There is little longitudinal, empirical evidence on which to base our understanding of teacher development in higher education. Although there is an extensive literature about teachers’ conceptions of and approaches to teaching, which acts as a useful theoretical foundation, there are a number of limitations in using these broad categories of description for investigating complex experiences such as teaching and teacher development. The aim of the current investigation was to provide an insight into how new lecturers in higher education develop as teachers and to identify some of the main influences upon this development. An important consideration in this was the use of fine-grained analysis to produce a more detailed account of teachers’ experiences than the traditional conceptions of teaching categories allow. The study employed a qualitative, longitudinal design with three semi-structured interviews over a two-year period. The eleven participating teachers had less than two years experience and were from a range of higher education institutions and settings. The teachers were from the subject areas of Sport, Physiotherapy, Psychology and History. Interviews were designed to encourage the participants to describe their everyday teaching experiences. The purpose of this was to ensure that the data represented real and specific instances rather than the questions generating general, idealistic responses. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed based upon the principles of building theories from case study research. In the first part of the main analysis, full case studies for three participants were developed to illustrate their experiences of development over the two-year period. This approach allowed for the generation of fine-grained and idiosyncratic insights into how new teachers in higher education typically develop. The second main part of the analysis identified a number of common themes in the data. This stage of the analysis was a highly iterative process that moved between the case studies, the interview transcripts and the literature. A range of criteria were used to check the analysis and ensure its quality. The principal finding from the current study was the identification of a number of influences upon the new teachers’ development. At the core of these influences were instances of interactions with students. These instances provided the teachers with richer and fuller feedback about their teaching, which appeared to support their development. There were also a number of other influences upon development, which in themselves impacted upon the amount and level of interaction between the teacher and students. These included confidence as a teacher and familiarity with the teaching situation, both of which were strongly related to the teacher’s content and pedagogical knowledge. The final influence, which also was seen to interact with the other influences, was the peer support and training received by the teacher in relation to teaching. Despite these common influences the idiosyncratic contextual factors, such as topic to be taught, also emerged as being significant for the way an individual taught and developed as a teacher. Based upon these insights, it is suggested that teacher development could be enhanced by focussing upon specific instances of interactions with students. These instances appear to provide highly specific and tangible moments that allow the conceptual aspects of teaching and development to be discussed, but also give an insight into the real challenges that a particular teacher is facing in their subject at a particular time.

"It has often been stated by many writers from their own personal observations, but without experimental evidence, that if pupils and teachers work in harmony with a mutual feeling of understanding and cooperation, a friendly atmosphere will result which is conducive to effective learning. On the other hand, teachers who are aloof and unfriendly and who irritate and antagonize their pupils destroy interests and incentives for learning, and promote, instead, resentment, unwholesome attitudes, and personality disorders. It is the purpose of this paper to support or refute such statements"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "May, 1945." / "Submitted to the Graduate Committee of the Florida State College for Women in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Christine B. Scarborough, Instructor in Psychology. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-33).

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jan. 31, 2007). Includes bibliographical references.

The current study utilized structural equation modeling to test an indirect model of the effects of Teacher-Student Relationship Quality (TSRQ) on reading and math achievement via the indirect effects of TSRQ on engagement over the entire grade school period (grades 1-5). The use of this design allowed for the testing of reciprocal causal pathways and stationarity effects across the first five years of post-kindergarten schooling. It was hypothesized that structural relationships between TSRQ, engagement and achievement would vary across the grade school period with early experiences with teachers influencing students’ patterns of engagement which would become stable, influencing future teacher-student relationships and long-term achievement. Additionally, muti-group analyses were utilized to determine if gender or ethnicity impacts the fit of the structural model. Results indicated that the effect of TSRQ on engagement is invariant across time. For both math and reading target outcomes, the null hypothesis that effects are invariant (i.e., constant) across time could not be rejected. Additionally, results did not indicate that gender or ethnic group membership impacted the structural fit of the model. The current sample was limited to elementary school students and may not have provided a sufficient age span to investigate the developmental trends in teacher-student relationships that were predicted. Additionally, while the influence of TSRQ on engagement and achievement remains constant, the process through which TSRQ influences achievement may vary at different developmental periods. Study limitations and implications were also discussed.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 42 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-35).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisor: Diane L. Schallert. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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