This survey addressed the experience of receiving tenure through the personal narratives of Directors of Library and Information Science Schools in the USA. Fifty-five respondents were asked to rank the emphasis of the variables operating in tenure based on their experience. Participants agreed that the granting of autonomy via tenure was an opportunity to exercise academic freedom. With tenure came the responsibility to contribute as a citizen of both the institutional and disciplinary communities of the profession. The most prominent factor in determining tenure and promotion decisions for LIS faculty is demonstration of research productivity through peer reviewed publications: articles, books and conference proceedings. Teaching and service are also important components of academic life. It was found that collaboration underpinned collegiality and created an environment conducive to research. In turn, the stability and collegiality of a tenured position made the institution work as a teaching and learning environment.

This case study examined the evolution of a partnership between a middle school mathematics teacher and a university researcher around discussions on the content and teaching of mathematics. In particular, the study sought to examine the evolution of the partnership, the constraints present for the teacher and researcher, the impact of the partnership on the mathematical and pedagogical issues that arose in planning, teaching, and assessment, and the impact on the tasks that the teacher chose and implemented in the classroom. Drawing from the literature on collaborations and the emergent perspective, the evolution of the partnership occurred through three stages, determined by the content-teaching tensions. The first stage focused on the mathematics content, with the agenda being set and run by the researcher. The second stage gave rise to the content-teaching tensions as the teacher shifted the discussions from content to a focus on lesson planning and teaching. Tensions were resolved in the third stage with the teacher taking a proactive role in the discussions of lesson design and teaching. The mathematical issues in planning and teaching reflected the shift in the partnership where in the beginning the discussions focused on the mathematical content, later discussions centered on a combination of content, pedagogy, and student thinking. The assessment discussions addressed differences between the language of the curriculum and the district and state tests.The shift in the partnership can be attributed to the teacher's choice of high level mathematics tasks, the subsequent adoption of a conceptually based mathematics curriculum and the effective management of the dialectic tensions by both partners. This study illustrated that generating perturbations and effective management of dialectical tensions has the potential for a fruitful collaboration between teachers and researchers.

The main purpose of this thesis is to deepen the current understanding of how the teacher self is constructed. Specifically, the study intends to integrate into this understanding the way in which language personal, professional, and student teacher identities inform this process. A special emphasis is placed on the role that language teachers’ life histories play on the construction of teacher selves. Narrative research constitutes the research design for this thesis project since I strongly believe that selves are narratively constructed through stories. This study is focused on the storied self (Chase, 2005) that is co-constructed between the researcher and narrator that reveals how personal, professional, and student teacher identities resist and interact with discursive environments in order to create and recreate a language teacher’s self. Life histories constitute the source of data collection in this study. This facilitated the construction of a broader understanding of how six language teachers’ personal, professional, and student teacher identities are shaped throughout a lifetime and the way these impact the formation of the teacher self. The results suggest that language teachers’ selves are in close relation to emotions. Language teachers negotiate their identities and emotions in order to make sense of the different sets of values that the social context presents to them. This in turn leads them to create/recreate their own teacher selves that serve as sources of agency that generates new sets of social/moral rules or stagnation that leads to the preservation of the current status quo. The thesis concludes by providing a series of suggestions tailored to the needs of the teaching context where this research took place with the purpose of fostering a continuous engagement with individual actors and socio-cultural factors that motivate transformation through reflection.

Language practices around the world have experienced a significant shift in the last number of years (McDermott, 2011; Walsh, 2005). Communities that continue to speak minority or heritage languages, such as Irish Gaelic, have felt the effects of the various social, political and economic pressures that have gone hand in hand with globalization, resulting in a breakdown in intergenerational transmission (Anderson, 2011; Hornberger, 1998; Norris, 2004). In the Republic of Ireland, the education system has been set as the corner stone of Irish language revitalization efforts since the 1920s, thereby assigning much responsibility to Irish language teachers. Yet, there is a dearth of existing research that gives voice to Irish teachers, and their experiences and motivations to teach a language that just 1.8% of the population speak on a daily basis remain unclear (National Census of Ireland, 2011). In this study, I engage with teachers from both Gaeltacht (where Irish is spoken as a first language) and primarily English speaking parts of Ireland, in order to give a broader account of Irish teachers’ experiences in different educational settings. In addition, I look to identify what implications a better understanding of teacher motivation could have for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs offered to Irish teachers, and situate these recommendations within the current educational policies that exist within the Irish education system. / February 2017

Only two years after graduating themselves, speech and language therapists are asked to act as placement educators and supervise student speech and language therapists. The role of the placement educator is to supervise, teach, support and assess the student in the clinical environment and as such is a complex and demanding role. Some previous research has suggested that the training and support provided to developing placement educators does not adequately prepare them for the role. However, the development of speech and language therapists as placement educators is a relatively under-researched area in the UK. This interpretive study explores how ten speech and language therapists feel they develop the necessary skills to be successful as placement educators, through the stories they tell about their experiences. This exploration of clinical education and professional development is set within a social constructivist perspective on learning. The participants talked at length of their own early experiences as students and described these as the starting point for their own enactment of the placement educator role. They also emphasised the importance of continuing to learn and develop their skills as they gained experience in the placement educator role itself. The themes of talk, collaboration, reflective practice and experiential learning were central to the stories told by the participants and underpin how these speech and language therapists learnt to be placement educators. It is suggested that in describing how she felt she learnt to be a placement educator each participant created a unique and dynamic map of that learning. This study contributes to the on-going discussion about the role of critical reflection in understanding and challenging established practice and reinforces the place of reflective practice as integral to both the clinical and placement educator aspects of the SLT’s role. The findings highlight the importance of peer support and shared opportunities for critical reflection with colleagues in ensuring that placement educators do not feel isolated or disillusioned.

