A thesis submitted to the Wits School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 2016 / This study investigates how primary school mathematics in-service teachers respond to learners’ offers, over time, during classroom interactions. The study was a follow-up to a one-year long in-service ‘maths for teaching’ professional development course in which 33 teachers participated in 2012. Four teachers from that course were tracked in this follow-up study. Data sources within this study consisted of two cycles of observations of lessons taught by the four teachers in 2013 and 2014, and an interim video-stimulated recall (VSR) interview with each teacher, with reflections guided by the structure of Rowland et al.’s ‘knowledge quartet’. A total of 18 lessons from the four teachers were video-recorded across the 2013 and 2014 observations. The notion of ‘elaboration’ was used in this study as an interpretive lens to examine and characterise responsive teaching actions in the South African context, with the focus narrowing over the course of the PhD to contingency situations within the knowledge quartet framework, focused on responses to learner offers. In the South African literature, the terrain of elaboration is characterised by extensive gaps in teachers’ mathematical knowledge, incoherent talk, and frequent lack of evaluation of learners’ offers in the classroom. Using a grounded theory approach, I propose an ‘elaboration’ framework with three situations of responsive teaching (breakdown, sophistication and individuation/ collectivisation), which can be used as a tool to support the development of more responsive teaching in the South African context (and perhaps in other contexts where similar problems prevail). In this way, the study has contributed in terms of identifying some important ‘stages of implementation’ (Schweisfurth, 2011) that might be required to move towards the ideals of more responsive teaching that are described in the international literature, and yet remain distant from the realities of South African schooling. Using the three markers of shifts (extent, breadth and quality) in elaboration recruited in this study, drawn from the ways in which the dimensions of responsive teaching were conceptualised, I report on the different patterns of shifts in elaboration by the four teachers. The results of this analysis indicated that all four teachers made shifts in their responses to learners’ offers from 2013 to 2014 lessons in at least one or more dimensions of responsive teaching, in relation to extent, breadth and quality of elaborations. Findings from VSR interviews indicated associations between shifts in teachers’ reflective awareness, and shifts in responsive teaching actions. Theoretically, the study contributes through characterising responsive teaching actions in contexts of evidence of limited evaluation within the elaboration framework, with a language of description for identifying and developing more responsive teaching actions in a resource constrained context

School leaders in the elementary and secondary levels are continually in search of ways to raise student achievement. It is acknowledged that a quality teacher is the most effective means to ensure student success. However, school leaders cannot stop at hiring quality teachers. They must take steps to provide support for those teachers so they will remain engaged in their jobs. This research study sought to examine how various supportive actions by school principals can affect teacher engagement. It addressed the research questions of “Can administrative support factors predict teacher engagement?” and “Can teacher engagement predict student achievement?” This was accomplished through a literature review of the topics associated with teacher engagement as well as a quantitative analysis of responses solicited from high school teachers in a large urban school district in the Southeastern United States. The results indicate that administrative support factors can predict teacher engagement as the model predicted that a significant amount (54%) of the variance in teacher engagement was due to the predictor variables. It was found that the social events factor significantly predicted teacher engagement (b=.419) with the next highest weight being the assessment factor (b=.246). However, the study did not show a predictive relationship between teacher engagement and student achievement. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the implementation of a structured professional learning community model referred to as Learning Team Meetings (LTMs) on teacher practice and student achievement from the perspective of teachers and instructional leaders at high-need schools. To accomplish this purpose, a multi-site case study was conducted at three school sites (an elementary, middle, and high school) all within the same region of one of the largest urban school districts in South Florida. Qualitative research methods, including one-on-one observations, interviews, focus groups, and review of documents were utilized to analyze, contrast, and compare perceptions,beliefs, and assumptions of the participants in the study. The participants included teachers, principals, assistant principals, instructional coaches, and Learning Team Facilitators (LTFs). A total of 20 participants were involved in the study. The conceptual framework for this study is rooted in the guiding principles of organizational learning and effective professional development practices. