<p> Four decades of university-based teacher education reform has failed to yield favorable outcomes in teacher effectiveness in P-12 schools. A rising tide of reform and criticism from governmental agencies and neo-liberal reformers has resulted in one-dimensional, structural approaches to impacting teacher effectiveness, based on the assumption that teacher effectiveness is universal across all school contexts. This study suggests that for university-based teacher education programs to impact teacher effectiveness, particularly in high-needs, high-minority schools, they must: a) define teacher effectiveness, b) contextualize the impact of high-needs, high-minority schools on teacher effectiveness, and c) provide the knowledge, structure and disposition to be effective teachers in the high-needs, high-minority context. To meet this task, this study boldly employs a post-modern theoretical positioning of the university-based teacher educator, one with professional experience or service in high-needs, high-minority schools, as the leading change agent in impacting teacher effectiveness in high-needs, high-minority schools. </p><p> Through a qualitative research design, this study utilizes phenomenology to uncover the lived experiences of qualifying teacher educators, those with experience and service in high-needs, high-minority schools, to define teacher effectiveness, effective teacher characteristics, and the uniqueness of the high-needs, high-minority urban school context. Through semi-structured, open-ended interviews, the lived experiences of qualifying teacher educators were gathered and analyzed using the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method of analysis to describe the shared experience of teacher effectiveness in high-needs, high-minority urban schools. </p><p> Findings suggest three themes that align respectively with each research question. When determining the effectiveness of teacher educators for preparation of pre-service teachers to enter high-needs, high-minority schools, <i> dispositions matter.</i> When conceiving teacher effectiveness within high-needs, high-minority urban schools, <i>responsiveness matters</i>. When reflecting on what makes the high-needs, high-minority urban learning environment different from what is thought of as the traditional school environment, findings suggest that <i>people matter.</i> What emerges as the composite experience of effectiveness in the high-needs, high-minority urban schools, is the significance of the <i>counter-narrative</i> focus. </p>

<p> The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and understand how teachers describe the changes in their practices as a result of ten years participation in a one-to-one environment. This research study focuses on one successful middle school&rsquo;s adoption of laptops to support teaching and learning. A qualitative study using interviews of key participants was undertaken with teachers and administrators. The Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework was used in conjunction with Rogers&rsquo; Diffusion of Innovation framework to understand from the participants&rsquo; perspective changes to their practice. The results indicate teachers underwent changes in their use of technology to support teaching and learning, showing increasing overlap between the domains of technological and pedagogical knowledge. The changes resulted in an increase in the transparency of the teaching and learning process for other teachers, students, administrators, and parent. These changes were supported by four school-wide factors; the adoption of a common software suite, robust social networks, modeling by leadership and the professional development model used. The findings were discussed in relation to participants&rsquo; position on the adoption spectrum of Rogers&rsquo; Diffusion of Innovation theory.</p>

<p> Research indicates that teachers benefit from education coursework in their preparation that provides opportunities to develop and practice pedagogical understandings (Darling-Hammond, 2000, 2006). Research also indicates that opportunities to enact learning from coursework are beneficial in teacher efficacy development within teacher preparation (Tschannen-Moran, 2007). Therefore, teacher education programs need to examine their structures and practices in an effort to provide the opportunities to enact their coursework to develop teachers&rsquo; pedagogical understandings and teacher efficacy. What needs to be better understood are the actual structures and strategies within the communities of practice that provide and encourage opportunities for growth of teacher efficacy for pre-service teachers. A case study methodology was used to explore the structures and strategies that pre-service teachers identified as contributing to the development of teacher efficacy within the collaborative cohort during the fall 2015 semester in a teacher education preparation program located in the Rocky Mountain West. </p><p> The findings suggest that (a) school communities matter as a context for pre-service teacher efficacy development, (b) purposeful, aligned, situated learning experiences which bridge course and field work contribute to efficacy development, and (c) a mindset of continual professional growth within practice develops confidence.</p>

