As efforts are made in pre-kindergarten settings to design and model high quality programs, there is a growing need to attend to the aspects of the local context that may influence the ways that teachers and staff make sense of visions for their practice. Yet, the professional cultures in which teachers and other educators make sense of their practice are multifaceted and not well understood, particularly in early childhood settings. This exploratory case study examines collaboration and mentorship network structures, the alignment between formal structures and informal networks, and the beliefs among leaders, teachers, and assistants in three pre-kindergarten schools that comprised an initiative to build a model pre-kindergarten program. Social network surveys and self-reported beliefs from 75 educators were used to develop a composite picture of professional culture at each school, complemented by interviews participants. Results indicate distinct cultures at each of the three schools and sparse ties across the three schools. More specifically, variations in the network cohesion and teacher assistant positioning, in the alignment between formal and informal networks, and in autonomy and teacher-assistant trust at the schools were combined into different types of professional culture. Interview statements and examples provide evidence for each type of professional culture. Implications for policymakers and practitioners hoping to develop strong positive professional cultures are included. Future research is needed that uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to generate more comprehensive pictures of professional culture in a variety of schools.

Classroom mathematics discussions are difficult for teachers to orchestrate. They require attending to and responding to studentsâ ideas about mathematics in ways that are responsive to their approaches, yet also guiding the group toward more sophisticated mathematical understanding. Deliberate practice is a promising approach to preparing teachers for this work. In this dissertation I focus on a form of deliberate practice called rehearsal that provides teachers an opportunity to role-play these discussions while instructors provide coaching and feedback. I provide a synthesis of literature that illuminates the learning opportunities in rehearsal and situates rehearsal as one component of a larger learning cycle that helps teachers learn how to learn from their own practice. I then offer two empirical analyses that examine the role of rehearsal in changes to the classroom practice of inservice middle school math teachers. These analyses conclude that the content of teachersâ questions are particularly susceptible to change as a result of rehearsal and are propelled through moments of teacher self-correction and conflict with previously-established classroom norms.

Previous studies have attempted to establish an empirical link between teachers beliefs and practices. However, weak theoretical framing and ambiguity in the measurement of beliefs and practices have contributed to challenges in researching the relationship between teachers beliefs and practices, resulting in uncertainty in the prevalence of different beliefs, the amount of individual variance in beliefs, and how beliefs influence teachers classroom practices. The current study proposes a theoretical framework based on the extant literature and uses a person-oriented approach to examine early childhood teachers content-related beliefs regarding the skills necessary for school readiness. Teachers belief profiles are used to explore the link between teachers beliefs and their use of instructional time and other observed classroom practices. The influences of contextual considerations such as teacher background, classroom composition, school setting, and regional contexts on both teachers belief profiles and their classroom practices were investigated. The study found no evidence that teachers belief profiles were associated with their practices, but results suggest that contextual considerations may be more important and relevant to teachers classroom practices than previously recognized. The findings are discussed in light of previous studies and evidence regarding child behaviors that are predictive of school success. Implications for teacher education and professional development are described, as well as the need for further investigation of teachers professional contexts and the potential benefits of qualitative or mixed-methods approaches.

Self-regulation is increasingly recognized as a key component of early school readiness. Self-regulatory skills, like paying attention, ignoring distractions, following directions, and persisting on difficult tasks, are particularly relevant for school success. However, little is known about the related developmental processes that may facilitate young childrens self-regulation growth. Socio-cultural theory posits a link between childrens early language skills and their self-regulation, whereby language serves as a metacognitive tool that children use to regulate their behavior, but thus far, only limited empirical evidence supports this connection. This study explored the relationship between childrens initial language skills, self-regulation gains, and learning behaviors in pre-kindergarten classrooms. Using an array of assessment tools (including standardized language assessments, direct child measures of self-regulation, teacher ratings of language and self-regulation, and child observational data), this study employed a unique cross-validation approach to answer three main questions. The first question examined the relationship between childrens language skills at pre-kindergarten entry and their self-regulation growth during the year. The second question explored whether childrens entering language skills were associated with the learning behaviors in which they engaged in their classrooms. The final question tested whether childrens learning behaviors in the classroom mediated the relationship between their entering language skills and their self-regulation gains. The studys results demonstrated that childrens entering language skills were positively related to their self-regulation growth over the course of the pre-kindergarten year. Further, childrens entering language skills were related to classroom behaviors believed to be particularly relevant for self-regulation growth, including social and sequential learning activities. In addition, childrens language skills were positively related to involvement during learning activities, and negatively related to off-task behavior. Finally, although the overall results of the analyses did not support mediation, the models for involvement and off-task behavior approached the statistical criteria for mediation. The results suggest that early language skills may play an important role in the development of self-regulation, in part because they are an important aspect of childrens ability to become highly engaged in classroom activities.

This project focuses on whether participation in authentic research experiences has an impact on teachers understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) and, consequently, their classroom instruction related to NOS. In my dissertation, I first explore to what extent participation in research affected teachers understanding and in what ways. I then describe any patterns that were evident in aspects of or activities within teachers research experiences that suggested that they may help make certain aspects of NOS more salient to participants. Finally, I explain the extent to which any changes took place in teachers classroom instruction that reflected shifts in their NOS understanding. Results indicate that, while participation in certain research activities may, in fact, make certain aspects of NOS more understandable for teachers, this does not necessitate change in classroom practice. Implications for research-based teacher professional development programs are explored based on these results.

