The purpose of this study is to explore the professional practices of teachers in both a Positive Behavior Support (PBS) high school and a traditional high school using Charlotte Danielson's (1996) 22 components of teaching responsibility that are clustered into four domains: Domain 1: Planning and Preparation, Domain 2: Classroom Environment, Domain 3: Instruction, and Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities. This comparison serves as a tool to determine if there is any difference in the professional practices of teachers in a high school with Positive Behavior Support and those in a traditional school. The results may be used to examine a variety of means to provide effective staff development and possible PBS implementation strategies. The teacher professional practices data retrieved were attained from teachers and principals of PBS and non-PBS schools. The major views that came forward from the respondents' survey questionnaires demonstrated that teachers and principals from the two schools characterize their professional practices quite similarly. Results from this study confirm the findings of research studies discussed in the literature review. On the whole, there were many similarities in the characterizations and levels of importance of teacher professional practices in the PBS and non-PBS schools. The descriptive data displayed that the PBS school out performed the non-PBS in the majority of the identified student outcomes. This study also noted that effective leadership and staff training are needed to facilitate the implementation of school improvement tools, such as PBS. / Ed. D.

Many new teachers will be hired in the decades to come. A school administrator screening candidates for teaching positions is faced with a decision that can have long-term consequences for a community, a school, and thousands of children. Finding the best candidates for teaching positions has never been more important. A variety of questions centering on prior experience, knowledge, or expertise may be asked by those responsible for screening candidates, yet there is another area of importance to be considered in the process, that of dispositions. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation [CAEP], formerly known as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education [NCATE] (2008), and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium [INTASC] (2010) have emphasized the need to identify dispositions in addition to the knowledge and skills that have historically received emphasis by school districts seeking candidates and institutions preparing them. In response to this emphasis, administrators may benefit from a greater understanding of dispositions when interviewing and making hiring decisions. Administrators will also benefit by greater knowledge of the questions asked to determine if a candidate possessed a particular disposition. The research procedure uses a focus group format to conduct a multi-round survey/discussion to obtain input and consensus on two asked of school administrators: (1)'What do administrators believe are the critical dispositions a teacher candidate must possess?' and (2) 'Do administrators believe that a person can ask candidates questions to determine if they possess those dispositions? If so, what are the questions administrators can ask to determine if the candidates possess those dispositions?' Recommendations on dispositions that should be assessed and questions that may be used in the assessment of those dispositions will be developed from the results of the study. The focus group identified 19 dispositions and 74 interview questions within 5 theme groupings. These groupings included: beliefs about children, attitudes/beliefs – willingness to act, job-related skill, structure, and other personal attributes/traits. / Ed. D.

In an attempt to staff every classroom with a highly qualified teacher, the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) mandated that only "highly qualified" teachers be hired to teach beginning in the 2005 school-year (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Highly qualified is defined by a teacher's background characteristics that include state certification, a bachelor's degree and subject area competence for secondary teachers. Researchers Palardy and Rumberger (2008), determined that a teacher's background characteristics alone are not sufficient in determining the effectiveness of a teacher but that it is the teacher's attitudes, beliefs and practices that should be considered , as these attributes have a greater impact and are most malleable. This study aimed to increase the body of research in the area of teacher effectiveness and how teachers' dispositions impact students' math achievement at the elementary level in an urban school district. Descriptive statistics were used to report the findings. The participants in this study were all full-time, general education teachers who worked with students in grades three, four and five in an urban school district. The data collected demonstrated that effective teachers in an urban school district believed it was their ability to reach students through their sense of efficacy and belief system that makes the difference in students' positive outcomes on high stakes tests. Findings revealed that effective teachers have high teaching efficacy, they are able to build personal relationships with their students and they are able to motivate their students to do well in school. This study confirms that effective urban teachers share a set of common dispositions and beliefs that make a difference in student achievement when all factors are considered. / Ed. D.

