Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-246).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 14, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on Feb. 6, 2007). PDF text: x, 125 p. : col. ill. UMI publication number: AAT 3216413. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche format.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Larry Holt. Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-172).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--East Carolina University, 2009. / Presented to the faculty of the Department of Educational Leadership. Advisor: Marjorie Ringler. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Apr. 23, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Despite being exposed to the Learner-Centred Approach (LCA) through traditional teacher professional development since 2000, teachers in Tanzania have generally failed to implement LCA in secondary schools. However, previous studies on the learning study in different parts of the world have shown encouraging results in developing teachers’ competencies. This study investigates how the learning study guided by the variation theory can enhance teachers’ competencies using the LCA in Tanzania secondary schools. It addresses two questions: what are the changes of teachers’ understanding of LCA through learning study rounds in a Tanzanian secondary school? And, what are the changes of teachers’ capability of implementing LCA through learning study rounds in bringing about student learning in a Tanzanian secondary school? A group of three teachers (John, Benja & Peter) in a school implemented learning studies for a period of one year. All forms two (N= 255) and three (N=240) students took part in three research lessons. The study adopted case study and phenomenographic research approaches. It used teachers’ interview protocols, lesson video recordings, lesson preparatory meetings, teacher’s journals, and students’ tests as research instruments. The teachers’ experiences and implemention of the LCA were studied before and during the three rounds of learning studies. Data were analysed using variation framework and SPSS version 16.0 for students’ tests. The study has two main findings. First, teachers involved in the three learning study rounds changed their understanding of LCA. They changed from seeing LCA as methodological (before the learning study) to treating it as subject content and even as far as seeing it as object of learning (during the learning studies) orientations. These changes were gradual and differed slightly, depending on the particular aspect(s) (the method, the content or the object of learning) a teacher focused more on than other aspects at a given time. Second, guided by the variation theory through learning studies, teachers’ capability to implement LCA improved progressively in slightly different ways, which in turn improved student learning. The teachers changed from simply making classroom pedagogical arrangements before the learning study to engaging the learners in either the content or the object of learning and enabling them to discern critical aspects of the objects of learning in terms of variation and invariance of those aspects during the learning studies. The study concludes that implementing learning study - guided by the variation theory - may be effective in enhancing teachers’ ways of conceiving and practicing LCA with a primary focus on student learning. In addition, as teachers increase their understanding of learning study and the use of variation theory they may advance their understandings in designing and teaching LCA lessons, thereby increasing possibilities for student learning. Such a conclusion lends credence to the variation theory which purports that powerful ways of acting originates from powerful ways of seeing. It also extends this theory to teacher learning of the LCA pedagogy. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Despite a rising interest in studying the effects and the antecedents of teacher efficacy, a review of literature indicated that an important individual variable has been left out of these studies. This is the cognitive component which Bandura (1977) suggests is central to the process of efficacy formulation. Specifically Bandura (1977) argues that for performance to be instructive for efficacy formulation, a type of cognitive appraisal needs to be present. To date, this cognitive appraisal has not been identified in teacher efficacy studies. The purpose of this thesis is to search for a way to represent this cognitive component and to examine its role in teaching performance and efficacy formulation. Two variables are selected as possible representations of this cognitive component. They are wisdom and wisdom in teaching. The two research questions developed for this study are: (1) What is the relative contribution of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, personal teaching efficacy, and general teaching efficacy to teaching performance? And (2) What is the relative contribution of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teaching performance to the formulation of personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy? Eighty-nine final year student teachers were asked to respond to three instruments that measured their level of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teacher efficacy. These instruments were: (1) Life planning dilemma "Jack" (Smith & Baltes, 1987), (2) Teaching dilemma "Perimeter" (Arlin, 1987), and (3) The teacher efficacy scale (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). The participants were also asked to submit their teaching practicum marks. This mark represents their teaching performance. Teaching performance was best explained by the combined effects of wisdom in teaching and personal teaching efficacy than by either of them alone. Jointly these two variables accounted for 54% of variance in teaching performance. Wisdom in teaching and teaching performance provided a better explanation for the formulation of personal teaching efficacy than each taken in turn. The joint effects of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teaching performance accounted for 7% of variance in the formulation of both personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy. An important finding from this study is that wisdom in teaching has the greatest impact on teaching performance. An implication of this finding is that teacher educators should develop and provide programmes which can help facilitate the growth of wisdom in teaching.

