M.Ed. / This qualitative research essay reports on a complementary programme, Service Learning, to the current Higher Diploma in Education (H.D.E-postgraduate) curricula at tertiary institutions. It originated from my personal experience of the H.D.E.(postgraduate) training, my experience as educator and the policy documents of the South African Government on Higher Education since 1995. My idea for the investigation is grounded in the first White Paper for Higher Education (1995) and the Norms and Standards of Teacher Education presented by the Committee of Teacher Education Policy (1996). Both these policies advocate innovative, holistic and reflective teacher education training. The title of the essay: "The cultivation of educational knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, through Service Learning, for H.D.E. (postgraduate) students encapsulates the framework of my thinking about teacher education". The investigation commenced with a document analysis followed by a literature study concerning H.D.E. (PIG) curricula and Service Learning. The basic data analysis was used to integrate the relevant literature with the professional ideas of the interviewees. Ethnographic interviews with educational leaders brought all diverting ideas together, which culminated in the findings of the investigation. The justification of the study lies in the question whether one year of training as an educator is holistic and foreseeable enough for the challenging educational environment. The findings of the study advocate Service Learning as an indispensable complementary programme to the H.D.E.(P/G) Curricula. The findings mostly enlighten the advantages of Service Learning Programmes through the eyes of the educational leaders interviewed, and present to the reader the possibilities in teacher education.

Academic discussion deepens learning when students share multiple perspectives, challenge propositions, and build on each other’s ideas to develop their own understanding (Michaels, O’Connor, & Resnick, 2008; Cazden, 1988). But academic discussion is rare in practice, suggesting that teachers are not implementing effective ‘talk moves,’ or discussion-based strategies to foster genuine dialogues (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003). How do teachers learn to respond to students effectively in academic discussion? This dissertation aims to describe the process by which teachers learn to teach using discussion in their own classrooms after professional development. It follows six teachers implementing a new curriculum, Word Generation, that uses discussion and debate to deepen students’ reading comprehension. Teachers were filmed conducting classroom discussions with their own students and then interviewed about their experiences, particularly how they made decisions on what to do and say in response to student contributions or events that emerged in the discussion. While developing the craft of dialogic teaching (Boyd and Markarian, 2011), teachers also encountered surprises and dilemmas, two types of teaching uncertainties that tested and influenced their professional growth. Findings showed that teachers mastered more effective discussion teaching skills when they learned to manage or resolve their uncertainties. In fact, surprises and dilemmas were important sources of experiential learning for the teachers who used their experiences of uncertainty to see and respond successfully to student contributions. The dissertation is comprised of two main articles. The first study analyzes the role that surprise plays in changing teacher perceptions of student abilities in academic discussion. The second is a case study exploring one teacher’s teaching dilemmas, and how, in order to resolve competing instructional goals, he attained more sophisticated techniques that fostered productive student talk. These findings shed light on how professional educators can support teacher implementation of academic discussion when surprises and teaching dilemmas are addressed in professional development.

In recent years, school districts have paid increased attention to closing opportunity and achievement gaps while raising performance standards for all students. Historically, teaching has been characterized as professionally isolating, with teachers often operating independently in their own classrooms. Compounding the effects of this isolation, district central offices initially emerged to guarantee compliance with laws and regulations, and to implement necessary business activities. However, reaching every student in every classroom every day with high quality teaching requires systemic instructional leadership that begins with each classroom teacher and extends all the way to a district’s superintendent. In Bellingham Public Schools, central office administrators, teacher leaders, principals, and teachers have been grounded in a common approach to instruction oriented toward fulfilling the goals of its strategic plan, The Bellingham Promise. The district’s increased use of teacher leaders to help implement district-wide instructional improvements coincides with the transformation of central office leadership into a strong support for great teaching and learning in schools. This strategic leadership project sought to develop district-level teacher leaders into a collaborative team delivering coherent support to teachers across the district. The capstone outlines how these teacher leaders needed to transition from working independently in assigned content areas to collaborating as a team to effectively support teachers more holistically. Leveraging their unique position bridging teachers in the classroom and administrators in central office, I strove to identify how this team could increase coherence across the school system. While my role leading the team was limited by the duration of my residency, the leading indicators from central administrators, principals, teachers, and the team members themselves suggest that the team helped manage the tension that exists with implementing education reform between district-directed priorities and site-based autonomy to deliver on those priorities. This analysis includes both tactical and strategic implications for Bellingham Public Schools, as well as ideas for how these findings inform teacher leadership and central office transformation in the broader education sector.