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) offer formal structures to provide teachers with learning enriched, ongoing, job-embedded staff development (Hord & Sommers, 2008). This study focused on one trajectory or type of PLC, and sought to better understand the implementation of an organizational systemic knowledge transfer structure and the impact on teacher practice from the participants' perception. The research design profided thick, rich data, which offered in-depth understandings of the participants' perception, beliefs, and assumption about the LTMs' impact on teacher practice and student achievement. Through the research it was determined that participants among all three of the schools sites believed that LTMs were changing teacher practice. / Further, the participants at each of the school sites recognized the significance of the LTF and that he or she plays an essential role in the LTMs. The significance of the study,implications of these findings, and recommendations for further research are also presented. / by Ora Meles. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:35:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Edilei_Rodrigues_de_Lames.pdf: 983194 bytes, checksum: a3a4909ed07c884e0a84ee7808c854b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-11-09 / The present work is stimulated by current investigations about university teacher's formation that, besides daily school life studies, constitute a set of topics considered mobilizers of the didactic reflection and superior teaching practice. To know how the teacher has been using the materials and resources and how has been constructing the pedagogical activities, has to do directly with the significance of the teaching function. This research had as an objective delineate the experiential knowledge outline of the professor who teaches the discipline of Cost Management in the Account Science course offered by a Higher Education Institution in the state of Sao Paulo, trying to identify the processes which structure and give meaning to their pedagogics practices in the university context. To this end, there was an exploratory research - qualitative. Data were collected through observation and interviews in order to identify aspects of professional life and the teacher's pedagogic practice, under the form of description and interpretation of their lived experiences, their habitus and their procedural knowledge. It was verified that the construction of the teacher's experiential knowledge happens through the mastery of educational fields such as: a) the way teacher presents the material to learners, b) the planning of education, c) the management of the classroom, d) the management of content. We can notice that the teacher's teaching knowledge is structured from the experiences he lived in the personal, academic, professional and organizational. His way of being and living as a teacher, his professorial habitus tends to set the rules, or ways of acting in pedagogical practice. These rules are present in the teacher's class, whether as a know-how, or as an instrument of expectations and/or standards judging and evaluating of students and their behaviors. It is concluded that the process of building experiential knowledge of the teacher does not occur in emptiness, their professional development and their teaching performances are inserted in a real and specific context, where their practices must be in line and responding. In this sense, this work contribute with data for the creation of proposals of monitoring and promoting to the experiences of teachers so that they can develop their creativity and originality of daily practice and the generation of a reflexive habitus indispensable for the improvement of teacher's knowledge / O presente trabalho ?? estimulado pelas investiga????es atuais sobre a forma????o de docentes universit??rios que, ao lado de estudos sobre o cotidiano escolar, constituem o conjunto de temas considerados como mobilizadores da reflex??o did??tica e da pr??tica de ensino superior. Saber como o professor vem utilizando seus materiais e recursos e como vem construindo suas atividades pedag??gicas t??m a ver diretamente com a significa????o da fun????o docente. Essa pesquisa teve como objetivo delinear o perfil do conhecimento experiencial do professor que ministra a disciplina de Gest??o de Custos no curso de Ci??ncias Cont??beis oferecido por uma IES do Estado de S??o Paulo, procurando identificar os processos que estruturam e d??o sentido ??s suas pr??ticas pedag??gicas no contexto universit??rio. Para tanto, realizou-se uma pesquisa explorat??ria - qualitativa. Os dados foram coletados por meio de observa????o e de entrevista, buscando identificar aspectos da vida profissional e da pr??tica pedag??gica do professor, sob a forma de descri????o e interpreta????o de suas experi??ncias vivenciadas, de seu habitus e de seus saberes procedimentais. Constatou-se que a constru????o do saber experiencial do professor acontece por meio do dom??nio de campos did??ticos tais como: a) o modo como o professor apresenta a mat??ria aos alunos; b) o planejamento de ensino; c) a gest??o da sala de aula; d) a gest??o do conte??do. Pode-se perceber que o saber docente do professor se estrutura a partir das experi??ncias por ele vivenciadas no ??mbito pessoal, acad??mico, profissional e organizacional. Seu modo de ser e de estar na doc??ncia, seu habitus professoral, tende a configurar as disposi????es, ou as maneiras de agir na pr??tica