The goal of this study is to investigate how a learning-progression-centered assessment system mediated the collaborative efforts between teachers and researchers in reorienting assessment toward improving the quality of instruction and supporting student learning. In particular, this study aims to understand how the learning-progression-centered assessment system can support teachers to orchestrate productive classroom discussion based on the path outlined in the learning progression to make conceptual progress. The analysis of four case teachers provides evidence that the assessment system supported teachers in developing understandings of the big ideas of data, chance and statistics and of the learning progressions of statistical reasoning. In addition, the assessment system supported the teachers in transforming assessment practices in their classrooms. The teachers demonstrated construct-centered orchestration of assessment talk: structuring classroom interaction centered on important mathematical ideas represented in the classification system and/or aligning the instructional trajectory with the learning progressions to support student learning. This study suggests that learning progressions as a classification system can be an effective tool to disrupt the historically developed classificatory system for assessment in modern schooling (i.e., right or wrong) and eventually overwrite it with a disciplinary perspective on mathematics. The field needs to develop more content-specific classification systems to inspect qualities of students reasoning and teachers interpretations of students reasoning.

Science education is increasingly organized around engaging students in scientific practices, positioning them as makers of knowledge. However, there is significant uncertainty both about how to initiate students into these practices and how domain knowledge and participation in practice should be integrated in instruction. This three-paper dissertation addresses these challenges by situating students activity within the overarching enterprise of modeling. The first paper is a conceptual review of the literature on scientific argumentation. It conceptualizes argumentation as the social activity that problematizes and stabilizes modeling practice and proposes three directions for research: carefully designing uncertainty into students activity, describing how students critique not just what they know but the means by which they know it, and attending to the development of practice. The second and third papers are empirical studies of third grade students scientific activity in a backyard ecosystem; they trace the relation between students modeling practice and the development of ecological understanding. The second paper documents four phases of instruction during one school year, following the development of one disciplinary idea, the reproductive success of plants. It traces how students activity facilitated the visibility and utility of meanings for reproduction, which, in turn, shaped students subsequent modeling practice. The third paper presents a close analysis of students work around one experiment, with which they sought to understand how different amounts of light might account for the pattern of plant distribution in the backyard. It describes the aspects of modeling practice students engaged in as they worked with the experiment, how their practice made contact with ecological ideas, and how forms of practice and disciplinary understandings developed over the course of eight weeks of activity. As a set, the papers illustrate productive contacts between the social, conceptual, and epistemic aspects of scientific activity that can be cultivated in instructional experiences that are typical in elementary school. In addition, they present, test, and refine design principles for engineering learning environments in which knowledge-making is both accessible to students and a useful foundation for disciplinary understandings.

A qualitative and quantitative study that give insight into students framing of digital physics video game environments is presented in this thesis. A qualitative pilot study is explained followed by a follow-up interview study. Analysis of post-interview video data showed evidence of discourse-differences in students framing of gaming environments as being game-like, or physics like. A secondary quantitative study analyzed the detail of students post gameplay artwork to see if there were statistically significant difference in the artwork due to the frequency and duration of gameplay. Analysis using a hierarchical linear model split across class sessions was not able to explain the variance in students performance.

This research examines the digital communication and composing practices of a group of preschoolers with touchscreen tablets. Four year-old children were invited to take on the role of digital composer as they used an open-ended drawing app, Sketches2, and an email program, Mail, on iPads to send emails to parents. Fifteen children in a NAEYC accredited preschool in a large, southern U.S. city took part in the iWrite study in their classroom between August and November. Qualitative analysis of the data allowed for a description of young children as digital composers. Children were found to be quick to adopt the physical skills need to compose messages on the iPads, engaging in activities such as tapping, swiping, drawing, pinching, knuckle dragging, and typing. Typing styles included a two-handed grown-up style and a one-handed hunt-and-peck style. Children relied on the adult for support generating messages and also for specific procedural and technical supports. During the composing process, the adult worked with children as she demonstrated, invited, encouraged, prompted, co-authored, authored, and redirected, commented and asked questions. Children engaged in exploratory, playful and purposeful ways with the iPads, creating products with much variability across modes. When composing messages, children selected typing over writing letters by hand. Children tended to select holiday-specific stamps from the selection of the stock images available in the app. These stamped images did not always correspond with the content of the email message.

This dissertation is a grounded theoretical analysis and design study of adults and youth counter-mapping their neighborhoods. Counter-mapping involves residents making claims to resources for the future by leveraging the representations and tools of the state or other powerful entities. The concept of counter-mapping evolved over three phases of research, each phase informing the next. First, counter-mapping was an emerging object of study in a participatory planning process with adults. Second, counter-mapping was a cumulative learning objective for designing an experimental teaching case study with youth participating in an after school bicycle workshop. Third, counter-mapping was a vehicle for (the same) youth to realize spatial justice for their communities in conversations with urban planners and local stakeholders. Data include audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring activity and participation in designed activities, interviews, GPS, and time-diary entries. These data were analyzed using interaction and multi-modal discourse analysis techniques. As a theoretical construct, counter-mapping was as a thirdspace practice where informal and formal ways of knowing and producing space came together. At this interface, productive tensions emerged that facilitated new forms of learning spatial literacies and civic engagement for imagining and planning for a more equitable urban arrangement.