Social emotional competence is an essential developmental skill recognized as the most critical for school and later success. Rising rates in behavioral referrals and preschool expulsion have brought increased attention to the importance of helping children develop social-emotional skills in the early years. In early childhood education a central factor of social-emotional/behavioral intervention is the competence of teachers to address children's needs. In order for the social-emotional needs of children to be addressed in early childhood classrooms, adequate preservice teacher training and support are needed. The current studies focused on preservice teacher training and support regarding social emotional assessment and behavior intervention. Two studies were included in this research: (1) an early childhood preservice teacher survey and (2) Social Emotional Assessment Measure (SEAM) Preschool Teaching Guide development and behavior support plan pilot study. The first study focused on early childhood preservice teachers' current knowledge and practices regarding social-emotional development and behavior support. Participants included 228 preservice teachers from early childhood education (ECE) and early childhood special education (ECSE) teacher training programs in 15 different states. ANOVA results and answer percentages and means revealed trends in training, implementation, and preparedness by program type and degree level. The second study addressed how to support early childhood teachers in the creation of behavior support plans linked to assessment results. It took place in two phases: (1) development of a preschool teaching guide for the SEAM, and (2) a behavior support plan pilot study using the SEAM Preschool Teaching Guide. Participants included 25 preservice early childhood teachers from ECE and ECSE programs. Results from a two-way repeated-measures ANOVA indicated that the teaching guide intervention significantly improved the behavior support plan quality scores of preservice teachers. Results were further analyzed by program type and degree level.

PRIDE preservice training is a widely-used method of resource parent preparation, yet a program that has been the focus of very little research. This thesis project was carried out in two studies designed to examine the process of training, investigate selected outcomes of the training, and explore the transfer of training into practice. The first study involved 174 prospective resource parents. Investigation of the process of preservice training determined that participant engagement and participant-perceived fidelity, the combination of which was conceptualized as participant-perceived training quality, were high. In terms of outcomes, significant large gains from pre- to posttraining were observed in knowledge of the PRIDE competencies taught by the training. However, no differences were found in resource parent attitudes (erroneous beliefs or motivation to adopt) from pre- to posttraining. Higher training quality was a significant predictor of both greater knowledge gains and higher participant satisfaction. No differences between prospective foster parents and adoptive parents emerged in terms of participant dropout, knowledge gain, participant satisfaction, or attitudes about resource parenting. The second study was a follow-up with 11 foster, adoptive, and kinship parents from study one who had begun parenting a child in care. Interviews with these resource parents focused on the transfer of training of the PRIDE competencies and requested feedback about the training. Participants’ ratings of their transfer of training were high, while the researchers’ ratings fell in the mid-range. Overall, participants’ comments about PRIDE were positive. Participants highlighted how useful they found personal accounts of resource parents’ experiences during training and that child welfare workers played a key role in the implementation of training. The methodological contributions of this project include the development of three measures – a knowledge of PRIDE competencies questionnaire, a measure of participant-perceived quality, and a transfer of training rating scale – that can be used both in future research and in practice. In addition, this project supplied the first evidence of meaningful links between the process, outcomes, and transfer of PRIDE training, all of which were positive. The project provided essential foundational research which future studies of PRIDE should take into account.

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Research shows that conversations and daily interaction among teachers and children is crucial for their development. Observing children and interpreting their thinking processes is a significant factor in intentionally planning curriculum that emerges from children’s thinking, assists them in making connections, and extends their learning. This article presents findings of a single case design study investigating the effects of the observation and interpretation processes in a Cycle of Inquiry System (COI) (Broderick and Hong in Early Childh Res Pract 13:1–14, 2011) intervention on preschool teachers’ productive conversations with children. The intervention for each teacher consisted of pre and post interviews, a 1-day COI training, use of COI observation and interpretation forms, and coaching meetings with the researcher. The participants were 4 preschool teachers in Northeast Tennessee. Teachers were videotaped in their classrooms working with children during the free play time and coded for productive and non-productive conversation strategies for determining the baseline and changes during the intervention. All the teachers show an increase in productive conversation strategies to differing degrees. The non-overlapping pairs analysis for all participants is represented by a large value. The findings indicate the benefit of training teachers to observe and interpret the meaning of children’s conversations to intentionally plan for productive conversations that impact learning.