pedag??gica. Estas disposi????es se fazem presentes nas aulas do professor, seja em forma de um saber fazer, seja como instrumento de expectativas e/ou padr??es de julgamento e de avalia????o de alunos e de comportamentos. Conclui-se que o processo de constru????o do saber experiencial do professor n??o ocorre no vazio, seu desenvolvimento profissional e suas atua????es pedag??gicas est??o inseridos em contexto real e espec??fico, com os quais suas pr??ticas devem estar em sintonia e para os quais devem dar respostas. Neste sentido, este trabalho contribui com dados para a cria????o de propostas de acompanhamento e de fomento ??s experi??ncias dos professores para que possam desenvolver a criatividade e a originalidade da pr??tica cotidiana e da gera????o de um habitus reflexivo indispens??vel para o aprimoramento dos saberes docentes.

After the comparison and contrast of the four schools, it is propounded that in the establishment and developing process of a professional learning community, its core, teachers' collaborative culture, also displays a developmental process from individualism and comfortable collaboration to organizationally induced collegiality and interdependent collegiality. A supportive system is the guarantee of the teachers' collaborative culture; and the key to facilitate the birth of this culture as well as the building of a professional learning community lies on the principals' leadership style which put attention both on the management strategies and the leading strategies. / Based on the result revealed from the questionnaire survey and data of the case studies, it is found that professional learning community, as an introduced concept from the west, has its local significance in primary schools in the three cities of mainland China, supporting the theoretical structure built by the following four professional learning community dimensions---Shared decision making; Shared sense of purpose and focus on student learning; collaborative activity and deprivatized practice; Staff support and cooperation. The features of the abovementioned dimensions also possess their local flavor: degree of the shared decision making is relatively low and the teachers rarely participate in the financial and personnel decision-making, but own more authority within their professional field; secondly, students' exam scores are more emphasized in the aspect of the focus on student learning, but this varies from the schools according to its realization of professional learning community; thirdly, as for collaborative activity and deprivatized practice, collaboration among teaching practice are bolstered by the traditional "teaching research system", nevertheless there is a gap between the system and the actual outcome of the activities; lastly, the uniform teaching research system, to some extent, provides teachers' cooperation with much support, but is overweighed by the collaborative culture among teachers. / Mixed methods are adopted in this research, in which the questionnaires are delivered in three cities (including Shanghai) of mainland China in order to know the features and the realization of professional learning community in primary schools in Shanghai. It is then followed a purposeful sampling on the basis of the data analysis from the questionnaires, and four schools will be chosen out as the cases to probe into the relationship between professional learning community and teacher development. The major methods for the data collection include questionnaire survey, in-depth interview, participant observation and document collection. / The professional learning community being the one side, the teachers' development is interactively on the other, and the key platform for their interaction is teacher development activities. The contents of teacher development activities vary in different schools of different realization of professional learning community, and also diverse in the interaction between professional learning community and teachers' teacher development. Meanwhile, the second round curriculum reform in Shanghai being the common backdrop, it on one hand offers three platforms to the interaction between professional learning community and teacher development, and on the other hand is itself affected by this interaction. Especially under the pressure of "moderate empowerment and high responsibility" in the second round curriculum reform, teachers are supported by professional learning community in terms of empowerment and responsibility, and are also aided to seek for their professional identities, which leads to the achievement of teachers' real proactive professional development. / With the advent of a transitional era, the field of education is likewise undergoing a global reform. However, in retrospect of the educational reforms launched by various countries in the past thirty years, the aspect of class teaching is seldom touched upon. The academia therefore gives increasing emphasis on teachers as well as teachers' communities, and the concept of professional learning community thus comes into being. In the recent years, the studies on professional learning community have been proliferated in the west, and are gradually introduced into our country, but the related empirical studies in China still remain a virgin land. / 宋萑. / Adviser: Lee Chi Kin. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3113. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 276-302). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Song Huan.