Professional development (PD) is seen by a broad cross-section of stakeholders — teachers, principals, policymakers — as essential for instructional improvement and student learning. And yet, despite deep investments of time and money in its design and implementation, the return on investment and subjective assessments about PD’s effectiveness remain uneven. In this thesis, I focus in-depth on professional development experiences that teachers identify as their most powerful and ask what these experiences could suggest toward improving PD design, policy, and research. Specifically, drawing on 25 in-depth accounts of powerful professional learning, I analyze PD across three papers, each of which applies a distinct analytical lens. First, using self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000), I explore the extent to which powerful learning experiences help to satisfy the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Second, using the growing body literature on professional identity (e.g., Beijaard et al., 2004), I posit that teachers may be motivated to pursue professional learning experiences that align with their core beliefs and identity. Extending this literature, I elaborate three distinct conceptions of how identity interacts with PD: an affinity for the what (content), the who (facilitation), and the with whom (community). I similarly discuss ways that powerful learning may help to form or transform teacher identity. Third, observing a pattern in the data and drawing on emerging literature on teacher agency (e.g., Priestley et al., 2015), I define teacher agency in professional learning as a multi-dimensional construct – agency over, during, and emerging from PD – and analyze the extent to which each dimension was evident in powerful and contrastingly negative professional learning experiences. I conclude that increasing dimensions of agency may be a promising lever for improving professional learning at both an individual and system level.Finally, by privileging teachers’ unique perspectives and emphasizing the deeply subjective nature of learning, this thesis aims both to complement and complicate the existing research on PD design and effectiveness and the policy imperative for scale.

While the field of educational research has produced an enormous amount of literature relevant for improving teaching and, ultimately, student achievement, the field has been less successful at producing deep and lasting instructional change at scale. In this dissertation, I present three papers that explore an approach to program implementation that attempts to cultivate conditions to support scale by involving teachers in a process of collaborative inquiry around an evidence-based program called READS for Summer Learning (READS). While many have called for implementation approaches that give educators an opportunity to make adaptations, few studies have examined the ways in which teachers respond to such an approach, including: the process that teachers go through as they are making their adaptation decisions, the kinds of adaptations they make, and the ways in which participation in such an approach may affect their perceptions of the program. In this thesis, I begin to address these gaps. Together, the papers in this dissertation explore how teachers at three high-poverty schools in one urban district responded when given opportunities—both as individuals and as teams—to make structured adaptations to READS. In the first study, I focus on individual teachers’ enactments of READS in their classrooms. The purpose of this study was to explore individual teachers’ fidelity to and adaptations of the core component of READS in which teachers have the most responsibility—teaching the READS lessons. In the second study, I consider the adaptation decisions that grade-level teams arrived at through a collaborative inquiry process. In my third study, I use interview data, collected after the implementation of the school-based components of READS (including the lessons) but before the end of the summer, to explore teachers’ expectations of the program’s effectiveness for their students and the basis for these expectations. Taken together, these studies provide insight into what success might look like when it comes to giving teachers greater autonomy over the implementation of evidence-based programs, as well as how researchers and school leaders might support these kinds of efforts.

