The purpose of my study was to determine if there are any differences in performance measures of student teachers with varying levels of participation in professional development schools. The population in my study was the 2002 through the spring of 2006 kindergarten through 6th-grade student teachers from a small, private postsecondary institution. A requirement of the teacher education program was to complete sequential, field-based experiences in kindergarten through 6th-grade schools culminating in student teaching. My study included kindergarten through 6thgrade student teachers who had experienced a number of semesters in a Professional Development School (PDS) classified into 4 levels: (a) 0 or 1 semester, (b) 2 semesters, (c) 3 semesters, and (d) 4 semesters of field experience in PDSs of partnership. Using analysis of variance procedures, the relationships between levels of participation in a PDS with each of 6 student performance measures were investigated. Several sources of data were used to evaluate the student teachers' performances. My study was based on the test results from 3 subtests of the PRAXIS II series examinations, the student teacher evaluation instruments, and the senior exit interviews. The performance evaluation scores were used to determine the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions of every student teacher before graduating from the teacher licensure program at Lincoln Memorial University. Based on the analysis of the data and findings of my study, PDS field-based experiences appear to have no significant relationship with student teachers' PRAXIS II examination subtests scores, student teacher evaluation instrument scores, or their senior exit interview scores.

Lesson study is a form of professional development for teachers adopted in recent years from Japan. Introducing lesson study to U.S. teachers and researchers has been the focus of most of the literature on this subject. Much of the literature outlines how lesson study works and describes its essential features. One of the features of lesson study is anticipating student responses, also known as anticipating student thinking. Anticipating student responses is passingly described in lesson study literature. This research was conducted to understand what it means to anticipate student responses for preservice mathematics teachers in a lesson study group. Lesson study literature indicates that anticipating student responses is to anticipate conceptual development from the students' perspective, and the purpose is to be prepared to have meaningful discussions and questions to enable students to develop the understanding. Anticipating student responses is highly related to the hypothetical learning trajectory described by Simon (1995), the self directed anticipative learning model described by Christensen and Hooker (2000) and the expert blind spot discussed by Nathan and Petrosino (2003). While their work does not stem from lesson study, they add theoretical perspective to the idea of anticipating student responses. Their work indicates that anticipating student responses is difficult, valuable, that one gets better at it through experience, and that it is very useful in refining lessons. Participants were enrolled in the mathematics education methods class of a large private university in the U.S. A characterization of anticipating student responses was developed as the participants met in group meetings to create a lesson. They anticipated student responses in ways that facilitated lesson planning and task design. Participants did not anticipate student responses toward students' conceptual development. This research reports five particular ways that anticipating student responses was used as a tool to define and refine the lesson so that it ran smoothly toward lesson goals. These ways are related to: goals, tasks and materials, procedural mathematical reasoning, successful student efforts, and emotional responses. It is believed that anticipating student responses towards task design is a necessary precursor to anticipating student responses toward students' conceptual development.

The tasks with which students engage in their mathematics courses determine, for a large part, what students learn. Therefore, it is essential that teachers are able to design tasks that are worthwhile for developing mathematical understanding. Since practicing teachers seldom incorporate worthwhile mathematical tasks in their lessons, we would expect that they did not become proficient at designing worthwhile tasks while in their teacher education programs. This thesis describes a study that investigated what preservice secondary teachers attend to as they attempt to design worthwhile mathematical tasks. Three participants were selected from a course at a large private university where preservice teachers are taught and practice the skill of task design. This "Task Design" course was observed, and the three participants were interviewed to determine what they attend to while designing tasks. There were seven main characteristics that the main participants in the study attended to the most often and thought were the most important: sound and significant mathematics, reasoning, appropriateness, clarity, communication, engagement, and openness. How the participants attended to these characteristics is described. Some implications for teacher education, such as requiring preservice teachers to explain how their tasks embody certain characteristics, are given based on the results.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to determine if first year teachers in Florida perceived they were adequately prepared by their preservice education programs to meet the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). The study was designed to gather data about first year teacher perceptions of personal technology proficiency and self-reported technology integration practices. The data were measured using the First Year Teacher Perceptions Related to Preparedness to Meet National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) survey instrument. The sample (N=257) for this study was drawn from the population of Florida first year PreK-12 public classroom teachers from the 2005-2006 school year who were still teaching during the 2006-2007 school year. Demographic variables, perceptions of personal technology skills, and self-reported technology integration practices were collected on the sample. Descriptive and comparative statistics were used to identify relationships between the variables. It was concluded that first year teachers in Florida who held a professional teaching certificate or graduated from a Florida public university's teacher education program perceived they were better prepared to meet national educational technology standards than first year teachers in Florida who did not. It was also determined that there was a statistically significant relationship between first year teacher perceptions for preparedness for technology integration and their perceived personal technology skills, as well as between self-reported technology integration practices of first year teachers and their perceptions of their ability to integrate technology. Two additional findings came to light during the study. The majority of first year teachers in Florida did not take the traditional university teacher preparation program as their path to certification. Additionally, the vast majority of first year teachers in Florida gave credit to independent learning in increasing their own personal technology skills.

