Rationale for this research was based on recent legislative requirements that all teachers must meet the No Child Left Behind of 2001 and Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act of 2004 highly qualified requirements by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which state Department of Education officials representing the 50 states addressed the issue of NCLB of 2001 highly qualified personnel provisions for secondary special education co-teachers. Information for this study was represented by online documents that were retrieved from DOE websites across the United States. Findings suggested that information provided in online documents from state DOE websites that represented the 50 states included a variety of options for special education co-teachers who were required to demonstrate core subject provisions. This study presented five themes regarding the definitions of special education co-teachers. Results in this study showed that depending upon the theme of co-teaching definition cited in online documents a range of six highly qualified options were provided. The information in this study was intended to describe current state policies and aid researchers in the review of the status of secondary special education co-teachers, analysis of current policies, and development on new policies.

California needs high quality teachers, particularly in schools that are located where well- prepared teachers who are committed to teaching urban youth are in short supply. Only 15–18% of traditional teacher candidates state a preference for urban settings. In contrast, the percentage of interns who state that they would prefer to teach in an urban school is 70%. Because of its ability to produce teachers willing to teach in urban schools, the California District Intern Program has been able to help alleviate the shortage of teachers willing to teach in urban settings. A key feature of district intern programs is the requirement to establish cohort structures within each program. The purpose of this study was to describe cohort support as it exists in district intern programs currently in operation in California. This included understanding what effect, if any, cohort participation has on interns' sense of personal teaching efficacy and determining to what extent the relationships formed within the cohorts provide support in both teaching and non-teaching contexts. Additionally, this study provides insight into practice and offers recommendations for improving the cohort system in district intern programs. California district interns affirm the need for cohort groups in learning to teach. There is strong agreement that participation in a cohort is a positive experience and seen by interns as being essential to their success within district intern programs. Additional analysis provided evidence that interns participation in cohort activities specifically tied to reflection is linked to a higher sense of personal teaching efficacy. This is crucial information as there is a direct relationship between teaching efficacy and higher student achievement. Regardless of whether internships exist as a result of a teacher shortage in California or because intern programs are seen as a high quality program for preparing teachers, these novices are expected to learn to teach on the job. There is clear evidence that participation in cohort groups provide interns with the support they feel is necessary for them to be successful in this endeavor. Current programs provide ample opportunities for this to occur, new programs are encouraged to provide the same variety.

Young adult literature is a genre of literature that is often overlooked. Adolescents would greatly benefit from reading young adult novels, academically and also for enjoyment. Educators are not using young adult literature as often as they should in the classrooms as a tool, due to strict curricula. However, young adult literature is a perfect tool for aiding with comprehension of the classic works. Pairing certain young adult books with classics would help adolescents understand the classic novel, but also assist in intriguing the student enough to pick up both books. After an online survey given to nine Seminole County school English or Reading teachers, I found that high school teachers today do feel as though young adult literature would benefit the students greatly.

The most important aspect of an encounter between a patient and his or her provider is the patient's ability to understand and implement the treatment plan and self-care instructions conferred by the provider. However, the literature in the field of patient-provider communication reveals that there is a noticeable gap in health literacy in certain patient populations that impairs their ability to understand pre-, during, and post-encounter paperwork, terminology, treatment plan, and critical self-care instructions. This has been shown to have detrimental consequences on patient health outcomes. The teach-back method, in which providers request patients to repeat key information discussed during the encounter in their own words, has been shown to successfully improve patient satisfaction, self-efficacy, and knowledge post-encounter. This paper seeks to investigate the impact of health literacy and teach-back on patient satisfaction, self-efficacy, and knowledge, and to determine the effect of a teach-back training intervention on the usage of teach-back during a patient-provider encounter. A total of 88 patients and 11 providers participated in this study over the course of two semesters. A pre- and post-encounter questionnaire was provided to patients and a post-encounter questionnaire to providers. Data regarding teach-back instances during the encounter were obtained via transcripts of encounter audio recordings. Training was given to 17 providers between semesters, 11 of whom were participating in a larger study data collection, and pre- and post-training teach-back instances were compared. The data were coded and statistically analyzed. The results were that there was a statistically significant relationship between health literacy and patient satisfaction as well as patient self-efficacy. Additionally, there was a significant relationship between teach-back and patient self-efficacy with an upward trend observed on the knowledge measures post-teach-back. Teach-back interventional training was also seen to have a statistically significant impact on provider use of teach-back during the patient encounter. Additional research in this field observing fidelity of teach-back practice and observing impacts of teach-back on a separate non-student population could be beneficial in improving patient encounters.

