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This thesis is concerned with the training of Italian secondary school teachers of English as a Foreign Language. It identifies the training needs and requirements of these teachers and subsequently analyses in-service training courses offered both in Italy and the UK. The, aim is to see if these courses meet the requirements and expectations of Italian trainees and, if not, to develop recommendations on how these courses could be improved. The starting point of this research is the increased recognition of the effectiveness of the non-native speaking teacher. While in the past native English speakers were perceived as the 'ideal'. teachers of the language, it has recently been recognised that non-native English speaking teachers have an equal chance of becoming successful teachers. However, there has been very little research focusing on the requirements of non-native English speaker trainees and similarly there has been minimal feedback on what works and does not work in teacher education programmes. This thesis aims to contribute to the ongoing teacher related research in order to gain a deeper understanding of the specific training requirements of Italian teachers of E.F.L., so that their full potential may be realised. The thesis illustrates in detail the Italian school system, the Modem Foreign Language undergraduate curricula and the recruitment system for teachers in Italy, three elements which play a crucial role in determining the in-service training needs of Italian teachers of E.F.L. The thesis also provides a detailed description of the Italian State Special Project for Foreign Languages (P.S.L.S.), a national training project aimed at in-service teachers of Foreign Languages. The thesis analyses data coming from surveys aimed at Italian teachers of English. One survey devised by the author was carried out among teachers attending training events at the British Council in Milan. A second survey analysed was based on data provided by the I.R.R.S.A.E. (Regional Institute for Research and In-service Training) Lombardy, resulting from a questionnaire completed by a large number of lower and higher secondary school teachers of English working in the region. The results of the analysis of these surveys provide important information about the requirements of these teachers and identify where these needs have not been satisfied in the training courses they have attended in the past. The thesis subsequently examines the training courses currently available to Italian teachers of E.F.L., both in Italy and the UK. Data coming from a survey conducted among P.S.L.S. trainers supply information about the general structure and content of these courses. The thesis also analyses material obtained from UK institutions and illustrates, and comments on, the variety of programmes of study currently available to Italian teachers of English. Suggestions are put forward on how both P.S.L.S. and UK based courses could be improved in an effort to overcome trainees' difficulties and meet their requirements and needs. The thesis concludes with recommendations for further work which include those areas where the analysis of teachers' requirements would benefit from expansion and where the evaluation proccss of existing training courses could be refined.

<p> In this qualitative study, comprised of interviews and observations, I explore how discourses of disability circulating within the epistemologies and practices of four general education teachers at two different public elementary schools. Utilizing a Foucauldian lens, I am particularly interested in how these teachers responded to the power/knowledge claims asserted through the dominant medicalized discourse of disability institutionally employed and deployed through special education and the public school system writ large. Moreover, I have looked for acts of resistance, or in the parlance of Foucault (1983), "modes of action," recognizing that the formation of resistance is both a precondition and consequence of the exercising of power, and that power is the medium through which social change occurs. </p><p> In one of the schools, Taft, I encountered a school culture in which the institutional and discursive authority of special education and a medicalized discourse appeared deeply entrenched in the school culture encasing teachers, administrators and children within a network of power relations. This network discursively produced children identified with disabilities as unable to learn in general education classrooms, and general education teachers as unable to teach all children. Within this environment, opportunities for interrogation and resistance were nullified. In the other school, Bedford, I encountered a school culture in which the institutional and discursive authority of special education and a medicalized discourse appeared diminished, absent the institutional authority of special education. In its stead, appeared an internal bureaucratic discourse of assessment and accountability, concerned primarily with issues of compliance. With instruction and classroom management discursively organized, teachers were produced as officers of compliance, mobilized as agents in the discursive production of docile and compliant children. </p><p> Yet, with a weak administration and in the absence of an institutionalized special education apparatus within the school, I posit that at Bedford a localized alternative discourse circulated within the school, and that opportunities for interrogation and resistance arose in particular classrooms, with particular teachers, and in particular moments of time. However, despite an apparent disassociation from a medicalized discourse at Bedford, escaping the underlying assumptions of the medicalized discourse proved unreachable, if not impossible, and it continued to shape classroom teachers, and their notions of disability and inclusion as well as their perceptions and interactions with special education.</p>

Despite the potential and increased availability of media technology, including advanced technologies such as computers and CD-ROM multimedia, teachers' actual use of technology, and particularly of the advanced technologies, in FLT/L in higher education in Korea still tends to be limited. The purposes of this study were, therefore: 1) to investigate the current patterns and contexts of teachers' (and for reference, students') use of media technology and their attitudes towards its use in FLT/L at university level in Korea; 2) to examine the cause of problems and the possibilities of improvement in its use in FLT/L; and 3) based on these findings, to suggest some solutions and strategies for applying them to the Korean context. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were adopted, i.e., questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observations were used to collect the data required for this study. The subjects consisted of forty-eight teachers who teach English (and 535 students) at twelve universities in the central districts in Korea. In addition, workshopbased experiments were carried out to gather additional data on teachers' opinions and to evaluate the implications of the study. This study shows that the majority of Korean teachers (and students) have positive attitudes towards the use of media technology in FLT/L, with generally no significant gender and years of teaching experience (and academic years) differences, although they make little use of it. The study suggests that the availability of media technology equipment and appropriate materials in particular, teachers' knowledge of it, and proper teacher training have a positive impact on teachers' attitudes towards its use, and are, in addition to their positive attitudes, the other main factors influencing its successful implementation in FLT/L. It is concluded that to provide the teachers with sufficient knowledge of the capabilities of media technology and to encourage wider use, more access to hardware and software is necessary, and training to familiarise teachers with the hardware and software and its potential for language teaching is essential. Therefore, suggestions are made for the effective use of existing facilities, and for a model that could be adopted for teacher training courses.

