<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>

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Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / In this critical ethnography I examined Teach First, the U.K. teacher education program modeled after Teach For America (TFA). Teach First described itself as "a unique business-led programme dedicated to addressing educational disadvantage by placing elite graduates in the schools that need them most" (Teach First, 2010). Teach First was thus problematically positioned at the crossroads of both neoliberal and progressive ideologies. My research addressed this problem by uncovering Teach First's theory of teacher education for social justice by applying a framework developed by Marilyn Cochran-Smith (2010) to interviews, observations, and artifacts that I collected at the 2008 Teach First Summer Institute. I then critiqued this theory using the tools of "Policy Sociology," a British research tradition that examines the political, ideological, and economic assumptions that drive education policy. My research led me to identify Teach First as a "progressive neoliberal" (Lahann and Reagan, in press) organization which is driven entirely by a theory of teacher education for social justice based on the idea of justice as distribution. This theory explains why the staff of Teach First appreciated the organization to have a mission of social justice while at the same time endorsing and promoting neoliberal policies which conflict with many theories of teacher education for social justice that draw from theories of justice as recognition. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This qualitative study explores how knowledge and concepts of knowledge are experienced in an undergraduate teacher education course that employs a community of enquiry pedagogy. As designer and facilitator of the course I engaged students in enquiries and enquiry-based activities to learn about art. Using an action-research approach I made changes to the course design in response to how it played out. The art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa was the focus of our study and students developed structured and logical ‘frameworks’ for analysing artworks as well as playing with laterally extending concepts such as art, justice, equality and humanity. The findings suggest that the dialogical and embodied practice of a community of enquiry pedagogy strongly influenced my students’ and my own awareness of knowledge as a creative and experiential opening up and as a companion to the equally valuable experience of not knowing. Teaching within this epistemological framework demands democratic and reflexive pedagogies such as the community of enquiry.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students, students of color, and students with disabilities are failing school and being pushed out at much higher rates that majority populations students while also experiencing high rates of bullying, harassment, and physical violence in school. This study explores efforts to reduce the violent experiences and academic disparities for these students through teacher practice at the classroom level. It examines public pedagogy and conflict pedagogy as curricular strategies in a preservice teacher education course over 5 years. The course aims to develop and support an advocate/activist teacher identity, a teacher identity that is not neutral and can challenge and disrupt the ideas and practices that have become normalized in our schools. This research draws on three theoretical frameworks to inform the design and analysis of this study on teacher identity: poststructuralism, feminist pragmatism, and queer theory. These theories provide a conceptual vocabulary for critically examining anti-oppressive teacher education curricula. Specifically, this work looks at the way public and conflict pedagogy can be used to achieve anti-oppressive curricular ends through the potential impact on preservice teacher identity.

This thesis deals with the preparatory education of Geography teachers at the Faculty of Science of Charles University and looks at it from many perspectives.The basis is the content analysis of study plans which are also evaluated through interviews with former graduates, now teachers of Geography. Furthermore, representatives of academic community were interviewed in order to present the current state and vison of preparatory education of Geography teachers at the Faculty of Science of Charles University. The aim of the thesis is to make a comprehensive study of open dialogue between students, graduates and academic staff, in order to characterize the current education of Geography teachers and to evaluate the outcome.