No description available.

The research described in this dissertation has its antecedents in my own experiences as a student and teacher of history in both England and the USA. Reflecting back on such experiences as a teacher educator in the US has led to a hypothesis that history teaching is conceptualized and performed differently by teachers in England and the US. This study used contrasting case studies of two English and two American preservice history teachers to illuminate and compare how the development of their understanding of history and evolving construction of self as history teacher influenced their everyday pedagogical performances as they began to teach history. Detailed portraits of teaching developed for this study show how the pedagogical approach to teaching history with an emphasis on developing historical understanding through learning the skills of the discipline of history in England contrast with the American emphasis on content coverage through the pedagogy of telling the tale of the past. The study revealed the participant's adherence to these two contrasting traditions in the teaching of history. This can be understood by examining two continually interweaving components: 1) well remembered events, and interactions associated with learning history and history teaching that form a "biographic conception" of history teaching, and 2) ongoing experiences and expected outcomes of planning and teaching history in a particular way. Within the scope of this study, particular attention was given to the participant's contextual understandings of: A) official history curriculum, B) their cooperating teacher and C) their students as they began to plan and teach history within their internship. The case studies compare and describe how the participants' biographic conceptions of both history and history teaching act as a filter through which the differing expectations of their respective history curriculum, their cooperating teacher and departments were mediated and negotiated. While the biographic conception of history exerted an enduring influence on their understanding of what it means to learn and study history in high school, the study revealed that the participants' ongoing classroom interactions with their students in conjunction with meeting the expectations of their cooperating teachers and departments constrained and limited the participants' perspectives as to what they believed was possible within the history classroom. The case studies here highlight the interactive forces and complexity of learning to become a teacher of history and have further implications for exploring the possibilities and constraints of two competing traditions in the teaching of history. This comparative study raises questions and opportunities for examining such epistemological questions as What is history? and How should it be taught in high school? The work shows that the role of history teacher can be and should be more than a teller of the tale of the past. It also highlights the problems faced by teachers and students when the primary goal of history is focused on the difficult task of learning historical skills and concepts. However, if the goals of history teaching in the US are truly for the development of knowledgeable, critically thinking citizens, then teacher educators must begin to provide opportunities and create communities of practice which encourage preservice teachers to not only break their attachment to the pedagogy of telling but also develop their skills to think historically to the end of organizing learning experiences that emphasize the doing of history within their classrooms. / Ph. D.