Inquiry is a learning stance that affords students with a variety of engagements to learn about a concept. It is a collaborative process where students think together, work together and talk together to develop their understanding of the issue they face. Inquiry supports teachers in creating highly recommended learning environments for students. Educators know the importance of the relationship between teachers and students and the influence on students' learning development and achievement in school. These goals can be reached through understanding classroom environments and informing teachers about an inquiry approach in teaching. This understanding will also improve teacher’s knowledge and help him/her professionally interact with students. This research explored the experiences and perspectives of eleven Saudi female educators on their learning experiences as students and as teachers in two different settings, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., and two different teaching strategies, a traditional teaching approach and a learning centered approach. I used a qualitative approach to design this study to ask my participants about their learning and teaching experiences before and after studying abroad. In-depth interviews allowed me to access their perspectives and how they created meaning out of experience. I used in-depth interviews, using focus group interviews for the third question only with the participants in Tucson because I wanted to explore an inquiry related to a group of people linked by their background culture. Throughout this study, the data was gathered and analyzed to answer three general questions: 1. What are the teaching and learning experiences of Saudi teachers? 2. How do the experiences of Saudi teachers impact their thinking about teaching practices and the curriculum in their classrooms? 3. What are the perspectives of Saudi women who either are teaching or have teaching experience on the type of learning experiences needed for Saudi Arabian pre-service and in-service teachers? The findings revealed that the participants in this study supported developing and working toward achieving reforms in education in Saudi Arabia. The participants' previous experience impacted them in thinking about their own teaching in their classrooms. All of the participants supported development of the education of teachers in Saudi Arabia. The participants' responses to this question revealed the need for ongoing professional development and redesigning teacher preparation programs around key principles of engagement and inquiry.

The problem of this study was to develop and analyze a useful approach to the professional development of faculty members in schools of business through the technique of self-appraisal. This study contained the following subdivisions: (1) a review of current college faculty development practices, (2) a review of current executive development practices within industry, (3) an explanation of the philosophy and technique of self-appraisal in professional development, (4) an application of the technique in six institutions of higher education, and (5) an analysis of results obtained from these institutions along with some suggestions for further research.

The purpose of this study was to understand professional development for paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD in Virginia. This understanding was reached through explanatory, sequential mixed methods design. Surveys and interviews provided insight into training practices, training needs, and training barriers. An interpretation of their professional development was developed through considering the perceptions of paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD, teachers of students with ASD, and directors of special education. Findings revealed a lack of supervision, training, and skills. The lack of training and supervision resulted in paraprofessionals learning through trial and error. Paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD felt qualified to complete their duties as a result of personal disposition and effective supervision. Paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD desired individualized training concerning behavior management. The results of this study provide several recommendations for training content and delivery format. It also provided a theoretical framework for explaining how paraprofessionals supporting students with ASD experience training.

Studies have shown that mentoring is a viable form of professional development.Faced with large numbers of retirements and a projected increase in student enrollment, the issues of recruitment, retention and revitalization of current faculty are at the core of this study. There is little empirical research on the phenomenon of structured or formal mentoring in higher education from the perspective of both the mentee and the mentor.The purpose of this study was to identify, describe, and analyze the perceived benefits that both senior or more experienced faculty mentors and junior or new-to-the institution faculty mentees at a large urban research university received from participating in a structured faculty mentoring program.A nonexperimental, descriptive study was designed to explore these issues. The method used to collect data was a survey questionnaire. Utilizing both descriptive and correlational statistics, the most notable findings revolved around the significance of sharing aspects of institutional culture by older, more experienced faculty members. Independent samples t-tests performed on ten subscales by participant type were significant at the p≤0.05 level. Specifically, mentors gave higher ratings for Scale 3, Institutional Culture and Scale 10, Value of One-to-one Activities. Mentees gave higher ratings for Scale 5, Psychosocial Compatibility elements.The findings also indicated that women gave higher value to the personal, psychosocial aspects of being involved in the structured mentoring program than men. Women gave higher ratings for Scale 5, Psychosocial Compatibility and Scale 8, Psychosocial Compatibility and Activity Elements.Correlations for faculty members years of experience at this institution as well astheir total years of being faculty members in higher education found faculty members at the current institution with greater years experience was positively correlated with Scale 3, Institutional Culture (r = .33). Total faculty years in higher education was also positively correlated with Scale 3, Institutional Culture (r = .40) and Scale 10, Value of One-to-one Activities (r = .27). The findings also suggest areas of emphasis administrators might use in designing and implementing faculty development activities that involve formal mentoring by more experienced faculty in order to obtain the greatest benefit for all participants.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Donna Augustine-Shaw / Jessica Holloway / School superintendents have traditionally been removed from the systemic process of learning in a school district and instead of been considered more indirect supporters of student achievement. Now, in the face of changing leadership standards, they are being required to provide leadership that more directly enhances student learning by way of teacher professional development. This case study takes a deeper look into the process of the superintendent’s role in district professional development. This will include a purposeful examination to clearly understand the superintendent’s role in designing, implementing, and monitoring professional development in the school district. The study includes (a) the meaning of professional development; (b) examination of school leadership theories and roles; and (c) analysis of how professional development impacts the classroom design of a district instructional framework for professional development.