A classroom teaching experiment was conducted to document prospective teachers' development of whole number concepts and operations. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the collective understanding of prospective teachers in an elementary mathematics content course. Design research methodology, specifically a classroom teaching experiment was the methodology selected for this study since it allows learning to be documented in a classroom environment and is iterative in nature. A revised hypothetical learning trajectory and instructional tasks from a previous classroom teaching experiment were used in this study (Andreasen, 2006). Research about children's development of whole number concepts and operations was used in developing instructional learning goals. In addition, research regarding prospective teachers' development supported the instructional modification that all tasks would be presented and expected to be reasoned about in base-8. Both qualitative data and quantitative data were collected. Qualitative data included whole class dialogue that was videotaped and transcribed, as well as student work samples. Quantitative data included items from the Content Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics database that were administered prior to and subsequent to the instructional sequence in base-8 (Hill, Schilling, & Ball, 2005). It should be noted that the items selected from the database were in base-10. The emergent perspective served as the interpretive framework of the collected qualitative data. This perspective reflexively coordinates the social or group perspective simultaneously with psychological or individual perspective. As stated, this study sought to describe the communal mathematics understanding of prospective teachers in an elementary mathematics content course. Toulmin's (1969) model of argumentation and Rasmussen and Stephan's three-phase methodology served to document normative ways of group reasoning called classroom mathematical practices. The following classroom mathematical practices were identified as taken-as-shared by prospective teachers: (a) developing small number relationships using Double 10-Frames, (b) developing two-digit thinking strategies using the open number line, (c) flexibly representing equivalent quantities using pictures or Inventory Forms, and (d) developing addition and subtraction strategies using pictures or an Inventory Form. Quantitative results indicated that prospective teachers were able to apply mathematical understandings grounded in base-8 to whole number concepts in base-10. In the end, counting and calculating in base-8 provides a meaningful context for prospective teachers to reconstruct their knowledge of whole number concepts and operations.

Given current legislation to ensure education for students with disabilities and that institutions of higher education are required to use universal design for learning (UDL) principles, the purpose of this study was to explore the impact of video modeling on preservice teachers' knowledge, understanding and application of the three principles of UDL. Preservice teachers were randomly assigned to control or experimental groups to determine if video embedded with UDL principles impacted their thinking. Specifically, pre and posttest information of knowledge and understanding as well as self-perceived ability to teach students with disabilities using UDL was analyzed. In addition preservice teacher created lesson plans were analyzed for application of UDL principles after viewing the video intervention. Quantitative analyses were conducted to compare pre and posttest scores of the control group (n = 41) and experimental group (n =45). The quantitative analyses of knowledge, understanding

