Within a Northeast urban school, there is little empirical evidence to indicate the effectiveness of the district professional development (PD) program. Elementary teachers at the study site reported that they encountered problems accessing professional development programs applicable to their needs. The purpose of this case study was to examine teacher perceptions of district PD programs and to discover teacher perceptions of PD best practices. Knowles' adult learning theory provided a frame of reference for this study. The research questions assessed teachers' perceptions of the format, content, and process of professional development programs and examined how teachers applied new knowledge, concepts, and skills offered in professional development training. A case study design was used to gather focus group data from a critical case sample of 6 elementary teachers who were participating in PD training or who had participated in PD within the past 3 years. Emergent themes were identified from the data. Findings were developed and validated with member checking. The findings indicated that these 6 teachers desired more involvement in planning relevant PD, greater time allocated to collaborative activities, and more grade-level customized programming. Implications for positive social change include improved district professional development opportunities that align with best teaching practices for effective student instruction and increased student achievement.

The majority of Grade 5 students demonstrate limited science knowledge on state assessments. This trend has been documented since 2010 with no evidence of improvement. Because state accountability formulas include proficiency scores and carry sanctions against districts that fail to meet proficiency thresholds, improved student performance in science is an important issue to school districts. The purpose of this study was to explore elementary teachers' perceptions about their students' science knowledge, the strategies used to teach science, the barriers affecting science teaching, and the self-efficacy beliefs teachers maintain for teaching science. This study, guided by Vygotsky's social constructivist theory and Bandura's concept of self-efficacy, was a bounded instrumental case study in which 15 participants, required to be teaching K-5 elementary science in the county, were interviewed. An analytic technique was used to review the qualitative interview data through open coding, clustering, and analytical coding resulting in identified categorical themes that addressed the research questions. Key findings reflect students' limited content knowledge in earth and physical science. Teachers identified barriers including limited science instructional time, poor curricular resources, few professional learning opportunities, concern about new state standards, and a lack of teaching confidence. To improve student content knowledge, teachers identified the need for professional development. The project is a professional development series provided by a regional education service agency for K-5 teachers to experience science and engineering 3-dimensional learning. Area students will demonstrate deeper science content knowledge and benefit from improved science instructional practice and learning opportunities to become science problem solvers and innovative contributors to society.

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This qualitative case study examined the effect of PLCs on teacher self-efficacy, and whether the type of PLC structure on each campus affected efficacy. The overarching research question that guided the study was, to what extent does perceived teacher self-efficacy change as a result of the practice of PLCs? Participants were selected using purposive and convenience sampling. Ten teachers and two principals on two different campuses participated in teacher focus groups and one-on-one principal interviews, respectively. The available literature on the topics of professional development, professional learning, teacher collaboration, and teacher self-efficacy yielded the discovery that collaborative practices can be used to improve a school and/or district or used to enhance positive practices that already occur. This study adds to the body of research as it develops the area of teacher efficacy and influence of PLCs. Using the coding software, NVivo, focus group data were coded into themes and further comparisons were made with categories derived and saturated until conclusions were drawn. The data show teacher self-efficacy increases as a result of PLCs when teachers are able to experience positive feedback from teammates, shared leadership, trust and honesty, and a freedom to fail. For those teachers who are not on a campus where PLCs are present, the data suggest they created their own PLCs as the need arose. These teachers experienced all of the same benefits of those teachers on a campus where a formal PLC structure exited; however, their stress level was higher.

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Preparedness, efficacy, and commitment to a teaching career are important products of the teacher preparation process. Yet research on how the context of field experiences influences the development of these products is limited. The purpose of this study is firstly to confirm the existence of hypothesized differences between urban and suburban field placements and secondly to investigate the relationship between individual components of these contextualized field experiences and the outcomes of preparedness, efficacy, and commitment. Field experiences are examined through the lens of Bandura's (1997) sources of teacher efficacy belief development (mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, emotional arousal) and their interactions with student teaching contextual influences. The results suggest that urban-based student teachers have a qualitatively different experience from their suburban-based counterparts. Although the study did not find significant differences in resultant teacher efficacy, or preparedness for assuming fulltime teaching responsibilities, urban-based teachers report less long-term teaching commitment, but are more likely to be seeking an initial placement in an urban school. Regression analyses were performed to identify those components of the field experience and individual student characteristics that predict preparedness, efficacy and commitment. Location and on-site school contextual variables (school climate, school poverty) play an integral role in prediction of teaching efficacy. While long-term teaching commitment was most strongly predicted by emotional interpretations of the experience (satisfaction, stress, confidence) together with feeling supported by the field supervisor, intentions regarding teaching location were more dependent on support and encouragement received from mentor teachers in those locations, and viewing the mentor as a good career model. The findings of this study have important implications for teacher training since the results confirm that student teachers have very different experiences based on field site location and that these experiences do contribute differentially to the development of preparedness, efficacy and commitment. / Educational Psychology