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used to acquaint geoscience novices with some of the observation, data gathering, and problem solving done in actual field situations by geoscientists. VR environments in a variety of forms are used to prepare students for doing geologic fieldwork, as well as to provide proxies for such experience when venturing into the field is not possible. However, despite increased use of VR for these purposes, there is little research on how students learn using these environments, how using them impacts student field experience, or what constitutes effective design in light of emerging theories of geocognition. To address these questions, I investigated the design and use of a virtual reality environment in a professional development program for middle school Earth science teachers called Teachers on the Leading Edge (TOTLE). This environment, called a virtual field environment, or VFE, was based largely on the field sites visited by the participants during summer workshops. It was designed as a tool to prepare the participants for workshop field activities and as a vehicle for taking elements of that experience back to their students. I assessed how effectively the VFE accomplished these goals using a quasi-experimental, mixed method study that involved a series of teaching experiments, interviews, participant surveys, and focus groups. The principle conclusions reached in this study are as follows: 1. In a field trip orientation experiment involving 35 middle school teachers, 90.6% of the participants stated a preference for VFE enhanced orientation over an alternative orientation that used photographs and static maps to complete a practice field activity. When asked about how the VFE prepared them for their field experience, the participants ranked it as most helpful for visualize the location and geography of the field sites. They ranked it lower for helping them visualize structural and geomorphic patterns, and ranked it as least helpful in developing conceptual links between the geology at individual field sites and regional geologic structure and processes. 2. According to workshop follow-up surveys, 23% of the first year participants and 40% of the second year participants used the VFE with their own classes. While factors cited for not using the VFE provided some information relevant to the larger question of technology use in classroom, individual reports of how teachers used the VFE in their classes provided limited information about student interaction with the virtual environment. 3. Interviews with 85 community college students (novices), geologists (experts), and middle school Earth science instructors (teachers) revealed no significant difference in the features of interest selected from a virtual field site. Though experts tended to ask slightly more complicated and higher order questions than the other two groups, there was no statistically significant difference in the questions asked about these features in regards to topical characteristics, cognitive outcome, or cognitive type. In addition to some insights into cognitive differences between these groups, the interviews also provided information about visual selection, perception, and processing which are valuable to VFE scene design.

There is an evidence base supporting the use of positive behavior supports in schools; however effectively and efficiently transferring these interventions into classroom settings remains a challenge. Precorrection is a highly-regarded behavior support strategy that relies on antecedent prompting to reduce problem behavior and teach socially appropriate skills. This study examined how a brief training in precorrection and praise paired with regular feedback impacted the behavior of four Title I elementary school teachers and students. As a result of the intervention, the four teachers increased use of precorrection and praise, while concomitantly reducing their use of reprimands. Limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

With the recent adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards in Oregon, there is a great need for teachers to be trained to effectively implement the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in their teaching. Time and location are the largest constraining factors that affect teacher participation in professional development trainings. To address this constraint, Tryon Creek State Park offered a NGSS professional development training opportunity for teachers that was integrated within a field trip that they took their students on. Before the field trip, teachers were introduced to the NGSS through a set of NGSS pre-field trip materials which informed them about the NGSS and how aspects of it would be integrated into their students' field trip. Teachers accompanied their students on a two-hour long field trip at Tryon Creek State Park where teachers observed nature guides model NGSS-aligned activities for the students. My research aimed to answer the following question: How will an informal science education program at Tryon Creek State Park affect K-2 teachers' awareness of the Next Generation Science Standards? Outcomes were measured through a pre/post retrospective survey and follow-up interviews. On the survey teachers reported little awareness of the three dimensions of the NGSS and very few of the teachers increased their understanding after the treatment. On the other hand, most had a high level of awareness and confidence in teaching factual information supporting the NGSS prior to treatment, resulting in a ceiling effect. Interviews suggested that few teachers read the materials sent in advance of the field trip, but teachers who did read the materials indicated increases in understanding of the NGSS. During the field trip several of the nature guides were effective in modeling science and engineering practices. These findings suggest that this method of professional development is promising, but needs further refinement.

