Although technology is becoming more common in schools, effectively integrating technology into the classroom can be a challenge for teachers. Teachers must understand how technology interacts with their content and pedagogical strategies to enhance student learning outcomes. Various theory-based training methods have been proposed to increase the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of teachers (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). In-service teachers have an established teaching style, or preference for specific pedagogical activities, which may influence how they respond to trainings either congruent or dissimilar to their own teaching practices. This study uses MANCOVA to investigate how middle school math teachers’ teaching styles preferences influence their technology integration in a lesson plan following three different types of training. The implications for the proposed study suggested future evaluation of a fourth professional development method to integrate teachers’ teaching styles and offer more prolonged support and reflection during the training process. This fourth method, lesson study, allows teachers to reflex on different ways of teaching as a group and may lead to change in teaching style beyond that possible in the first three methods. The final chapter of this report includes an evaluation plan for the proposed lesson study professional development. / text

Apartheid education practices have left an indelible mark on Black students in South Africa even after 16 years of democratic rule. For many years tertiary educational institutions have striven to improve throughput and retention rates of Black students who have met the entry requirements for higher education yet seem unable to succeed because of the disadvantaged backgrounds from which they come. Many programmes have been initiated at institutions of higher education throughout South Africa to address this problem; the Humanities Access Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal is one of these. This study has investigated the impact of the Humanities Access Programme on the institution, by considering throughput and retention rates, and on the student, through their perceptions of the programme and, by combining the results of these two investigations, has tried to suggest an explanation for the results emerging from the data. A mixed methods research approach was used in this study. Quantitative data was collected to conduct a cohort study of student retention and throughput for students in the programme from 2001 to 2004 and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with students from this cohort was used to obtain student perceptions. Using Tinto’s Student Integration Model tentative explanations of the throughput and retention results were formulated from the students’ perceptions. This study concluded that students from the Humanities Access Programme outperformed their mainstream counterparts and that students perceived the programme in a positive light and felt that the programme contributed to their success. The social and academic integration to university life that the programme provided appears to be a major contributing factor in these students’ success. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

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As an ethnographic study situated within teacher education practice, this thesis is structured around 'three pedagogical moments' in the studies of society and environment units within a Bachelor of Education degree. This study links classroom teaching and observation illuminated through naturalistic enquiry with student surveys and interviews and locational analysis using a multi-method approach to research. The hidden and explicit curriculum and pedagogies of fieldwork are investigated as these are implemented in early childhood and primary education - and more particularly, in the teaching of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE), as a specific site of knowledge construction in teacher education. Accordingly, the study is located within recent debates surrounding the nature of geographic knowledge and understandings of place and space as partial and socially constructed. It also draws on recent critiques of fieldwork in early childhood and primary education and more specifically, in geography. Integral to this discussion are understandings of place and space as triggers to childhood learning and emerging identity. Reference to paintings by Jeffrey Smart - as an illustrative and visual device -helps to locate the study's central themes, and the visual and emotional as well as rational and cultural dimensions of student teacher choices. Key themes identified through a constructivist approach to grounded theory are used as the basis of analysis of interview responses and the generation of theory. By beginning a critical pedagogy of space with the 'mattering maps' and 'cartographies of taste' of teacher education students, the study articulates the many discourses brought to the selection of sites for Studies of Society and Environment and contributes to the dialogic process of learning to teach.

It is now twenty years since the Federal Government mandated the transfer of nurse education to the tertiary sector. The conflict surrounding the issue of educational preparation for entry to professional nursing practice remains, supported by the oft-repeated comment that "graduates should hit the ground running". Student nurses/graduates are key stakeholders in nursing education and their perceptions are a valuable source of information as they experience the Bachelor of Nursing Program. To contribute to the body of knowledge, this evaluative study focused on the perceptions of students/graduates in relation to their preparation for beginning professional practice. Illuminative evaluation, supported by a qualitative interpretive approach, constructivist learning theory and a quantitative approach, was used to help understand and describe how students/graduates constructed ideas about their preparation for beginning professional practice. Data were collected from the participants in two stages, before and after the completion of the Bachelor of Nursing program, using questionnaires, open-ended questions, documentary information, reflective writings and semi-structured interviews. The participants for both Stages were drawn from the same student cohort. Following thematic analysis of the data it emerged that ninety-nine percent of the participants believed they were adequately prepared for beginning professional practice at an advanced beginner level. The study highlights that context is an important factor in relation to learning and that the theory/practice gap is a natural phenomenon in the learning process. Students experience difficulty in transferring knowledge and skills from one context to another. Also, a real tension exists between preparing a well educated nurse and preparing a practitioner who, on graduation, will not be fully prepared to deal with all the complexities and diversities of the nursing practice setting. Nurse clinicians, administrators and academics have a responsibility to ensure beginning practitioners are prepared for beginning professional practice at an advanced beginning level.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

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