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The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of academic advising at a tertiary institution in Jamaica and how it has influenced teacher-efficacy and instructional attentiveness among student teachers. The participants included twelve student teachers and four lecturers who have been intimately involved in academic advising. The student teachers selected have been engaged in academic advising for two to four years while the lecturers have been advising for ten to sixteen years. This qualitative study explored how academic advising is related to teacher efficacy and instructional attentiveness among a set of second to fourth year student teachers at a teacher training college in Jamaica. All participants were actively receiving and giving academic advising in a government-owned teacher training institution. The primary source of data was unstructured interviews with student teachers and lecturers. Data were acquired over a two-month period by means of unstructured interviews and field notes. These tools afforded the opportunity to extend the conversations and generate meaning from the responses thereby providing rich descriptive notes of the phenomenon. Data were prepared using triangulation matrices, data coding and the Constant Comparison Approach to generate categories showing patterns and relationships of meaning. The findings on the perspectives of the study participants indicate academic advising has significantly influenced teacher-efficacy among the student teachers as their level of confidence increased, appreciation of teamwork blossomed, instructional competency broadened and misbehaviors controlled. Additionally, their valuing of self and acceptance of other personalities grew immensely which positively affected their relationship with various tiers of staff in the learning environment. The interview data garnered from student teachers indicate that instructional attentiveness improved through the use of multiple teaching methods which included authentic assessment, field experience and student-centered learning. Other factors that boosted instructional attentiveness were good relationships with advisors who were understanding of their differences and commended simple efforts. As a result of the academic advising received, there are several implications for practice and policy which need to be addressed in order to help student teachers to identify their strengths and weaknesses, remain on task, avoid drop out and maintain equilibrium between academic and social experiences as they navigate their way through college. / Educational Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic placed greater demands on school leaders and caused ongoing disruption to teaching and learning. Faced with unprecedented challenges, school leaders have made critical changes in how they lead their school communities (Brinkmann et al., 2021). The study aimed to investigate the perceptions of elementary teachers within the United States concerning the identified leadership practices needed to cultivate teacher well-being before and during the global pandemic. A literature review revealed the commonalities in what highly effective principals do and their impact on student achievement (Grissom et al., 2021a). Researchers synthesized five practices of effective principals: instructional-focused interactions, building and fostering a productive school climate, facilitating collaboration, strategic management, and leading for equity (Grissom et al., 2021b). The study involved interviewing twelve elementary teachers' working in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. The interview questions investigated the perceived leadership practices implemented by principals to foster teacher well-being before and during the pandemic. The research questions were as follows: (1) What leadership practices of elementary school principals do teachers perceive have positively impacted teacher well-being prior to the COVID-19 pandemic? (2) What leadership practices of elementary school principals do teachers perceive fostered teacher well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic? The outcomes of the study offered awareness of elementary teachers' perceptions of school leadership practices that cultivated teacher well-being before and during the global pandemic. / Doctor of Education / The COVID-19 pandemic caused many school districts to make rapid changes with little communication with teachers regarding instructional expectations. Educators faced unprecedented challenges, including shifting from in-person teaching to virtual learning and the uncertainty about their health and safety. The focus of research for this study included elementary teachers who taught for three or more years within the United States and during the pandemic. The qualitative study determined what twelve elementary school teachers perceived as the most effective leadership practices in cultivating teacher well-being during a global pandemic. This insight may be invaluable to a school leader's approach to leading teachers through a crisis. The study involved interviewing twelve elementary teachers from working in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. The interview questions probed teacher perceptions and identified leadership practices that cultivate teacher well-being before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researcher identified five findings and four implications. The small sample size limited this study. Ensuring that teachers work is valued, their voices heard, and facilitating meaningful professional development are necessary to cultivate teacher well-being before and build a sustainable education system. Suggestions for future research include investigating the impact to teacher well-being over the course of a school year through interviews with building leaders and the teachers they serve and investigating teacher well-being and its impact on teacher retention and burnout.

