<p>This dissertation takes on a key and persistent challenge within teacher education: pre-service teacher learning in field experience. I approach this historical problem through its local manifestations, and this study examines an intervention that brought together three university supervisors and six classroom mentor teachers from one university-school partnership for seven meetings over the six months of student teaching. Framed by Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the emergent design of the Mentoring Study Group intervention aimed to provoke expansive learning (Engestr&ouml;m, 1987; 2001) to transform how practitioners understand their work and to support them in constructing new tools and concepts for practice for themselves. Qualitative methods were used to examine the key problems of practice participants identified, the new tools and concepts for practice they developed, and to interpret learning in terms of the expansive learning conceptual model to understand how features of the model design enabled the group to broaden their understanding and coordinate their work. Results demonstrate that through participation in the structured collaboration offered by the emergent professional development approach, participants were able to uncover a fundamental contradiction embedded within teacher preparation, between goals of helping pre-service teachers develop ambitious instructional practice and preparing pre-service teachers to lead &ldquo;formula lessons.&rdquo; In attempting to confront and resolve this contradiction, the Mentoring Study Group devised a shared tool to coordinate their work, The Five High-Leverage Math Practices +1 Protocol and field-based pedagogical practices to guide modeling, observations, and feedback on teaching. This model of structured collaboration for teacher education practitioners holds promise for university-school partnership efforts to come together to develop shared approaches to mentoring and a common language of practice for the purpose of preparing beginning teachers for ambitious practice in the field. </p>

<p>The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of accomplished teaching practitioners by tracing the development of the teaching expertise of participants using a narrative inquiry frame. This allowed time and space for participants to engage in making meaning of the memories of lived teaching experiences. This perspective took into account the influence of the cultures and contexts in which the teacher was situated prior to, during, and after engaging in the National Board process. The implications of the study indicated engaging in continuous reflection enabled teachers to mitigate problems by framing and reframing practices. Educators at all levels may do well to pause, reflect, and reconsider the how the structures of public school might be altered so that teachers have the spaces they need to learn to teach in ways that ensure all students, particularly those with a support system that is significantly different from the backgrounds of their teachers, are provided with an equitable education. School leaders might choose to consider how the disparate cultural history of teachers and students influences the teaching practices in their school and community context, which may diminish the likelihood of equity, access, and fairness for learning by all students. Emphasis on creating pathways for culturally diverse future educators will continue to be of concern as our knowledge of the growing diversity of our students depends on constructing understandings of their actual, not perceived, educational needs. </p>

<p> Four decades of university-based teacher education reform has failed to yield favorable outcomes in teacher effectiveness in P-12 schools. A rising tide of reform and criticism from governmental agencies and neo-liberal reformers has resulted in one-dimensional, structural approaches to impacting teacher effectiveness, based on the assumption that teacher effectiveness is universal across all school contexts. This study suggests that for university-based teacher education programs to impact teacher effectiveness, particularly in high-needs, high-minority schools, they must: a) define teacher effectiveness, b) contextualize the impact of high-needs, high-minority schools on teacher effectiveness, and c) provide the knowledge, structure and disposition to be effective teachers in the high-needs, high-minority context. To meet this task, this study boldly employs a post-modern theoretical positioning of the university-based teacher educator, one with professional experience or service in high-needs, high-minority schools, as the leading change agent in impacting teacher effectiveness in high-needs, high-minority schools. </p><p> Through a qualitative research design, this study utilizes phenomenology to uncover the lived experiences of qualifying teacher educators, those with experience and service in high-needs, high-minority schools, to define teacher effectiveness, effective teacher characteristics, and the uniqueness of the high-needs, high-minority urban school context. Through semi-structured, open-ended interviews, the lived experiences of qualifying teacher educators were gathered and analyzed using the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method of analysis to describe the shared experience of teacher effectiveness in high-needs, high-minority urban schools. </p><p> Findings suggest three themes that align respectively with each research question. When determining the effectiveness of teacher educators for preparation of pre-service teachers to enter high-needs, high-minority schools, <i> dispositions matter.</i> When conceiving teacher effectiveness within high-needs, high-minority urban schools, <i>responsiveness matters</i>. When reflecting on what makes the high-needs, high-minority urban learning environment different from what is thought of as the traditional school environment, findings suggest that <i>people matter.</i> What emerges as the composite experience of effectiveness in the high-needs, high-minority urban schools, is the significance of the <i>counter-narrative</i> focus. </p>

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<p> Teacher preparation programs are making concerted efforts to prepare practitioners to transform urban education. Current studies rely heavily on self-reported data with little to no inclusion of the voices of teachers or perceptions of principals. This qualitative case study aimed to fill that gap by exploring how alumni of one social justice&ndash;themed University Teacher Preparation Program (UTPP) defined and implemented socially just teaching practices in urban elementary classrooms. Participants included six teacher alumni in their first, second, or third year of teaching, two supervising principals, and one UTPP staff member. Methods included semistructured interviews, full-day classroom observations, and a review of program documents. The study was guided by 12 characteristics of socially just teaching outlined in a new practice-based conceptual framework. Major findings combatted current critiques of social justice education and highlighted the importance of relationships, collaboration, craft, and selection in teacher preparation. Minor findings revealed the impact of school culture, critical reflection, and teaching experience on social justice pedagogy. Recommendations include a need for UTPP to pay greater attention to the craft of teaching for social justice, develop assessment literacy in preservice candidates, and model activism inside and outside the classroom.</p>