<p> This ethnography reconceptualizes the paradigm of cultural competence used within the literature on teacher education to describe the multicultural learning of White teacher candidates. Within the cultural competence framework, White learning is problematic, dichotomously defined, and fixed. The binary of competence/incompetence established by this paradigm has recently been questioned within the literature as deficit-based and in conflict with postmodern, critical theories of learning and teaching espoused by multicultural education espouses. </p><p> This study of the researcher's multicultural education class at a private, religious, four-year undergraduate college on the East Coast of the United States used co-constructed pedagogical practices&mdash;including a co-constructed community engagement experience, dialogic critical reflection, student-led inquiry-based seminars, and student-teacher email dialogues&mdash;to reconceptualize White multicultural learning as a dynamic process involving both teacher candidates and the teacher educator. As such, this work is co-ethnographic because it analyzed the learning of both the researcher and her students. </p><p> The study found that antiracist White learning within multiple, co-constructed approaches on a public/private spectrum is related to learners' placeling identities; multicultural learning was a migration and re-negotiation of the histories of White learners' homes and geographies. This re-negotiation&mdash;called de-/reterritorialization&mdash;occurred within a dialectic of Whiteness as space and Whiteness as places; both universal characteristics and local expressions of Whiteness were important in the learning of this classroom. White placeling de-/reterritorialization was also found to be unique to each learner, thereby reconceptualizing White learners as diverse. In addition, White placeling de-/reterritorialization was incremental and agentic, extending previous studies' findings that White learners are disinterested and resistant within multicultural teacher education classrooms. </p><p> Within this study, patterns of de-/reterritorialization emerged as particular learning dynamics between the researcher and the teacher candidates; these dynamics included guarding and stagnating, pushing/pulling, and inviting. These patterns, their uniqueness within the encountering of placeling identities' borders, and the attempts at antiracist learning that were made by the White teacher candidates in this classroom offer a reconceptualization of cultural competence that is geographic and complex. Placeling de-/reterritorialization resists the flattening of White identities too often found in the multicultural literature, situates place as the site of antiracist inquiry when working with White learners, and offers a new paradigm for teaching and researching with White teacher candidates.</p>

<p>The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the educator&rsquo;s perception of the optimal professional development experience. Research studies have concluded that the biggest indicator to predict student achievement is teacher effectiveness (Aaronson, Barrow, &amp; Sander, 2007; Marzano, 2003; Sanders &amp; Horn, 1998; Wong 2001). Guskey (2000) stated, &ldquo;Never before in the history of education has greater importance been attached to the professional development of educators&rdquo; (p. 3). School districts continue to face reduced budgets and continue to expend resources on professional development. In addition, states such as Indiana have recently changed their evaluation system to encourage more professional development at the school and district level. A survey was created to analyze educator perceptions of professional development in five Midwest states: Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. The survey collected basic teacher demographic data: gender (male/female), licensure (elementary K&ndash;5, secondary 6&ndash;12), years of experience (0&ndash;5, 6&ndash;10, 11&ndash;15, 16&ndash;20, and 20 or more), and position type (teacher/principal). The survey consisted of 35 questions that focused on educator perceptions of professional development. In all, 396 educators from 18 school districts across five Midwest states responded to the survey instrument. A statistical analysis of the responses provided composite mean scores and standard deviations. A factorial ANOVA was used to test the first hypothesis. An independent samples t-test was used to test the second, fourth, and fifth hypotheses. A one-way ANOVA was used to test the third hypothesis. There was a significant difference between position type (teacher/principal) and licensure (elementary K&ndash;5, secondary 6&ndash;12) on their perceptions of professional development. Principals responded with a higher perception of professional development than teachers. Elementary licensure, K&ndash;5th grade teachers, also responded with a higher perception of professional development. There was no significant difference between gender (male/female) and years of experience (0&ndash;5, 6&ndash;10, 11&ndash;15, 16&ndash;20, and 20 or more). Educators responded that their perception of the most effective forms of professional development were having more time to work with colleagues (86.6%), using a professional learning community model (85.7%), and attending conferences and workshops (84.9%). In addition, educators had a higher perception of the effectiveness of professional development at the school level versus the district level. </p>

This research documented inservice teachers and college instructors perspectives on a long standing professional development education program in American Samoa. This research study gathered and analyzed a wide array of interview responses that a defined group of educators' shared-responses that relate to cultural, professional, and educational issues about students, instructors and professional development curriculum in American Samoa. Initially this study sought to assess the effectiveness of a mentorship program, analyzing how it supported professional development and incorporated interagency communication. A closer look and further interpretation of several themes (i.e., discourses of culture, language, and curriculum within the professional development model) as they came to be present in the interview sessions, established how colonial characteristics of the past have impacted and created an educational system in American Samoa that historically and currently moved away from the traditional Pacific ways and toward closer alignment with the educational system of the West. This dissertation study sought to understand and address how these stated discourses impacted: (1) Indigenous cultural and language education; (2) culturally appropriate professional development for indigenous and non-indigenous educators; (3) culturally relevant curriculum for the Pacific people; and (4) colonizing educational practices in the Pacific and the West. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2002. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 190-198). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / x, 198 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2416. Adviser: Sarah McCarthey. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-175) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3797. Adviser: Barry Bull. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 8, 2008).