<p> Research suggests that instructional interventions can impact student learning most effectively when teachers receive support for implementation (Danielson, Doolittle, &amp; Bradley, 2007; Songer, et al., 2002). This is particularly true for interventions targeting struggling students within Response to Intervention structures (Akerson, Cullen, &amp; Hanson, 2009; Harris, Graham, &amp; Adkins, 2015; Martin-Kniep, 2008;). Professional learning communities (PLCs) provide one structure to provide teachers with the needed instructional support to implement instructional interventions (Akerson et al., 2009; Danielson et al., 2007; Martin-Kneip, 2008; Pease-Alvarez &amp; Samway, 2008). Implementation literature largely examines two aspects of these PLCs in relation to teacher&rsquo;s practice: 1) teachers&rsquo; fidelity in implementing the curricular intervention, and 2) how intervention training within the PLC impacts on students&rsquo; academic performance. Absent from the current research is an examination of the ways in which teachers develop their capacity within PLCs, particularly when that PLC directly supports teachers&rsquo; implementation of a curricular intervention. Drawing on data from a large-scale evaluation study of an early literacy intervention, this dissertation explores how teachers describe the ways in which their capacity is built within a PLC. Using a critical feminist framework, this study examines interview transcripts, program artifacts, and analytic memos to surface the themes and discourses used by teachers to forward a theory of how PLCs can influence teachers&rsquo; practice.</p><p> This study found five key features of this intervention&rsquo;s PLCs that teachers described as developing their capacity: 1) theoretical texts directly connected to teachers&rsquo; practice; 2) a resource-orientation to students; 2) a developed sense of personal responsibility for students&rsquo; progress; 4) informal collaboration with colleagues outside the PLC space; and 5) peer observation with direct, non-evaluative feedback conversations. These features, when situated within existing literature, provide the groundwork for greater research around PLCs and how they can serve as a support of teachers&rsquo; capacity-building and implementation of instructional interventions.</p>

<p> This dissertation seeks to address the facilitation of difficult knowledges in the classroom. I employ constructs of poststructural feminism to critique rationalist-only frameworks that limit the forms of knowledge that "count" in the construction of knowledge. In response to these critiques, this dissertation constructs an alternative pedagogical framework from a psychoanalytic and poststructural feminist lens that emphasizes the bordered landscapes of the un/conscious. This approach is named Intimate Transgressive Pedagogy (ITP). Additionally, this dissertation introduces an empirical study that explored one semester of classroom teaching using Intimate Transgressive Pedagogy. Student and teacher experiences are analyzed through the theoretical concepts of ITP with a further discussion of the implications of the pedagogical concepts and empirical findings for multicultural teacher education.</p>

<p> The public education system in the U.S. has been under assault with the latest neoliberal education reforms. Those reforms are characterized by their antidemocratic and homogenizing assessment system, which reinforces a banking model of education. Such model goes against teachers and teaching, linguistic and cultural diversity and bilingual education. In order to countervail this reality, this research urged pre-service teachers in a <i>Foundations of Bilingual Education/ ESL</i> college coursework to engage in a problem-posing and emancipatory pedagogy. The main purpose was for them to nurture and enhance political clarity and political agency in issues of bilingual and ESL education. Students not only engaged in dismantling hegemonic discourses in bilingual and ESL education in the U.S., but also went through an epistemological break when the teacher-researcher invited students to become co-researchers in order to co-construct the curriculum and pedagogical realities. Readings, journals, personal narratives, dialogue and theater of the oppressed became the vehicles for engagement. The transformative process of the teacher-researcher and co-researchers occurred when they deliberately transitioned from a pedagogy that promotes passive citizens to a pedagogy that promotes collective emancipation. The research paradigm that aligned with those experiences was Participatory Action Research (PAR). Central to PAR is radical participatory democracy. Through self-collective development and reliance, participants transform themselves and find alternatives to defeat injustices. Pre-service and in-service teachers and teacher education can benefit from the following results: (1) <i> the transformative effect of a dialogic research (2) the lessons the teacher-researcher learned (3) how theater of the oppressed could have been central to the vivencia, instead it was supplementary and still the door for infinite possibilities (4) the viability of PAR as a vivencia embedded in undergraduate education major and (5) the extraordinary case of Sofia's (co-researcher) ongoing advocacy. </i></p><p>