Many researchers feel that teacher preparation programs are not doing enough to prepare teachers to effectively use technology. The result is a plethora of teachers who may know the basic functions of different programs, but who are unprepared to integrate these skills into their teaching. One method used by a few preservice programs, including BYU's, is the use of modeling sessions, otherwise referred to as live modeling. In these modeling sessions, the instructor models for the preservice teachers how a K-12 teacher could teach with technology, while the preservice teachers participate as if they were K-12 students. This thesis is a qualitative investigation of how this method of live modeling has impacted students, according to the perceptions of a sample of former students of the course. This project also has a practical focus of identifying strategies for improving modeling, and pitfalls that may indicate when modeling is not as effective. Overall, this study found that modeling was perceived by most students to be effective at teaching technology skills and ideas for integrating technology as teachers. However, there were some students who struggled to abstract principles from the modeling that could help them as teachers. In other words, they struggled to cognitively transfer the learning from the context of the modeling session to their own teaching contexts. In this research I identify five main contextual breakdowns that often occurred among students in the course. These were breakdowns, or differences, between the modeled context and the students' actual contexts that were sufficiently large enough to disrupt the students' abilities to cognitively transfer the learning. By adapting the live modeling method to more specifically address unique students' needs and contexts, then the cognitive transfer of learning should be easier and the method could be a strong tool for training preservice teachers to use technology in their own teaching.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-22T17:26:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Josiane.pdf: 6047437 bytes, checksum: 7ed52c285e70263e8bf9e1b22b21a251 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-03-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Considering the relevance of supervised preservice training for teachers training and the complexity of this activity, this research has as its general aim to investigate characteristics of the work of Portuguese language preservice teaching trainees in order to contribute for the understanding of conflicts arising in this training stage. To do this, we propose the following specific aims: (a) to investigate to whom is directed the activity of Portuguese language teaching trainees during supervised preservice training; (b) to verify from linguistic practices of teaching trainees how discussions about norms applying to their activity arise; (c) to analyze how the use of self by oneself and by others happens during preservice training and (d) to identify discursive clues that refer to the real of the activity of Portuguese language teaching preservice training. Our theoretical background are studies of Bakhtin s Circle that have as their crucial assumption the conception of language as a constitutively dialogical phenomenon, studies that are integrated for the aims of our work with studies carried through by Work Sciences, which consider work a complex object and recognize the importance of analyzing language for adequately understanding it. In accordance with the adopted theoretical perspective and taking into account the importance of having work protagonists talk about the activity they carry through, we created two different speech spaces for research subjects three teaching trainees from the Course of Letters of a private university of a city of Rio Grande do Sul to talk about their preservice training period: (a) individual interviews and (b) the participation in a discussion group. As a parameter for focusing the analysis, considering recurrence and aims to reach, we selected, by examining utterances produced by trainees, three topics in circulation: (a) to whom teaching activity is directed during supervised preservice training, (b) conceptions of Portuguese language teaching and (c) difficulties lived during preservice training. From each topic and considering the reflection's theoretical basis, we analyzed from an enunciative-discursive point of view, trainees utterances produced considering interdependently the specific conditions of research, the situation where verbal interactions materialize and linguistic materiality aspects. Results point to the fact that speech spaces created in the research provided different interactions that produced in alterity relationships several different subjectivity productions and the recognition of part of the complexity of the teaching activity in preservice training. Moreover, considering the dynamic character of human subjects, language, the sense and work activity itself, dimensions traversed by a multiplicity of voices, we point out some characteristics of Portuguese language preservice teaching trainees activity: (a) their work is constituted from the conflicting character of the other to whom they direct their activity and from the restricted space for the use of self, mainly by oneself; (b) their practice is traversed by a permanent tension among antecedent norms (proceeding from different spaces) and the inevitable