M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed.

This essay deals with the experiences of hospital school teachers, when teaching terminally and chronically ill children. Teachers form part of a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers and other caregivers. As a team they all share the same goal of assisting the child to better health with the minimum disruption to normal development and education. The effects on teachers personally; coping with emotional stresses of children being seriously ill and sometimes, unfortunately dying and professionally; by constantly adapting learning and teaching styles to suit the needs of these learners, are numerous when working in these conditions and often results in burnout. This essay explores these effects by inquiring into the lives of four teachers at one particular hospital school. This phenomenological study comes to a conclusion that hospital teachers need specific and distinctive characteristics to deal with issues out of the norm. They have to own extraordinary commitment and acknowledge the true value of teacher collaboration. Finally teachers needed ongoing support on a personal level; counseling, and on a professional level; teacher training and development in order to remain healthy, personally intact and at the spearhead of developments in the teaching profession. The essay ends with recommendations for hospital school teachers and hospital schools. / Dr. M.P. van der Merwe

This dissertation investigates the experiences of K-12 teachers in Title I charter schools in New York City who have been exposed to school-based trauma (TSBTE), focusing on the effects of such trauma on teacher well-being and professional identity. Through a narrative inquiry approach, the study documents the lived experiences of four teachers, drawing on frameworks including the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model and Trauma-Informed framework. Findings reveal significant impacts of school-based trauma on teachers’ mental and physical well-being. This research highlights systemic gaps in school policy that fail to adequately support teacher well-being, advocating for enhanced trauma-informed practices that empower teachers to effectively meet the needs of both students and themselves. The study’s implications suggest policy revisions and additional research to foster a supportive educational environment prioritizing teacher well-being following a traumatic event, thereby strengthening overall school climate for all members of the school community.

<p>The aim of this paper was to identify the sources of stress for teachers involved with inclusive education as well as whether there is a statistically significant difference in stress experienced by teachers based on their biographical details. In this research the focus was on intellectual disability.</p>

<p>The aim of this paper was to identify the sources of stress for teachers involved with inclusive education as well as whether there is a statistically significant difference in stress experienced by teachers based on their biographical details. In this research the focus was on intellectual disability.</p>

M.Ed. (Psycho-educational programme development) / The wide spread concern, pertaining the alarming rate of adolescents leaving school before completing Grade12 is a South African problem. The experiences of those adolescents vary greatly. In line with the South Afncan School Act (84 of 1996) education is accessible and compulsory for all. Unfortunately that provision is targeted only for grade 1to grade 9, of which grade 9 is considered an exit point for General Education and Training. There is no clear cut intervention strategy in place in the educational system toassist adolescents leaving school before completing Grade 12 in order to cope with their situation It is for this reason that the researcher took the initiative of exploring the adolescents' experiences of leaving school before completing Grade 12. The researcher realises that adolescents form alarge percentage of our country's population. Therefore they should be retained inschools in order to be capacitated, so that they can develop and sustain economic structures of a country that has a future that depends on the expertise of the youth. Retaining adolescents in schools is a necessity. As a result, in this research, an attempt is made to alert the educational stakeholders to assist the adolescents who have left school before completing Grade 12 to cope with their situation. This research study is aimed at describing the adolescents' experiences of leaving school before completing grade twelve, to provide guidelines and to make recommendations for other educational stakeholders on how these adolescents can be assisted. The setting of the study is in the informal settlement of Ekurhuleni metropolis. Thestudy is conducted through the combination of individual interviews and participant observation. The research method that was followed was qualitative, explorative, descriptive, and contextual in order to investigate what the adolescents' experiences are. Sampling was done purposively because the respondents had to be adolescents who have left the secondary school before completing grade twelve. A pilot interview study was done. Thereafter phenomenological interviews were conducted with twenty of these adolescents. During the interviews, ethical measures were adhered to and steps to ensure trustworthiness were also followed. The data was analysed as per Tesch's method of data analysis. The services of an independent coder were also employed. The results were based on the phenomenological in-depth interviews on adolescents' own experiences of leaving secondary school before completing Grade 12. The recommendations from this study were made with specific reference to the education department. educators, parents and non-governmental organisations Guidelines were described according to themes and categories of experiences. objectives and strategies.

Ph.D. (Education) / Education in the United Kingdom is divided into three stages which are: primary, secondary, further and higher education. Learners’ compulsory education lasts for 11 years. Legal schooling ages are starting from five years to 16 years. Within that period learners must obtain full-time education that is suitable to their age, ability, capacity and their special educational needs (SEN). If a learner does not attend a school, the local education authority (LEA) must be satisfied that other appropriate provision is available for them. Transferring age from primary to secondary school is at the age of 11 years. Most secondary schools in the United Kingdom are comprehensive; which means that they do not operate a selective entrance system. However, in some parts of the United Kingdom, grammar school systems operates which usually requires learners to pass an entrance examination based on their ability.