<p> This dissertation explores how pre-service teachers conceptualize the relationship between justice and practice, and then navigate the tensions of their student teaching context to enact their beliefs in their teaching practice. Starting from the assumption that all teachers must understand how their practice challenges rather than reproduces inequities, this proposal&rsquo;s theoretical framework explicates four elements of a social justice educator: an orientation towards justice, a critical frame for understanding the relationship between macro-level structures and micro-level interactions, and conceptual and practical tools to live this in one&rsquo;s practice/praxis. A literature review of Social Justice Teacher Education (SJTE) and Practice-based Teacher Education (PBTE) along these four dimensions suggests complementary possibilities for facilitating the preparation of social justice educators. The qualitative study, leveraging practitioner research methodologies, how pre-service teachers developed the conceptual and practical tools of social justice educators. Findings pre-service teachers suggest that pre-service teachers varied in their conceptualizations of how teachers acted towards more just outcomes, and in their relation of their teaching aims to the real world. Additionally, pre-service teachers responded to tensions they countered in their particular school context by planning and enacting units of instruction that fulfilled their teaching aims, responded to the contextualized tensions, reflected their conceptualizations of justice, and met their students&rsquo; needs.</p><p>

<p> Outcome-driven data literacy is a relatively new discipline in the field of K-12 education. With the exception of a few researchers, a handful of teacher training organizations, and practices observed in some public schools, there is little guidance for how teacher training organizations interested in developing outcome-driven, data-literate teachers should go about this work. In response to this problem, this study investigates how four teacher training organizations already engaged in developing outcome-driven, data-literate teachers are going about teaching these kinds of knowledge, skills, and mindsets. Using a qualitative case study approach, the study aims to help teacher training organizations identify approaches for teaching data literacy by sharing promising practices and lessons learned from organizations that have pioneered this work over the last several years.</p><p>

<p> I conducted this autoethnographic research study to explore how I as a freshman orientation instructor meandered into college teaching through writing, which I used to develop my pedagogical content knowledge. Focusing my research as college faculty development, I reached back in the past and also in the present to select particular experiences to portray as vignettes, thus creating a kaleidoscopic lens. This kaleidoscopic lens serves to provide insight into my perspective of how my teaching philosophy based on the use of writing prompts developed. By connecting the personal experiences that had established my teaching philosophy using writing prompts to the classroom culture of first year students in a northeastern Alabama public two-year community college, the scholarly significance will be perused through integrating the theoretical framework of Lee S. Shulman&rsquo;s (1986, 1987) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) with additions of Otto and Everett&rsquo;s (2013) context knowledge and Zepke&rsquo;s (2013) threshold concepts. </p><p> I as a differently-abled instructor-researcher self-narratively depict how writing prompts supported my teaching experience as pedagogical content knowledge. Thus, my use of writing prompts as pedagogical content knowledge is purposefully intended for providing significant learning experience for my students, improving their readiness for writing college papers and also for communication skills as a potential employee and productive citizen. Over the course of spring and fall 2015 terms totaling four different seventy-five minute Orientation 101 courses, the data purposefully sampled from the students&rsquo; written responses to the prompts given and also from dyadic interviews with several peers ranging from active and retired faculty to acquaintances serve to support my own perspectives and experiences that determine use of writing prompts as effective pedagogical content knowledge.</p>

<p> Active learning, an engaging, student-centered, evidence-based pedagogy, has been shown to improve student satisfaction, engagement, and achievement in college classrooms. There have been numerous calls to reform teaching practices, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); however, the utilization of active learning is still underwhelming. The lack of implementation points to a scarcity of effective professional development. While the majority of studies have focused on four-year colleges and universities, this study examined the impact of active learning professional development at a community college. Community colleges, which have open admissions policies, serve nearly 13 million students annually. Many community college students are first generation or underprepared students, many of whom have been shown to benefit from the use of active learning. </p><p> This study sought to determine the impact that active learning professional development has on the pedagogical values and practices of science faculty, and its subsequent impact on student perceptions and achievement at a community college. Through the use of faculty surveys, teaching practices and perceptions were analyzed pre-workshop and post-workshop. Student focus groups provided further insight. Student achievement was measured by means of test scores on common final exams pre-workshop and post-workshop. Faculty surveys showed that faculty do have a favorable opinion of active learning; however, lecture remained the dominant teaching method even after the training. Post-workshop, faculty felt active learning could increase student motivation and retention of material. Both faculty and students agreed that more class time should be devoted to active learning. The main barrier to active learning identified by faculty was the lack of time, both in terms of class time and time to develop materials. Students identified fearfulness, being accustomed to lecture, and lack of time as possible barriers. Students overwhelmingly agreed that active learning increased their engagement, interest, and achievement in the classroom. Two courses showed increased student achievement based on exam scores; however, other classes saw a decline in scores post-workshop. The findings suggest that a single professional development may not be enough to create a complete reform. However, faculty were interested in learning more, which could open the door to sustainable approaches.</p><p>