renormalizations and (c) there is a movement of constant tension between the activity carried through and the real of the activity , and therefore trainees are evaluated at all moments and need to adjust their work to requirements that are not only different but many times divergent from their own points of view / Levando em consideração a importância do estágio supervisionado na formação docente e a complexidade dessa atividade, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo geral investigar características do trabalho de professores-estagiários de língua portuguesa, a fim de contribuir para a compreensão dos conflitos dessa etapa de formação. Para atingir tal objetivo, propomos os seguintes objetivos específicos: (a) investigar para quem é direcionada a atividade do professor de língua portuguesa durante a realização do estágio supervisionado; (b) verificar, a partir das práticas linguageiras dos professores-estagiários, como aparece o debate de normas em sua atividade; (c) analisar como se dá o uso de si por si e pelos outros durante o estágio de língua portuguesa e (d) verificar pistas discursivas que remetem ao real da atividade do professor de língua portuguesa no período de seu estágio. Sob o ponto de vista teórico, partimos dos estudos do Círculo de Bakhtin, que têm como pressuposto básico a concepção de que a linguagem é constitutivamente dialógica, e estabelecemos interlocução com os estudos realizados pelas Ciências do Trabalho que consideram o trabalho como um objeto complexo e reconhecem a importância da análise da linguagem para a sua compreensão. De acordo com a perspectiva teórica adotada e levando em conta a importância de o protagonista do trabalho verbalizar sobre a atividade que realiza, criamos dois diferentes espaços de fala para que os participantes da pesquisa três professores-estagiários, alunos do Curso de Letras de uma universidade particular do interior do Rio Grande do Sul falassem sobre a sua prática de estágio docente: (a) entrevistas individuais e (b) participação em um grupo de discussão. Como critério de entrada na análise, tendo em vista a recorrência e os objetivos propostos, selecionamos, por meio dos enunciados produzidos pelos estagiários, três temas em circulação: (a) o direcionamento da atividade docente durante o estágio supervisionado, (b) concepções referentes ao ensino de língua portuguesa e (c) dificuldades no desenvolvimento do estágio. A partir de cada tema e tendo em vista os pressupostos teóricos que embasam a reflexão, analisamos, sob o ponto de vista enunciativo-discursivo, enunciados dialógicos produzidos considerando, de forma interdependente, as condições específicas de pesquisa, a situação em que se materializam as interações verbais e aspectos da materialidade lingüística. Resultados apontam para o fato de que os espaços de fala criados na pesquisa proporcionaram diferentes interações suscitando, na relação de alteridade, variadas produções de subjetividade e o reconhecimento de parte da complexidade da atividade docente no período de estágio. Além disso, considerando a dinamicidade do sujeito, da linguagem, dos sentidos e da própria atividade laboral, dimensões perpassadas por uma multiplicidade de vozes, destacamos algumas características da atividade do professorestagiário de língua portuguesa: (a) seu trabalho é constituído a partir do caráter conflituoso do direcionamento da atividade e do restrito espaço ao uso de si, principalmente por si; (b) sua prática é perpassada por um embate permanente entre as normas antecedentes (provenientes de diferentes espaços) e as renormalizações e (c) há um movimento de tensão constante entre a atividade realizada e o real da atividade , pois o estagiário é avaliado a todo momento e precisa adequar seu trabalho a exigências distintas, muitas vezes divergentes de seus próprios pontos de vista

Preservice training programs offered in a city in the Pacific Northwest have not been assessed to determine whether they adequately prepare therapeutic foster parents (TFPs). This phenomenological study identified factors that influenced the impact of preservice training on parents' preparation to manage their foster children's behavior, foster parent attrition, and multiple moves of the foster children. Chamberlain, Rork, McNeil, and Christenson's work linking training programs with the success of foster children was used to frame this study. Data were generated from semistructured interviews of 12 certified local TFPs who had completed preservice training and had at least one child placed in their home for at least a weekend. NVivo 10 qualitative analysis software was used to manage the data, which were analyzed via an inductive process. Findings indicated that TFPs felt the training was effective and the information provided was useful in real life situations. Suggestions for improvement included adding additional examples of behavioral issues and personal stories from trainers and facilitating increased interaction among foster parents. TFPs reported that their intrinsic motivations for fostering had more impact on decisions to continue with foster children in their home than did the preservice training. The project generated from the study was a policy recommendation addressed to program stakeholders that could have a significant social impact in developing training to better address behavioral challenges, prevent multiple moves, and promote cultural sensitivity while reinforcing parents' motivation for fostering.