One year since over 1.2 billion learners were affected by school closures in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, this study sought predictors of past month perceived stress for K-12 teachers. The sample (N=159) had 89.3% (N=143) born in the United States, 89.9% female (N=143), 69.8% White (N= 111), 9.4% Asian (N=15), 9.4% Black (N= 15), and 8.8% Latino (N= 14)—with mean age of 39.53 years (min=23, max=70, SD=1.138), while 72.3% (N=115) had a current partner. For education level, the mean was category 2.87 (min=2, max= 4, SD=.517) for closest to a master’s degree with a mean annual household income of category 5.39 (min=1, max=9, SD=1.034) for $50,000-$99,000. They had a mean of 13.36 years (min=1, max=45, SD=13.36) teaching. Teachers reported high stress related to being a teacher, high fear about the transmission of COVID-19 in the school setting, high anger about COVID-19 decision-making and policies, and moderate coping overall as a teacher during the pandemic. In backward stepwise regression, controlling for social desirability, higher past month Perceived Stress (PSS-4) was significantly predicted by: Yes, lost social support in the last year due to death/change in status; Lower annual household income; Lower rating of mental/emotional health during pandemic; Greater negative changes in physical/mental health during pandemic; Greater symptoms of mental health disorders during pandemic; and Lower level of social support/lower number of people providing it—while the model (R 2=.568, Adj R 2 =.547) accounted for 54.7% of the variance. Qualitative data showed their most stressful experiences during the pandemic: Category I: Coping with Overwhelming and Varied Feelings; Category II: New Challenges Teaching with Exorbitant Hours; Category III: Teachers as Disrespected, Blameworthy, Disposable Multi-Tasking Servants. Other categories showed how teachers coped: Category I: Adaptive Coping Through Self-Calming Activities; Category II: Adaptive Coping Through Social Support and Companionship; Category III: Adaptive Coping by Entering Mental Health Treatment; Category IV: Adaptive Cognitive Coping—as well as the unfortunate Category V: Maladaptive Coping Through Alcohol/Drug Use and Food. Implications and recommendations suggest directions for future research and practice, including using new short tools in this study in future research and as screening tools.

Teachers engage in relational and emotional work as they develop relationships with their students, forming teacher-student dyads that impact the lives and experiences of both the teacher and student. Within their schooling contexts, some teachers become known for their ability to build teacher-student relationships, particularly with students who demonstrate behavior that may be challenging or deviate from the explicit and/or implicit socially accepted norms of formal schooling – students who are formally or informally labeled as demonstrating misbehavior. The purpose of this research was to explore the professional experiences, knowledge, and skills of these teachers – who consistently build relationships with students whose behaviors may be described as challenging by others – with particular emphasis on the approaches the teachers enacted in building relationships with students, what experiences informed their approaches, and how these teachers navigated the emotional labor of teaching and being in relationship with their students. Utilizing a qualitative practitioner inquiry-based research approach, participants were 13 inservice elementary educators teaching in the United States, whose classrooms ranged from first grade through fourth grade (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Extant research within the field of student misbehavior is difficult to locate, frequently lacks the perspective of the student or the teacher, and adopts a behavioral stance with the goal of attributing the source of the misbehavior. In addition, while research studies illuminate the ways relational approaches are beneficial, this relational approach has not yet been applied to the area of student misbehavior or to identify specific professional skills, knowledge, and experiences that inform how educators who consistently build relationships with these students approach their work, how they learned these skills, and how they think about and navigate the emotionality embedded in their work. Using data from multiple sources (semi-structured interviews, focus groups, ongoing anecdotal exchanges, fieldnotes, and reflective journals) and analyzing a collective 222 years of teaching experience, the study demonstrates how teachers who enact relational approaches when fostering teacher-student relationships adopt the stance of researchers of the lives and stories of children. In these teacher-student relational dyads, teachers described their emotional experiences and the emotional labor of the teaching profession, including the systemic challenges that impeded their relational work. Teachers in the study used strategies to navigate their emotional labor, and these strategies were often developed from their early life experiences, observing other educators, experiential learning in the field, and practicing self-reflection. In particular, teachers negotiated the profession's emotional demands through emotional and relational modeling, or what emotional labor theory poses as surface and deep acting (Hochschild, 2012). The enactment and use of relational and emotional modeling ultimately enabled teachers to be authentically engaged as researchers of the lives and stories of children, forming teacher-student dyads with students whose behaviors were perceived as challenging. The research findings have significant implications for preservice teacher education and inservice teacher professional development, particularly in supporting teachers as they develop teacher-student relationships and navigate the emotional labor of teaching through relational and emotional modeling.