In the last twenty years in US science education, professional development has emphasized the need to change science instruction from a direct instruction model to a more participatory and constructivist learning model. The result of these reform efforts has seen an increase in science education professional development that is focused on providing teaching strategies that promote inquiry learning to learn science content. Given these reform efforts and teacher responses to professional development, research seems to indicate that whether teachers actually change their practice may depend on the teachers' basic epistemological beliefs about the nature of science. The person who builds the bridge between teacher beliefs and teacher practice is the designer and facilitator of science teacher professional development. Even though these designers and facilitators of professional development are critical to science teacher change, few have studied how these professionals approach their work and what influence their beliefs have on their professional development activities. Eight developers and designers of science education professional development participated in this study through interviews and the completion of an online questionnaire. To examine the relationship between professional development providers' science beliefs and their design, development, and implementation of professional development experiences for science teachers, this study used the Views on Science Education Questionnaire (VOSE), and interview transcripts as well as analysis of the documents from teacher professional development experiences. Through a basic interpretive qualitative analysis, the predominant themes that emerged from this study suggest that the nature of science is often equated with the practice of science, personal beliefs about the nature of science have a minimal impact on the design of professional development experiences, current reform efforts in science education have a strong influence on the design of professional development, and those providing science education professional development have diverse views about epistemology and the nature of science. The results and conclusions from this study lead to a discussion of implications and recommendations for the planning and design of professional development for science teachers, including the need to making equity and social justice issues an integral part of inquiry and scientific practice.

The major focus of this study was the identification of factors that motivate teachers to participate in professional growth and development activities. Although teachers may be motivated to participate in staff development for different reasons, it was hypothesized that common factors forming an identifiable incentive profile could be found. Within the focus of the study, three primary questions were asked: (a) What are the needs, incentives or motivators that influence teachers to further their professional development? (b) What are the relative strengths of the various needs, incentives or motivators? and (c) How do the incentive structures of teachers differ based on a set of demographic variables and attributes? Answers to Question (1) were formulated in the process of conducting a literature review of staff development, general motivation theory and teacher motivation theory, and while developing the research instruments used in the study. Questions (2) and (3) were answered by analyzing the results of the research instruments after they were administered in survey format to study respondents. The study instruments (Work Motivation Profile and Staff Development Motivation Profile) utilized the technique of paired comparisons. Respondents were asked to weight two statements that corresponded to levels of Maslow's (1954) and Herzberg's (1959) five-tiered motivation constructs. The analysis unit examined in the research study consisted of all teachers, kindergarten through twelfth grade, in the state of Washington during the time period 1986-1987. A systematic sample of 2000 was drawn from the approximately 39,500 teachers in the state. Of the 2,000 surveys mailed to teachers, 770 were usable for the study. There were four major findings from the study: (a) The strongest need that prompted teachers in this sample to participate in professional growth and development activities was the intrinsic motivation of Self-Actualization. The second greatest source of motivation was Social needs; (b) Basic, Status, or Security needs were secondary motivators; (c) Years of experience, major work assignment, size of school district and proportion of household income attributable to school district salary had significant, though weak, effects on the need structures of teachers; (d) Despite subtle differences, the basic teacher profile remained constant: the five needs motivating teachers to participate in professional growth and development, in descending order of strength, were Self-Actualization Needs, Social Needs, Basic Needs, Status Needs, and Security Needs.