This thesis considers pupils attitudes, teachers (and pupils ) creativity and teacher well-being. These three terms represent factors that are closely linked and have a synergistic relationship in determining learning outcomes. Research concerning these factors, and in particular the findings of action research concerning teachers well-being, are presented through eleven publications. This thesis, when viewed as a single piece of work, provides an insight into teachers everyday experiences, professional lives and their responsibilities. It utilises several research methods including questionnaires (approx. 200 teachers; 150 pupils), interviews (approx. 50 trainee teachers), and diaries (N = 2). The key findings suggest that more clarity is required concerning the meaning of creativity for all primary and secondary teachers and how it should be embedded in teachers practice. A safe classroom, one where a child can make mistakes, take risks and share their thoughts and feelings, is necessary for this to occur; teachers understanding of this concept is considerable and broadly based; however, results suggest that teachers approach this in different ways. Trainee teachers well-being is affected by their school placements and therefore time for them to learn and share with their peers was found to be both necessary and important. It was also found that the trainee teachers benefited from being taught about time-management as this skill was beneficial for their role. An intervention of a 90 minute lecture addressing stress, time-management, psychology models such as Maslow s hierarchy of needs and Rogers core conditions, was researched and proven helpful for trainee teachers (primary and secondary science). However, more discussion of the topics and models was required and therefore three workshops per academic year were trialled with the aim of creating a community of practice to normalise experiences. Questionnaire and interview data were highly positive about this intervention and evaluation of the content showed it was beneficial during school placements. The conclusion of this work is that creative pedagogy and a teacher s well-being are related: if we want our teachers to be creative practitioners in the classroom, we need to ensure that they are well in themselves. Although this conclusion is from a small case study, it could be generalizable to other teacher training courses and a crucial area for those working in teacher education to consider. Supporting and training trainee teachers in how to manage their professional lives so they are equipped personally and emotionally is reported in the findings as necessary for the profession.

Abstract not available.

This study examined the effects of the supervisory process on classroom teaching. Through examination of the supervisory conference setting, this study examined whether effective supervision required supervisors who practiced certain strategies as they dialogued with teachers in the conference, or whether discussion of research-verified knowledge about teaching and learning alone was sufficient to bring about an improvement in classroom teaching practice. This study also examined the effects of an intervention on school principals in their performance of the supervisory task. That is, the study sought to determine if supervisors transferred the research-verified knowledge and/or process strategies presented in workshop programs to the supervisory task, and, if so, what effect, if any, this had on teachers' classroom teaching performance (classroom management practices). The research design was a case study of three supervision dyads which included two different treatments. Pre- and post-test data sources included supervisee classroom management performance, supervisory post-observation conferences, and conference participants' independent post-conference reactions. Data analysis explored the relationships between classroom observation data and supervisory conference data, in each case, for evidence of improved practice on the part of the teacher in the classroom and on the part of the principal in the supervisory conference. The relationships among the teacher's classroom management practices, the supervisor's process strategies, the substantive content focus of the conference, and the differential treatments (workshops) received careful examination. Through this approach the effects of many variables on teachers' classroom management performance were explored. The supervisory experience appeared to be affected by the experience and/or professional confidence levels of both supervisors and supervisees, the openness of both supervisors and supervisees (as evidenced in the interactive nature of the conference), the level of content knowledge and supervisory process strategies employed by the supervisor in the conference setting, and the facilitating role played by the supervisor. Where teachers were experienced and professionally confident, they appeared to find the supervisory process less threatening, and were more open and interactive in the conference setting, rendering the supervisory experience more effective. Where supervisors were perceived as less threatening (low in experience and/or level of confidence), more knowledgeable, and sincere in their facilitating efforts (process strategies), the supervisory experience also appeared more effective. The effects of the treatments on supervisors also appeared to be related to their level of experience and/or confidence, as well as their degree of openness. While the supervisors in this study transferred the knowledge and/or strategies learned to their performance of the supervisory task, the levels of application differed considerably. The implications for practice, based on the limited findings of this study, suggest that the improvement of current supervisory practice may require a combination of several staff development programs designed to provide both partners involved in the supervisory process with opportunities to develop and/or enhance both the knowledge and/or the skills that appear necessary for effective supervision. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Although preservice teacher education comprises only a small part of student teachers' socialization into the teaching profession, it nevertheless has an important impact of student teachers imagination through an educative world it renders both possible and the intelligible. Anchored in a secondary social studies methods course at the University of British Columbia, and following six of its student teacher participants through their university- and practicum-based experiences, this year-long ethnographic study explores the production of knowledge and knowing in presevice teacher education. As such, it examines how particular versions and visions of education, teaching, and learning are made possible as well as on what they, in turn, make possible for prospective social studies teachers learning to teach. Exploring how teachers' ways of being are dependent, in part, on student teachers' ways of becoming, this study examines what happens to student teachers during their preservice education and, as a result, what they make happen because of what happens to them. Examining the complex relationship between the knowledge student teachers are given and the knowledge they themselves produce, this dissertation considers not only what student teachers choose to say and do but also what structures their choices. Disturbing the practice of teacher education by examining how discourses use and are used and what, in the process, gets covered over, silenced, and ignored, this dissertation attempts to extend the traditional exploration of how prospective social studies student teachers learn to manage ideas and theories in the teacher education classrooms to the examination of how the use of ideas and theories in those very classrooms manages those who attempt to engage them. Organized as a multivocal text in which the running narrative is interrupted and interrogated by the researcher's own reflexive comments about the impossibilities of knowing and those of the participants about the study and its textualization, this dissertation focuses on the problematics and possibilities in the process of learning to teach, highlighting and publicly engaging them in order to bring more of what we do in university-based teacher education classrooms into the fold of the discussion both about and in teacher education / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