A Contabilidade, na qualidade de Ciência voltada à administração e a economia, envolve, a um tempo, um valor específico e uma prática abrangente, na medida em que tem por função orientar, controlar e registrar eventos econômicos proporcionando informações para a tomada de decisões. Esse conceito exige, portanto, dos seus profissionais, uma visão sistêmica, holística e interdisciplinar, que lhes possibilite um desempenho de qualidade. No entanto, as estratégias de ensino utilizadas, ainda hoje, têm priorizando os aspectos operacionais da Contabilidade, em detrimento da sua capacidade informativa, que implica necessariamente juízo de valor. Visando contribuir para dotar o ensino da Contabilidade Geral em nível de 3º grau de um instrumento de aproximação entre a teoria e a prática que reflita melhor a realidade das empresas e suas necessidades das informações contábeis para a tomada de decisões, esta pesquisa objetiva a apresentação de um simulador de transações, em forma de jogo, aplicado ao ensino da Contabilidade Geral. Por meio da pesquisa-ação, desenvolve-se a modelagem de um simulador de transações, em forma de jogo, desdobrando analiticamente a tomada de decisão num processo de planejamento, execução e controle, valendo-se para isso da teoria dos jogos, levando o aprendiz a tomar decisões e fazer julgamento de valor. Ao elaborarmos um simulador de transações e aplicá-lo em sala de aula, a nossa contribuição reside não na estratégia em si, mas, antes, no processo de comunicação, motivando o aluno a participar de uma situação simulada. Importa, sobretudo, a representação, ou seja, a ficção que obriga a trabalhar não apenas tendo em vista o real, mas aquilo que tem a aparência de real, e que possibilita o interesse do jogo para o aluno. Conclui-se da pesquisa que o uso do simulador de transações, em forma de jogo, estimula e favorece o aprendizado dos conteúdos propostos pela disciplina de Contabilidade Geral, proporcionando ao aprendiz a visão abrangente desejada. / Accountancy as a Science oriented to management and economy involves at the same time an specific value and more encompassing practices based on the purpose to guide, control and record economic events providing information for decision making. This concept demands, however, a systemic, holistic and interdisciplinary view from professionals to achieve high quality performance. Nevertheless, teaching strategies used both in the past and today have prioritized the operational aspects of Accountancy to the detriment of its informative ability which involves a judgment of value. The goal of this study is to help in providing an instrument that can bring together theory and practice in the teaching of General Accounting Level 3 that better expresses business reality and the needs of accountable information for decision making. In addition to the presentation of a simulator of business transactions as a game applied to the teaching of General Accounting. This model representation of business transactions as a game will be developed by means of action-research. This game will analytically unfold the decision making during the planning, performance and control of a process using the theory of games and leading the learners to make decisions and judge values. The key factor of this representation of business transactions and its application in class will not be the strategy itself, but the communication process. It will encourage the students to participate in a simulated situation. All in all, the key aspect is the role play, or in other words, the fiction that encourages the work not only having real facts, but also with the representation of real-life situation and this will increase students interest in the game. The final conclusion of this study is that the use of a simulator of business transactions as a game encourages and favors the learning process of the subjects proposed by General Accounting, therefore providing the students with the desirable comprehensive view.

A Contabilidade, na qualidade de Ciência voltada à administração e a economia, envolve, a um tempo, um valor específico e uma prática abrangente, na medida em que tem por função orientar, controlar e registrar eventos econômicos proporcionando informações para a tomada de decisões. Esse conceito exige, portanto, dos seus profissionais, uma visão sistêmica, holística e interdisciplinar, que lhes possibilite um desempenho de qualidade. No entanto, as estratégias de ensino utilizadas, ainda hoje, têm priorizando os aspectos operacionais da Contabilidade, em detrimento da sua capacidade informativa, que implica necessariamente juízo de valor. Visando contribuir para dotar o ensino da Contabilidade Geral em nível de 3º grau de um instrumento de aproximação entre a teoria e a prática que reflita melhor a realidade das empresas e suas necessidades das informações contábeis para a tomada de decisões, esta pesquisa objetiva a apresentação de um simulador de transações, em forma de jogo, aplicado ao ensino da Contabilidade Geral. Por meio da pesquisa-ação, desenvolve-se a modelagem de um simulador de transações, em forma de jogo, desdobrando analiticamente a tomada de decisão num processo de planejamento, execução e controle, valendo-se para isso da teoria dos jogos, levando o aprendiz a tomar decisões e fazer julgamento de valor. Ao elaborarmos um simulador de transações e aplicá-lo em sala de aula, a nossa contribuição reside não na estratégia em si, mas, antes, no processo de comunicação, motivando o aluno a participar de uma situação simulada. Importa, sobretudo, a representação, ou seja, a ficção que obriga a trabalhar não apenas tendo em vista o real, mas aquilo que tem a aparência de real, e que possibilita o interesse do jogo para o aluno. Conclui-se da pesquisa que o uso do simulador de transações, em forma de jogo, estimula e favorece o aprendizado dos conteúdos propostos pela disciplina de Contabilidade Geral, proporcionando ao aprendiz a visão abrangente desejada. / Accountancy as a Science oriented to management and economy involves at the same time an specific value and more encompassing practices based on the purpose to guide, control and record economic events providing information for decision making. This concept demands, however, a systemic, holistic and interdisciplinary view from professionals to achieve high quality performance. Nevertheless, teaching strategies used both in the past and today have prioritized the operational aspects of Accountancy to the detriment of its informative ability which involves a judgment of value. The goal of this study is to help in providing an instrument that can bring together theory and practice in the teaching of General Accounting Level 3 that better expresses business reality and the needs of accountable information for decision making. In addition to the presentation of a simulator of business transactions as a game applied to the teaching of General Accounting. This model representation of business transactions as a game will be developed by means of action-research. This game will analytically unfold the decision making during the planning, performance and control of a process using the theory of games and leading the learners to make decisions and judge values. The key factor of this representation of business transactions and its application in class will not be the strategy itself, but the communication process. It will encourage the students to participate in a simulated situation. All in all, the key aspect is the role play, or in other words, the fiction that encourages the work not only having real facts, but also with the representation of real-life situation and this will increase students interest in the game. The final conclusion of this study is that the use of a simulator of business transactions as a game encourages and favors the learning process of the subjects proposed by General Accounting, therefore providing the students with the desirable comprehensive view.