This research project aimed to extend the research literature by providing greater insight into the way individual prospective teachers develop their conceptual understanding of whole number concepts and operations in a social context. In this qualitative study, a case study analysis provided the opportunity for careful exploration of the manner in which prospective teachers' understanding changed and the ways two selected participants reorganized their mathematical thinking within a classroom teaching experiment. While previous research efforts insisted on creating a dichotomy of choosing the individual or the collective understanding, through the utilization of the emergent perspective both the individual and the social aspects were considered. Specifically, using the emergent perspective as a theoretical framework, this research endeavor has outlined the mathematical conceptions and activities of individual prospective teachers and thus has provided the psychological perspective correlate to the social perspective's classroom mathematical practices. As the research participants progressed through an instructional sequence taught entirely in base-8, a case study approach was used to select and analyze two individuals. In order to gain a more thorough understanding of the individual perspective, this research endeavor focused on whether teachers with varying initial content knowledge developed differently through this instructional sequence. The first participant initially demonstrated "Low-Content" knowledge according to the CKT-M instrument database questions which measure content knowledge for teaching mathematics. She developed a greater understanding of place value concepts and was able to apply this new knowledge to gain a deeper sense of the rationale behind counting strategies and addition and subtraction operations. She did not demonstrate the ability to consistently make sense of multiplication and division strategies. She participated in the classroom argumentation primarily by providing claims and data as she illustrated the way she would use different procedures to solve addition and subtraction problems. The second participant illustrated "High-Content" knowledge based on the CKT-M instrument. She already possessed a solid foundation in understanding place value concepts and throughout the instructional sequence developed various ways to connect and build on her initial understanding through the synthesis of multiple pedagogical content tools. She demonstrated conceptual understanding of counting strategies, and all four whole number operations. Furthermore, by exploring various ways that other prospective teachers solved the problems, she also presented a greater pedagogical perspective in how other prospective teachers think mathematically. This prospective teacher showed a shift in her participation in classroom argumentation as she began by providing claims and data at the outset of the instructional sequence. Later on, she predominantly provided the warrants and backings to integrate the mathematical concepts and pedagogical tools used to develop greater understanding of whole number operations. These results indicate the findings based on the individual case-study analysis of prospective elementary school teachers and the cross-case analysis that ensued. The researcher contends that through the synthesis of the findings of this project along with current relevant research efforts, teacher educators and educational policy makers can revisit and possibly revise instructional practices and sequences in order to develop teachers with greater conceptual understanding of concepts vital to elementary mathematics.

Students in preservice teacher preparation courses are instructed, assessed, and graded by either regular full-time faculty members or adjunct part-time instructors. The assessment practices utilized by individuals from these two different instructor levels may be inconsistent and differ significantly, thereby affecting the thorough preparation and training of preservice teacher credential students. There was a two-fold purpose for this study. The first was to determine what the assessment practices of regular faculty and adjunct instructors are in preservice teacher education courses. Specifically, the study did so by administering a survey to determine the course assessment practices; i.e. class attendance, class participation, quizzes, other written papers or assignments during a course, final exams (written in class, take home, oral, or none at all), utilized by the two different instructor levels. The second purpose for the study was to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between the assessment practices of regular instructors compared to adjunct faculty members. The subjects chosen for this study were the entire preservice teacher education full-time faculty or regular instructors, a total of 40 individuals, and 97 preservice course teaching adjunct or part-time instructors (selected at random) from a private university. Together this constituted a total sample population of 137 individuals that were included in the survey utilized for this study. The results of this study showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the utilization of 3 (or 15%) out of 20 assessment practices (Class Attendance, Portfolios, and Final Exam: Oral) between regular and adjunct instructors in preservice teacher education programs. Since the possible effects of differences in the utilization of assessment practices or teaching between full-time and part-time instructors has not been conducted at the higher education level, research in this area may make an important contribution to the future preparation of preservice teacher education students.

Cultivating preservice teachers' reflection on their practice has been a major objective in teacher education over the last twenty years. Teacher educators have designed a number of activities, usually related to coursework, to facilitate preservice teachers' reflectivity. These kinds of assignments might be described as asking preservice teachers to reflect on demand. Studies in the past have typically focused on the discussion of specific strategies used to elicit reflection or descriptions of reflective teacher education programs. This study explored how preservice and first-year teachers understand and engage in reflection in different contexts while learning to teach. A sample of seventeen respondents, education students enrolled in coursework, student teachers, and first-year teachers, was selected to participate in the study. The data consisted of interviews, classroom observations and the examination of related documents. Preservice teachers taking courses engaged in introspection or self-reflection. This time was spent exploring their emerging identities as teachers. As respondents got opportunities to work in school settings, they began to reflect more on content and students. First-year teachers applied some of the reflective strategies they learned during coursework in their own practice. Several factors appeared to enhance preservice and first-year teachers' ability to reflect as they moved from coursework into student teaching and their own classrooms: (1) building relationships with teachers and students in K--12 classrooms, (2) engaging in reflective dialogue with 'more knowledgeable others'---university faculty and practitioners, and (3) having opportunities to teach on a regular basis.