Thesis advisor: Lillie R. Albert / Mathematics education is constantly at the forefront of public and academic debates during this era of increased accountability. Questions concerning teacher preparation and teaching practices that connect to pupil learning are central to these discussions. However, very few studies have examined relationships among these factors and most are confined to a short time period; thus, this dissertation studies such relationships over a two-year period. Informed by a sociocultural perspective, this study examines how preservice elementary teachers' past K-12 schooling and teacher education experiences influences their attitudes and perceptions about mathematics education over time. It also explores how teaching practices are shaped by these experiences, and are ultimately linked to pupil learning. A mixed-method design of survey and qualitative case-study research methods was employed to collect and analyze data over a two-year period. During the first year of this study, pre- and post-surveys using Likert-scale items were administered to all preservice teachers (n=75) enrolled in an elementary mathematics methods course. For a two-year period, the experiences of two participants were explored through longitudinal interviews, observations, and an examination of artifacts (i.e., teacher lesson plans, assessments, and pupil work) to develop in-depth case studies. Findings indicate that prior schooling experiences influenced teachers' initial attitudes and perceptions about mathematics. Nevertheless, over a short period, positive changes in teachers' attitudes and confidence to teach mathematics suggest that experiences in the mathematics methods course were conducive to building on teachers' prior knowledge. Survey and case-study findings also indicate that preservice teachers planned to teach mathematics with a reformed approach, which emphasizes a conceptual understanding of mathematic. However, it was challenging for case-study participants to implement a reformed approach as first-year teachers, especially if they had limited teaching models to reinforce this method. Findings also suggest that school context, classroom management, and mathematical content knowledge all influence teaching practices and pupil learning opportunities. Implications for teacher education, school reform, and future research are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Larry H. Ludlow / Teacher preparation programs face an urgent call to prepare high-quality and "highly qualified" teachers who teach all students in an increasingly culturally, racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse student population, and who work toward closing the achievement gap that separates students along these demographic lines. In response, and as part of the current accountability context, there has been greater focus on outcomes in teacher education. Along different lines, also in response to these challenges, there has been an increase in social justice-oriented teacher preparation programs. This dissertation operates within both of these contexts. Specifically, this dissertation examines one of the many outcomes of teacher education for social justice: teacher candidates' changing beliefs about teaching for social justice and the factors that may or may not be related to their change. Using primarily Rasch rating scale and multiple regression analyses, this dissertation examines longitudinal survey data from two cohorts of undergraduate teacher candidates (N=134) who completed the same social justice-oriented teacher education program. By investigating two cohorts of teacher candidates at the time of entry into the teacher education program and again when they graduated four years later, this study investigated individuals in the aggregate, variability within and across cohorts, and change across time. In addition, this research sought to untangle and identify whether reported experiences and perceptions before and during formal teacher education are related to beliefs about and commitment to teaching for social justice. Findings suggest that from the time of entry to graduation, candidates' beliefs about teaching for social justice were significantly more aligned with the concepts and principles endorsed by the teacher preparation program. Additionally, at particular points in time and across time, there were identifiable perceptions and experiences related to their beliefs about teaching for social justice. In particular, the location of the student teaching experience and candidates' perceptions of their teacher education faculty were significant predictors of their beliefs about teaching for social justice. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / Preparing students to participate in a democratic society means cultivating citizens who are capable of making informed, rational decisions about complex issues related to the common good. In order to do this, teachers need to provide students learning opportunities that promote critical thinking and involve in-depth examination of meaningful content. Drawing on Gutmann's (1987) theory of democratic education, this dissertation examines how beginning teachers who were prepared in a teacher education program that emphasized social justice and democratic practices think about and engage their students in this type of work. Specifically, using Newmann's (1996) framework of "authentic intellectual work" as an indicator of knowledge consistent with democratic education, this dissertation examines the extent to which the learning opportunities teachers create and the work that students produce demonstrate authentic intellectual work and examines the degree to which teachers' understandings of student learning align with authentic intellectual work. This qualitatively-oriented mixed methods study (Creswell, Plano Clark, Gutmann, & Hanson, 2003; Morse & Niehaus, 2009) used quantitative and qualitative methods concurrently to examine 11 beginning teachers' experiences during the preservice period and first two years of teaching. Using the Teacher Assessment/Pupil Learning protocol, this study draws upon quantitative methods to evaluate teachers' assessments/assignments (n=53) and students' work (n=481) on these assignments and qualitative methods to analyze interviews (n=54). Findings suggest that these beginning teachers and their students engaged in "moderate" levels of authentic intellectual work, although this varied widely. The quality of assessments was positively correlated to the quality of student learning. The degree to which teachers fostered authentic learning opportunities is complicated by teachers' beliefs about assessment and student learning and particular contextual factors such as time, accountability frameworks, classroom management, student ability, and content area. Teachers whose goals for learning aligned with authentic intellectual work were more likely to construct more authentic learning opportunities. This dissertation argues that evaluations of teacher performance and student learning must account for the quality of learning and utilize multiple measures of evaluation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.