Co-teaching has been, and continues to be, a growing trend in American schools since the late 1990s. As the popularity of this service delivery model increases, there is an imperative need for empirical research focusing on how co-teaching affects academic outcomes of students who receive special education services. Evidence regarding the academic outcomes of co-teaching is limited, and reports mixed results. The purpose of this study is to provide a synthesis of research examining academic outcomes of co-teaching on students who receive special education services. Quantitative information from each research report was coded, an overall effect size was computed, and a moderator analysis was conducted. Results suggest a significant effect (g = .281, k = 32, p < .05) of co-teaching on the academic outcomes of students with disabilities when compared to students with disabilities who did not receive instruction in co-taught settings; though a larger effect was found among dissertation reports (g = .439, k = 25, p < .001). Additionally, a significant effect was found when examining the academic outcomes of students in co-teaching compared to the academic outcomes of students in a resource classroom setting (g = .435, k = 27, p < .001. Lastly, effects were stronger the longer these students were in co-teaching environments. Implications of findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.

The process of ‘learning to teach’ is still not well understood. In particular, existing research does not fully reflect the complexities of the process; how student teachers’ level of subject matter knowledge influences their teaching, or how their placement affects the process. This study provides an alternative nonlinear, relational model for understanding the process of ‘learning to teach’. I study the ways in which 66 BEd students teach during eight school-based Teaching Experience sessions, conducted over the four year duration of their preservice teaching degree. I primarily draw on evidence obtained from lesson observation reports written by university tutors as they respond to lessons taught by this cohort of student teachers. I cluster their comments into five facets necessary for enabling learning, namely, student teachers’ knowledge and understanding of content; their preparation; their teaching strategies; their classroom management; and the ways in which they monitor learning. These five facets have links to the process of teaching described by Shulman’s (1987b) Model of Pedagogical Reasoning and Action. Within each of these five facets, varying levels of competence were demonstrated by the student teachers in this study. I develop an analytical tool that describes four developmental levels of student teaching over each of the five facets of the teaching process. An in-depth study of the developmental teaching portraits of five student teachers illustrates that they are often more advanced in some facets of their teaching, and less so in others. The portraits highlight the ways in which certain facets affect teaching in other facets. The interactions between these differing levels and facets give rise to particular challenges that student teachers experience as they ‘learn to teach’. Some of these challenges are more significant than others, as certain inter-facet relationships are essential to the development of pedagogically reasoned action, and other relationships are less crucial. My findings suggest that although ‘learning to teach’ is a non-linear process, there nevertheless exists a logical hierarchy within the facets, whereby some facets create conditions of possibility for others. In particular, I find that the way in which student teachers use their knowledge and understanding of the content to inform other facets, establishes the 2 logical conditions necessary for the development of teaching as pedagogically reasoned action.