The purpose of this pilot and main study was to examine teachers' perceptions of the post No Child Left Behind (NCLB) elementary classroom, the perceived changes, and the implications for teachers' feelings of empowerment and student test anxiety. Previous investigators have agreed that the teacher's voice has been missing, but needed in test anxiety research. By engaging veteran teachers who had experience both before and after the enactment of NCLB in reflective conversation about their experiences, valuable information was gained concerning whether or not teachers felt empowered to perform their duties and what impact they perceived that high stakes standardized testing has had on both teacher anxiety and student test anxiety. This information could be used to inform educational practice and decision making. Triangulation of data sources included narrative data collected through face-to-face interviews with the teachers, the writing of field notes, interview process notes, and reflective journal entries from both the pilot and main studies. Three clear themes emerged that fit the division of the data by the research questions: change in the teachers' experiences, change in teaching vocabulary, and change in the students' experiences. These themes emerged through a process of categorical-content perspective analysis for coding the data and sorting it into themes. The Hermeneutic narrative analysis approach was used to analyze and identify the meaning of these related experiences and stories. The context of the pilot and main studies was elementary schools in a rural school system in the Southeastern United States. The participants were eleven elementary teachers from grades three through five with experience before and after NCLB enactment who taught core academic subjects. Member checks of the interview transcripts and data analysis enhanced the credibility of these reports. The analysis revealed both positive and negative perceptions of the changes in the classroom experience of these elementary teachers, their feelings of empowerment, and the impact of the changes on the test anxiety of their students. Participants across the pilot and main studies indicated that increased stress, pressure, frustration, and professional struggles have had a negative impact on teacher anxiety, teacher efficacy beliefs, and student test anxiety. / Ph. D.

More than 8 million of America's middle and high school students are struggling readers. Two-thirds of all eighth graders read below grade level, and the reading scores of high school students have not improved since 1974. Low literacy levels affect learning in all subject areas and impede student opportunity for future success. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the accountability measures associated with the Act have heightened public awareness of the deficiency in adolescent literacy. School districts are choosing to respond in one of two ways. Some school districts are opting to invest in teacher-proof curricula that negate the effect of the teacher. Other districts are opting to invest in the professional development of their teachers. The goal of this study was to support district efforts to provide strategic professional development opportunities for teachers by investigating the effects of teacher efficacy for instructional strategies, classroom management and student engagement on ninth and tenth grade students' reading achievement. Teachers with high efficacy were hypothesized to impact students' reading gains positively. Student contextual variables of prior achievement, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and grade were controlled for in the study. The participants included 2,061 students in 23 classrooms taught by 110 teachers in two school districts on the west coast of Florida. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant relationship between teacher efficacy and student reading achievement gains. The only variables of statistical significance were race (white vs. Non-white) and grade. As more researchers use the findings and recommendations from this study to inform new investigations of the complex relationship between teacher efficacy and student achievement in reading, teacher educators, policymakers, teachers and administrators will be better informed as they continue to work towards improving the reading achievement scores of and narrowing the achievement gaps in adolescent literacy.

Children experience limited time outdoors and have few opportunities for outdoor learning in schools, putting them at risk for being unprepared to engage in solving environmental and societal problems. Researchers have examined outdoor learning at the preschool and high school levels; elementary school experiences have been explored less frequently. Guided by a conceptual framework informed by social emotional learning (SEL), ecological literacy, and teacher self-efficacy, this study investigated public school elementary teachers' experiences with outdoor classrooms including barriers and supports to creating and using outdoor classrooms. A qualitative design using in-depth interviews with interpretive phenomenological analysis techniques was conducted with 9 elementary teachers who had at least 2 years of recent experience working with outdoor classrooms in the U. S. Pacific Northwest. Thematic analysis of interview data, using a combination of a priori and open coding, identified primary themes related to academic rigor, district policies and budgets, and motivations for teaching ecoliteracy. Barriers including a lack of time and money needed to teach effectively using outdoor classrooms and the need for a stronger integrated curriculum that connects SEL, environmental education, and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emerged as areas of concern. Recommendations based on these findings include ecoliteracy professional development for teachers which may contribute to positive social change by increasing teacher understanding of and involvement with outdoor learning and the integration of ecoliteracy in the pedagogy of K-6 programs.

