developed a contextual inquiry method to help inquire into engineering identity. Two participants were placed in an online chatroom and allowed to talk for ten minutes, with one trying to answer the question 'Am I talking to an engineer or not?' and asked to give their reasoning. Comparisons allow entry-level engineering students to articulate their beliefs on what characteristics, behaviors and personalities make up their cohort -- thus exposing their ideas about identity. Moreover, this methodology also provides opportunities for participants to critique their own bias and further develop and expose their opinions on identity. Additionally, our findings showcase the complexity around student's perceptions of engineers. For example, participants' responses pointed to: many sources that inform identity, the difficulty of identifying what is uniquely engineering, how identity is impacted by the ideal image of an engineer, that identity is a spectrum, and that identity varies with respect to associations and time. As a result, through our inquiry and representation of results we demonstrate the validity of our methodology as a HCI research tool along with the power of narrative forms of representation. / Master of Science / The General Engineering Program exists at Virginia Tech to provide curriculums that engage, challenge and support entry-level engineers. One important part of this initiative is helping students identify with a specific type of engineering, and overtime develop an identity within it. Yet, there exists little research on what entry-level engineers believe it means to be an engineer, especially during their freshmen year of college when they are still forming and changing their ideas about engineering identity. In order to generate insight on this topic we developed a methodology to help inquire into engineering identity. Two participants at a time were placed in an online chatroom and allowed to talk for ten minutes, with one trying to answer the question ‘Am I talking to an engineer or not?’ and asked to give their reasoning. Comparisons allow entry-level engineering students to articulate their beliefs on what characteristics, behaviors and personalities make up their cohort -- thus exposing their ideas about identity. Moreover, this methodology also provides opportunities for participants to critique their own assumptions about engineering identity and further develop and expose their opinions on identity. Additionally, our findings showcase the complexity around student’s perceptions of engineers. For example, participants’ responses pointed to: many sources that inform identity, the difficulty of identifying what is uniquely engineering, how identity is impacted by the ideal image of an engineer, that identity is a spectrum, and that identity varies with respect to associations and time. As a result, through our inquiry and representation of results we demonstrate the validity of our methodology as a Human Computer Interaction research tool along with the power of using written stories to represent results.

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