Finally, case studies of the thesis revealed that teachers constructed their professional identity around the focus, main contradictions and human relations in their work. In the context of reform for Quality Education, the construction of teacher professional identity referred to different levels of relationships and expectations as well as to personal factors. Such construction embodied the complex interactions and competitions among the state, the market, the school, as well as personal factors. The tensions between structure and agency were illustrated by characteristics that marked different stages, dynamics and varieties in the construction process of teacher professional identity. / First, in the macro-context of policy, teachers realized their key role in implementing Quality Education and took on an "adaptive" attitude toward reform. With regard to responsibility and commitment, teachers felt that rigidity in their work decreased. However, they found it difficult to put new ideas into practice, mainly due to their concern over high-stake examination results. Accordingly, there were two opposing trends of change in teacher professional identity. The first trend involved changes from "Sparta coach", "parts maker" to "normal teacher". The second trend was attributed to the pressure of examinations which compelled teachers to follow their requirements. Consequently, teachers changed from "angel" to "birdman" and "teaching craftsman". Limitations notwithstanding, some teachers tried to remain persons who "influence and enhance" education. / Identity is a valuable concept for guiding the analysis of theoretical and practical issues in education. Professional identity is closely related to teachers' professional practice. Therefore, from the perspective of teacher professional identity, this study aims to explore teachers' professional lives and their development in the context of reform for Quality Education. Its central concern is how teachers construct or reconstruct their professional identity in response to reform. Based on in-depth interviews with 29 teachers in 5 schools, the main observations and findings are explicated in the following paragraphs. / In concert with the global wave of educational reform, basic education in the Chinese Mainland has undergone comprehensive changes in paradigms and practices since 1985. The emphasis of reform has been on Quality Education. Teachers played a key role in the reform endeavors, and teacher professional development became an important topic in policy discourse and theoretical research. In educational transformation, what are the conditions in the life of front-line teachers? What are their personal experiences and feelings? / In the context of reform for Quality Education, tensions between educational quality and examination results penetrated every aspect of teachers' work. They also effected changes in their work and professional roles. Although teachers demonstrated different aspects of professional identity, academic subject identity stood out as the most significant identity. The status and characteristics of academic subjects affected teachers' understanding of and their reaction to Quality Education. They also affected the ways teachers dealt with their students and viewed their place in school. Academic subject identity, therefore, has affected teachers' individual autonomy as well as the extent to which they conformed to external systems. / Key words: Chinese Mainland; Quality Education; educational reform; identity; teacher professional identity; teacher professional development / Second, in the meso-context of school, teachers generally understood the structural influence of schooling, including its intrinsic norms and values on their work and sense of self. The promotion rates to schools on a higher level, and a school's tradition and management style determined how teachers viewed and responded to the reform for Quality Education. Tensions between the external system world and the internal life-world of a school emerged. How these tensions were played out depended on the school's autonomy relative to external evaluation by the authorities and the public. This in tum brought different meanings to teachers' work, which caused teacher professional identity and its construction to be perceived either positively or negatively. / Student influence teachers' internal experience (sense of satisfaction and failure) by means of discipline and examination results, recognition and evaluation (love and contempt), which further caused changes in teachers' attitudes toward work and their behavior, i.e., their commitment to work. Several teacher identities emerged in their meeting student expectations and dealing with student behavior and attitudes: "learner"; "responsible person"; "friend" and "educator". / Third, the context of teachers' core work, which was critical to the construction of teacher professional identity, was composed of academic subjects and students. In the context of academic subjects, the reform for Quality Education had various kinds of impact on academic subjects which possessed different status and characteristics. Teachers' perception of and response to reform were grounded in the subjects that they taught. Status and characteristics of academic subjects determined the change that took place in teacher behavior, their professional understanding and experience. In general, teachers positioned themselves as "subject teachers". Moreover, subject department was the organizational form of subjects within schools. Cooperation or competition among teachers depended on the importance that the schools attached to examination results. As a major form of collegial interaction and learning, collective lesson preparation was perceived as a useful way of meeting the needs of classroom teaching and the improvement of teaching efficiency in order to obtain better examination results. In this, teacher professional identity was based on a practical rationality. Collective lesson preparation embodied a series of tensions, such as individualism and cooperation, voluntariness and compulsion, and requirements from the top and the teachers' own professional autonomy. / 王夫艳. / Adviser: Nai-kwai Leslie Lo. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-310). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Wang Fuyan.

Yao, Jingdan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-70). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; appendix in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.ii / Table of Contents --- p.iii / List of Tables --- p.iv / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Definitions of Teacher Leadership --- p.2 / Major Approaches of Leadership Research --- p.4 / Leadership Complexity --- p.6 / Moral Leadership --- p.9 / Personality and Leadership --- p.11 / Evaluation of Teacher Leadership --- p.19 / Subordinates' A ttitudes --- p.22 / Objectives and Hypothesis of the study --- p.26 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Method --- p.28 / Participants --- p.28 / Measures --- p.29 / Procedure --- p.33 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Results --- p.34 / Teacher Leadership Behavior --- p.34 / "The Relationship among Teachers Self-ratings and Student-ratings in Leadership, and Student Outcomes" --- p.39 / Personality and Leadership --- p.40 / Chapter Chapter 4: --- Discussion --- p.43 / Leadership Behavioral Model of Head Teachers --- p.43 / Moral Leadership of Head Teachers --- p.46 / Criteria of Teacher Leadership Performance --- p.48 / Personality Predictors of Head Teacher Leadership --- p.50 / Implication of the Present Study --- p.52 / Limitations and Future Direction --- p.53 / References --- p.54 / Appendix --- p.71

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-112). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The purpose of the project was to develop and implement a survey for the purpose of better understanding how teacher's attitude affect their ability to achieve success and overcome challenges associated with the implementation of a 1 on 1 Learning Program. This project was intended to increase awareness as to how teachers currently use technology, their attitudes about the technology they use, and their perceptions as to how students will use technology. Research in this study affirms this can improve teacher/student achievements; promote creativity and motivation through effective communication. The significance of this project was to identify teacher's attitudes about utilizing 21st century skills that had been newly acquired through effectual professional development.