M.Ed. / From the researcher’s experience as well as in the literature on continuing professional teacher development (CPTD) it seems that teachers in South Africa in general, but in particular technology teachers experienced problems with CPTD. With this in mind, TechnEd launched the Catalyst Project in 2003 with the financial support of Anglo Platinum in the Bojanala Region of the North West province in South Africa. The Catalyst project entails the CPTD of technology teachers from 130 schools which takes place at one central venue (so-called school-focused CPTD). A literature study was done in which a variety of international CPTD models, as well as a model that focuses on the process of developing appropriate CPTD programmes for technology teachers in a South African context were considered, and criteria for sound CPTD were identified. The criteria were used to develop the TechnEd’s school-focused CPTD programme. Although TechnEd has been offering schoolfocused CPTD in partnership with trade and industry, as well as with a department of education to technology teachers, it was still unknown how these teachers experience the workshops. The purpose of this research was to describe a CPTD model where partners from trade and industry, a department of education and a higher education institution are involved, and to determine the teachers’ experience of the CPTD intervention. The research questions addressed in this research were: 1. What are the training needs of technology teachers in South Africa? 2. Which criteria for CPTD can be derived from existing CPTD models? 3. What is the teachers’ experience of the CPTD?An evaluative case study, which drew on qualitative research methodology, was conducted. The participants in the research were technology teachers who are participating in the Catalyst project. Data were collected through the observation of the teachers during the various workshops, open-ended questionnaires (questions were adapted after each workshop to try and get the richest data possible) and interviews. The data were analysed through the constant comparative method in order to derive findings. The main finding is that the teachers experienced the workshops as rewarding and fruitful. This finding is supported by four further specific findings, namely: 1. Teachers felt empowered by the workshops through the development of their technological knowledge (both conceptual and procedural) as well as their pedagogy. 2. Teachers experienced the workshops as being conducive to learning among learners. 3. Teachers experienced the accompanying learning and teacher support material (LTSM) as well as the materials and tools, supplied during the workshops, as informative and helpful, and have a need to use it in their classrooms. 4. Organisational aspects (some over which TechnEd had control, and some over which the department of education had control) regarding the workshops were part of the teachers’ experience. In contradiction to the earlier reference that teachers found CPTD too generic, it seems that teachers experience TechnEd’s CPTD with a specific focus where they are supplied with customised LTSM, material and tools that they can implement in their classrooms, and where they are orientated and trained in the underlying (school and content) knowledge and pedagogy, as rewarding and fruitful.