<p> A great deal depends on preparing high quality teachers, and reformers of teacher preparation have recently drawn attention to the need for clearer delineations of effective practice, what it takes to be a teacher, and standards of preparation. Taken together, these reform proposals arguably frame a professional ideal for teaching. How this ideal and other ideals are established as desirable for beginning teachers during preparation remains relatively unexplored. In this study I thus tease out the desired ideals of teaching in two alternative residency-based teacher preparation programs, City Teacher Prep (CTP) and a Montessori teacher training program (MONT). Drawing from literature in the humanities and the learning sciences, I develop a conceptual framework of desire as socially constructed and conveyed to beginning teachers through <i> orienting narratives</i> that serve to direct them toward desired objects of teaching. I also postulate that beginners develop desires by making <i> heartfelt investments</i> in those objects. I use a constructivist grounded theory approach to collect and analyze observation and interview data. My findings reveal differences in the desired objects at each program suggestive of a tension between a professional ideal and vocational ideal of teaching. I also find evidence of <i>standing</i> desires for leadership among beginners at both programs that could result in their eventually leaving teaching. Through this investigation, I illuminate the conceptual features of desire and show how it can inform our understanding of teacher preparation.</p>

In this research, a model of teachers’ efficacy posed by Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk-Hoy, and Hoy (1998) is considered with regard to teachers’ use of standardized assessment data. This study is timely because teachers are expected to utilize standardized test scores, but they are often underprepared for this task. As a result of minimal experiences, teachers require in-service opportunities that develop their efficacy and knowledge toward standardized assessment. This proposal provides an opportunity for such experiences, and assesses the impact of a professional development activities designed to foster teachers’ assessment efficacy and knowledge. Last, for considerations pertaining to program evaluation, this report will explore the relevance of using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as an alternative statistical procedure. / text

During the fall 2013 semester, a group of seven preservice theatre teachers engaged in a devised playbuilding project with the aim of exploring and interrogating their own identities. This thesis uses identity theory and the methodology of playbuilding as qualitative phenomenological research to interrogate the multiple identities of the preservice theatre teacher. Through qualitative analysis of that playbuilding process, this thesis reports on the perceptions, experiences, and stories of seven participants currently enrolled in the BFA Theatre Studies program at The University of Texas at Austin as they explored identity. Their experiences and perceptions reflect the multiple, and sometimes simultaneous, identities of the participants such as Student, Student-teacher, Teacher, Artist, and Person. / text

This study investigated teacher mobility situations in a case study school and the underlying factors influencing mobility intentions. Data was collected and analyzed using a mix-model approach, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research participants were primary in-service teachers at the case study school, but not include teachers on loan from public schools and reemployed after retirement. To explain how different factors impact teachers’ mobility intentions, the data was interpreted and categorized using Alderfer’s ERG theory, which contends that human beings have the need for existence, relatedness, and growth. The results of this study are:(1) Working in the public schools is optimal occupational choice for most teachers because of its overwhelming advantages, such as better salaries and work benefits, job security, and better professional development opportunities, which can satisfy teachers’ needs for existence, relatedness and growth all at one and to a high degree. (2) Teachers’ mobility intention is the result of comparison between the present job and the potential jobs provided by other schools and other industries based on their different degrees of demand. (3) Many of the factors that influence teachers’ mobility intentions are under the school’s control, which enable schools to take an active role in stabilizing teachers’ mobility intentions. (4) Teachers’ mobility behavior is determined not only by mobility intention but also by mobility competence. Hence, it is better for school to make appropriate decisions and actions within school’s capacity to teachers’ mobility behaviors based on fully understanding their needs, their mobility intentions and their mobility competence. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

本文主要探討了中文二語教師在跨文化教學中對教師權威的理解和態度。東西方文化的差異在教師權威方面的表現，是彼此對師生間權力距離的認同並不一樣，東方文化中，權力距離較大，教師更為權威；而西方文化則權力距離較小，學生擁有更多的自由。本研究採訪了香港某國際學校的9名中外二語教師，得出結論：中文二語教師還是重視尊師重道的傳統，但對於教師權威已有了與時俱進的理解，面對外國學生,師生互相協商、尊重，從而達到課堂的學習目標才是教師權威的真正意義。受訪者採取1）樹立嚴師形象、運用獎懲機制；2）從學生角度考慮，尊重、幫助學生；3）自我提升，贏得學生尊重的方式，來應對學生挑戰教師權威的行為。影響受訪者形成如上教師權威的理解和態度，并選擇用以上的方式應對學生挑戰教師權威行為的策略，因素为：成長環境和教學經驗；獎懲制度和職位的肯定；個人性格、師生關係；以及網絡時代的挑戰；教師需要通過不斷進修、學習來提升自我。 本文通過分析跨文化教學中，中文教師的教師權威的理解和態度，應對策略和影響因素，引出思考和啓發：1）教師權威需要被重視和理論化；2）教師權威應在跨文化教學中因應學生的需要而轉變；3）區別對待中外學生的原因在于用不同的方法，達到公平、一視同仁的結果，希望學生的需要得到重視和照顧；4）學校教育與社會的關係意味著教師權威被理論化的重要性；5）當代教育學者應著手將教師權威理論化，從而也能使中文二語教師在跨文化教學中有據可循，重建教師權威。 / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education