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This person-centered ethnography focused on the ways one exemplary veteran Mexican American bilingual educator’s (MABE’s) cultural resources and professional experiences influenced her teaching practices. The study examined her life history and classroom practices to explore the trajectory of her identity making. The framework utilized in this research included a sociohistorical/sociocultural lens and Chicana/Latina feminist theories. Specifically, my research investigated the multiple spaces where a MABE navigated between an additive bilingual education model and a subtractive one. The study relied primarily on data collected from oral life history interviews augmented by participant observations at a school in a large, central Texas district. The participant, a first grade teacher with 28 years of classroom experience in the same district, was interviewed over a four-year span. Further, classroom observations occurred during a full school year. Additional interviews with educators who worked with the participant at critical moments in her professional life provided not only triangulation of information, but also a multiplicity of perspectives and foci on the educational landscapes wherein she operated. Narrative analysis of the data involved the decoding and deconstruction of a MABE’s active participation in the processes of performing and (re)presenting her identity production including being silenced and speaking up. The findings revealed a dialectic and dialogic process between personal experiences, early schooling, impositions of policies, and daily-lived classroom experience while constantly navigating and negotiating the challenges of educating culturally and linguistically diverse students. A primary finding revealed the construct of autobiographical consciousness as a MABE’s critical awareness of the historical legacy, lived experiences, and the contexts in which she teaches. The study documented silencing through marginalization, as well as establishing voice through agency to understand construction and reconstruction of identities. / text

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The research described in this dissertation has its antecedents in my own experiences as a student and teacher of history in both England and the USA. Reflecting back on such experiences as a teacher educator in the US has led to a hypothesis that history teaching is conceptualized and performed differently by teachers in England and the US. This study used contrasting case studies of two English and two American preservice history teachers to illuminate and compare how the development of their understanding of history and evolving construction of self as history teacher influenced their everyday pedagogical performances as they began to teach history. Detailed portraits of teaching developed for this study show how the pedagogical approach to teaching history with an emphasis on developing historical understanding through learning the skills of the discipline of history in England contrast with the American emphasis on content coverage through the pedagogy of telling the tale of the past. The study revealed the participant's adherence to these two contrasting traditions in the teaching of history. This can be understood by examining two continually interweaving components: 1) well remembered events, and interactions associated with learning history and history teaching that form a "biographic conception" of history teaching, and 2) ongoing experiences and expected outcomes of planning and teaching history in a particular way. Within the scope of this study, particular attention was given to the participant's contextual understandings of: A) official history curriculum, B) their cooperating teacher and C) their students as they began to plan and teach history within their internship. The case studies compare and describe how the participants' biographic conceptions of both history and history teaching act as a filter through which the differing expectations of their respective history curriculum, their cooperating teacher and departments were mediated and negotiated. While the biographic conception of history exerted an enduring influence on their understanding of what it means to learn and study history in high school, the study revealed that the participants' ongoing classroom interactions with their students in conjunction with meeting the expectations of their cooperating teachers and departments constrained and limited the participants' perspectives as to what they believed was possible within the history classroom. The case studies here highlight the interactive forces and complexity of learning to become a teacher of history and have further implications for exploring the possibilities and constraints of two competing traditions in the teaching of history. This comparative study raises questions and opportunities for examining such epistemological questions as What is history? and How should it be taught in high school? The work shows that the role of history teacher can be and should be more than a teller of the tale of the past. It also highlights the problems faced by teachers and students when the primary goal of history is focused on the difficult task of learning historical skills and concepts. However, if the goals of history teaching in the US are truly for the development of knowledgeable, critically thinking citizens, then teacher educators must begin to provide opportunities and create communities of practice which encourage preservice teachers to not only break their attachment to the pedagogy of telling but also develop their skills to think historically to the end of organizing learning experiences that emphasize the doing of history within their classrooms. / Ph. D.

Teachers' use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the classroom has largely been studied to date with a focus on what is lacking. An important aspect that seems to have been understudied is how teachers' own histories and experiences of ICT connects to their teaching practices - in essence, focussing on what is 'present' and not what is 'missing'. This study examines five teachers working in the same school, but working very differently with ICT in their classrooms. The narratives of their lived experiences highlight the acquisition of their beliefs, attitudes and their in situ behaviours about the role of ICT in the classroom. A critical look at the factors responsible for shaping such behaviours suggests the value of understanding individuals' experiences when planning for technology-utilization, rather than prescribing a "teacher-proof" (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988) approach to technology uptake.

Teachers' use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the classroom has largely been studied to date with a focus on what is lacking. An important aspect that seems to have been understudied is how teachers' own histories and experiences of ICT connects to their teaching practices - in essence, focussing on what is 'present' and not what is 'missing'. This study examines five teachers working in the same school, but working very differently with ICT in their classrooms. The narratives of their lived experiences highlight the acquisition of their beliefs, attitudes and their in situ behaviours about the role of ICT in the classroom. A critical look at the factors responsible for shaping such behaviours suggests the value of understanding individuals' experiences when planning for technology-utilization, rather than prescribing a "teacher-proof" (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988) approach to technology uptake.

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