Thesis PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: ABSTRACT Chapter 1 investigates teacher wages in the South African labour market, in order to ascertain whether teaching is a financially attractive profession, and whether high ability individuals are likely to be attracted to the teaching force. Making use of labour force survey data for the years 2000 to 2007 and for 2010, wage returns to educational attainment and experience are measured for teachers, non-teachers and non-teaching professionals. The returns to higher levels of education for teachers are significantly lower than for non-teachers and non-teaching professionals. Similarly, the age-wage profile for teachers is significantly flatter than it is for non-teachers, indicating that there is little wage incentive to remain in teaching beyond roughly 12 years. The profession is therefore unlikely to attract high ability individuals who are able to collect attractive remuneration elsewhere in the labour market. Chapter 2 deals with explicit teacher incentives in education. It provides a technical analysis of Holstrom and Milgrom’s (1991) multitasking model and Kandel and Lazear’s (1992) model of peer pressure as an incentivising force, highlighting aspects of these models that are necessary to ensure that incentive systems operate successfully. The chapter provides an overview of incentive systems internationally, discussing elements of various systems that may be useful in a South African setting. The prospects for the introduction of incentives in South Africa are discussed, with the conclusion that the systems in place at the moment are not conducive to introducing teacher incentives. There are however models in Chile and Brazil, for example, that may work effectively in a South African setting, given their explicit handling of inequality within the education system. Chapter 3 makes use of hierarchical linear modelling to investigate which teacher characteristics impact significantly on student performance. Using data from the SACMEQ III study of 2007, an interesting and potentially important finding is that younger teachers are better able to improve the mean mathematics performance of their students. Furthermore, younger teachers themselves perform better on subject tests than do their older counterparts. Changes in teacher education in the late 1990s and early 2000s may explain the differences in the performance of younger teachers relative to their older counterparts. However, further investigation is required to fully understand these differences. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In Hoofstuk 1 word die lone van onderwysers in die Suid-Afrikaanse arbeidsmark ondersoek om vas te stel of onderwys ʼn finansieel aantreklike beroep is en hoe waarskynlik dit is dat mense met sterk vermoëns na die onderwys gelok sal word. Met gebruik van arbeidsmagopnamedata van 2000 tot 2007 en van 2010 word die loonopbrengs op jare onderwys en ervaring vir onderwysers, nie-onderwysers en beroepslui buite die onderwys gemeet. Die opbrengste vir hoër vlakke van opvoeding is beduidend laer vir onderwysers as vir nie-onderwysers en nie-onderwys beroepslui. Netso is die ouderdom-loonprofiel van onderwysers beduidend platter as vir nie-onderwysers, wat dui op weinig looninsentief om langer as ongeveer 12 jaar in die onderwysveld te bly. Dit is dus onwaarskynlik dat hierdie beroep baie bekwame mense sal lok wat elders in die arbeidsmark goed sou kon verdien. In Hoofstuk 2 word na eksplisiete insentiewe in die onderwys gekyk. Die hoofstuk verskaf ʼn tegniese analise van die multi-taak-model van Holstrom en Milgrom (1991) en van Kandel en Lazear (1992) se model van portuur-druk as aansporingskrag, met klem op die aspekte van hierdie modelle wat in Suid-Afrikaanse omstandighede van nut mag wees. Vooruitsigte vir die instelling van insentiewe in Suid-Afrika word bespreek, met die slotsom dat die stelsels wat tans in plek is nie bevorderlik vir die instelling van onderwysersinsentiewe is nie. Daar is egter modelle in byvoorbeeld Chili en Brasilië wat effektief in Suid-Afrikaanse omstandighede sou kon funksioneer, gegewe hulle eksplisiete klem op ongelykheid binne die onderwys. In Hoofstuk 3 word hiërargiese liniêre programmering gebruik om te ondersoek watter eienskappe van onderwysers ʼn belangrike invloed op studenteprestasie uitoefen. Met gebruik van data van die SACMEQ III studie van 2007 is ʼn interessante bevinding dat jonger onderwysers beter in staat is om die gemiddelde wiskunde prestasie van hulle student te verbeter. Verder vertoon sulke jonger onderwysers self ook beter in die vaktoetse in Wiskunde en taal as hulle ouer kollegas. Veranderings in onderwysopleiding in die laat negentigerjare en vroeë jare van hierdie eeu kan dalk die verskille in die vertonings van jonger onderwysers relatief tot hulle ouer eweknieë verklaar. Verdere ondersoek is egter nodig om hierdie verskille beter te verstaan.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education