This study was done in order to determine whether teachers are taking on leadership roles in their schools. The following questions were posed: What factors exist in schools that help or hinder teacher leadership? What structures need to be in place for teachers to be leaders? How does the culture of the school support or creates barriers to teacher leadership? And, finally , what personal factors enhance or inhibit teacher leadership? This dissertation takes the form of case studies of three urban primary schools in the Pietermaritzburg region. The study is qualitative in nature and examines the leadership roles that teachers are undertaking, with the intention of identifying and exploring the factors that help or hinder teacher leadership. To ascertain the responses of teachers, a questionnaire, as well as semi-structured interviews were used. The principals who participated in the study were also interviewed to ascertain their views on teacher leadership. South Africa is a relatively new democracy with a host of new policies. The one that is of relevance to this study is the Norms and Standards for Educators (2000). This policy prescribes that teachers are required to undertake seven roles . Of these seven roles , the one that is of particular relevance to this study, is the role of leader, administrator and manager. This role, as prescribed by policy, implies that teachers are expected to undertake leadership roles , both in and out of the classroom. What is of interest, however, is whether and to what extent, this policy prescription is implemented in the school. The findings revealed that schools in the study were characterized by structures that were 'top-down' , and that leadership roles in these schools were delegated, rather than distributed. Findings also pointed to a number of barriers to teachers taking on leadership roles . These included time constraints, rigid attitudes of principals and school management team members as well as the impact of taking on additional roles and responsibilities, on the personal lives of teachers. Some recommendations in order for leadership to succeed in South Africa would be, firstly , that steps should to be taken to implement and encourage teacher leadership. This would entail a change in mindset on the part of principals in particular, many of whom would have to radically revise their views of what constitutes leadership and who should lead. Secondly, there should be a movement away from delegated leadership towards a more distributed form of leadership. Thirdly, it is also the recommendation of this study that the creation of a collaborative culture in schools will create an enabling environment for teacher leadership to flourish. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

This research presents an understanding of the world of successful teachers. In documenting their life histories, I composed a research text which explored the presences and absences, identities and differences, changes and continuities, variations and uniqueness, which characterise how teachers perform their success in the present educational context of continued shifts and constantly changing images. Working with Trevor, Anna, Ursula, Daryl, Eddie and Hlo, I co-created stories of lives "told and experienced", a journey that pressed me to look at the transcending and shifting line between the private/public. Written through a composition of stories, poems, photographs, musical pieces and illustrations, I have engaged in the risky, poststructural practice of redescribing their worlds in order to understand what it means to think, know and act differently, in the struggle with the desire to be "free". Employing a cubist metaphor as a heuristic device, I was able to entertain the possibility of other "worlds" within the discursive practice of "being teacher": creating potential explanatory and diverse descriptions other than the one available as the singularly defined identity category of "teacher". Employing a poststructural analytical framework, I documented the multi-dimensional nature of identity and meaning, and drew attention to the play between discourse and practice in teachers' agenda for agency. Teachers' agenda for agency is described within "Patterns of Desire" within which the evaded or marginalised in teachers' lives become available as spaces for change and moments of freedom. I present an understanding of teachers' selves through excavating the "interior" of their lives to provide a more three-dimensional approach that injects the private into the public, rupturing the fine line as a way to maintain an "aura" of desire, love, friendship, hope and familiarity in their daily lived experiences. Emerging along two axes, "Practices of the Self' and "Practices on the Self', this composition that I have created, identifies the complexity of teaching discourses and practices enacted out and enacted on teachers' daily lives that resist and disrupt those hierarchical grids of normalcy and regularity. In particular, I attended to those elusive eruptions of teachers' selves when teachers articulate their resistance to normalcy and surveillance and make themselves available to refiguration and transformation. Investing in particular historically emergent social practices and relationships that teachers effect, by their own means, there is pleasure in challenging anew the bond between teachers' private lives and public responsibilities. Agency of teachers lies in the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct identity within the discursive formations and cultural practices. In troubling the structures that often imprison and violate, teachers are able to slip through and open their thoughts and desires to their differences - the other categories that are evaded in the single identity category teacher, thereby sustaining potential for ongoing continuity and change. Continued metamorphosis of thought and act, simultaneous and consecutive, is what offers teachers moments of deep meaning and awareness that keep the private/public alignment and variation in the ways of experiencing their world, in their 'desire to be', 'desire for' and 'desire to please' as a possible condition for being a successful teacher. / Thesis (Ph.D) - University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

The bulk of research on teacher knowledge has taken place in elementary and secondary school settings. The goal of this study was to examine teacher knowledge in higher education by asking: (1) what types of knowledge are drawn upon in teaching in higher education and (2) Are there differences in the knowledge drawn upon by inexperienced (M = 5.77, SD = 2.8 years teaching), experienced (M = 18.79, SD = 7.36 years teaching), and professors who have won teaching awards (M = 19,50, SD = 7.60 years teaching)? Participants were selected at random from published lists of university faculty. Questionnaires were mailed to 500 potential respondents asking them to recall and describe two memorable teaching incidents and then rate their response, using a Likert-type scale, to a series of items based on descriptions of teacher knowledge found in the literature. They indicated the extent to which they considered each item, and the extent to which they felt they had been influenced by knowledge of the item at the time of the incident. Finally, respondents answered questions about their teaching background. A total of 102 completed questionnaires were returned. Principal components analysis (PCA) resulted in a four factor solution describing the knowledge drawn upon. Factors were (1) pedagogical content knowledge, (2) current knowledge of learners, (3) knowledge of content, and (4) knowledge of learners' background and appropriate pedagogy. Definitions of the four factors were generated using PCA results and descriptions of the incidents selected based on factor coefficient scores. Stepwise multiple regression was used to determine variables that best predict factor scores. Overall, no differences were found between the factor scores of inexperienced, experienced, and award-winning professors. Results indicated differences in the definitions of particular types of teacher knowledge in higher education that broaden the definitions found in the literature. Results also indicated