The present study aimed to investigate teaching self efficacy beliefs of instructors working at university prep-schools and to examine whether years of teaching experience, English competency, self reported proficiency and graduate department predicted instructors&rsquo / self efficacy beliefs and their efficacy beliefs in student engagement, instructional strategies and classroom management. Two-hundred-fifty-seven prep-school instructors from universities in Ankara participated in the study. The data were collected through Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale, Self Reported English Proficiency Scale and Language Teaching Methods Scale. Both descriptive and inferential statistics, correlation and hierarchical regression analysis, were utilized by PASW 18. The results of the study indicated that the instructors have quite higher overall self efficacy beliefs. The instructors feel more efficacious in classroom management than using instructional strategies while they feel least efficacious in student engagement. Moreover, instructors&rsquo / overall self efficacy beliefs were significantly predicted by experience, English competency and self reported proficiency. Student engagement efficacy was not predicted by experience while it was significantly predicted by English competency and self reported proficiency. Instructional strategy efficacy beliefs were significantly predicted by experience, English competency and self reported proficiency. Classroom management efficacy was predicted by experience and self reported proficiency while English competency was not a significant predictor. Being a graduate of Faculties of Education was not a significant predictor in any regression models. Lastly, there was a significant relationship between the instructors&rsquo / use of communicative method and their overall self efficacy beliefs and its three sub-scales.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (2002) mandated that every teacher be highly qualified by the close of the 2005-2006 school year. However, the means by which newly certified teachers are prepared has been questioned. In addition to understanding how teachers enter the field, researchers have indicated a vested interest in examining who comes into the field. More specifically, the characteristics and experiences of pre-service and in-service special educators are of great interest (McKlesky & Ross, 2003; Rosenberg & Sindelar, 2001). The present study examined the characteristics of six teachers in the final internship phase of a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program in Varying Exceptionalities at a Research I/Research Extensive University in the Southeast.This study was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods, employing a concurrent triangulation mixed-methods design for data collection and analysis. The quantitative phase included descriptive statistics gleaned from pre-existing Haberman Urban Teacher Selection Interview data, results from the Teacher's Sense of Efficacy Scale self-report survey, and an adapted Pathwise Classroom Observation System protocol. The qualitative data collected for complementarity included thick, rich case descriptions, descriptive data from semi-structured interviews with mentors and a focus group interview with participants.Results showed that the participants entered the program with a variety of experiences and backgrounds. Also, the participants demonstrated and reported a range of variability in terms of their classroom effectiveness and their sense of efficacy. Further, the participants discussed several factors that they perceived as contributing to or impeding their professional success. The findings have implications for teacher preparation programs, school districts, and educational policymakers.

Education and its associated resources continue to be unequally administered and delivered in the United States. All stakeholders in the education of the nation‘s children—parents, teachers, unions, school administrators, principals, community members and students, should be concerned with the inequities which abound in the country‘s education system African American male cohorts are particularly vulnerable in the US population as they face a series of challenges that continue to threaten their achievement, including those students who are academically gifted. The purpose of this study was to examine and interpret the philosophy, ideology, and educational practices of five teachers of African American males in gifted and talented programs in an urban secondary school. The following research questions guided the study: (a) How do teachers describe factors that promote achievement with African American males in Gifted and Talented Programs? (b) How do the life experiences of teachers influence their advocacy for African American males in Gifted and Talented Programs? (c) How do Gifted and Talented teachers of African American males participate in and influence identification and referrals of African American males in Gifted and Talented Programs? The naturalistic paradigm of inquiry guided the study to collect and analyze data. The participant sample consisted of five teachers of African American males in gifted and talented programs in an urban secondary school. In addition to a detailed review of the literature related to this population, data came from in-depth interviews and classroom observations. Data from the audio recorded and transcribed (verbatim) were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Some of the major findings reveal that the educational demographic landscape in the US and in Texas in particular highlights an underrepresentation of African Americans, and especially African American males in gifted and talented education. The themes that emerged from the study reveal that valuable insight can be gained from teachers of this cohort which can inform educational practice and policy. The teachers reported to be working hard for the success of all students and not just those from minoritized backgrounds. Nonetheless, all five teachers were committed to believing that all of their students had the potential to be successful, albeit some with more challenges than others. Their experiences and backgrounds frame their ideologies and in turn the way in which they teach and interact with these learners. It is important to note that despite these differences and diversity in their racial/ethnic backgrounds, each teacher reflects deep commitment and passion for these learners. The overall goal reported by the participants is to encourage creative problem solving, to develop content mastery, to serve as a role model for their students, regardless of racial or ethnic background. Ultimately, they believe that these are the keys to the success of all students, and particularly for African American male gifted and talented middle school students.