Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2002. / Title from title page screen, viewed January 26, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Rodney P. Riegle (chair), William Rau, Albert Azinger, George Padavil. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-156) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 228 p. : ill. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-206).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-186).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-170). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis advisor: Lauri Johnson / This individual study was part of a larger group case study about how educators of color experience racial disproportionality in the Cityside Public Schools (pseudonym). The purpose of this individual study was to identify factors that influence job satisfaction for teachers and administrators of color and how teachers and administrators of color perceive how these factors might influence their job retention. This study included both teachers and administrators of color from one urban school district in Eastern Massachusetts, the Cityside Public Schools (CPS). Data sources included 11 semi-structured interviews with educators of color and 40 completed Likert scale surveys measuring job satisfaction and retention. The data was collected during a one-month period. All data was coded thematically using three levels of ecological framework, as well as factors that contribute to job satisfaction and retention. The interview data was coded first, and then the survey data was coded. The data was coded using identified themes from previous research, as well as new themes that emerged from the interviews. All the data was then combined and synthesized to determine findings and make recommendations. This individual study found that many of the Cityside participants were satisfied with their job, while still recognizing that their work is challenging. Factors that influenced their job satisfaction were embedded in themes of connections, support, racial identity, resources and fatigue. These factors, except for the last, predicted slightly higher rates of perceived retention within the district among the teachers of color than the administrators of color. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This research project investigates the lived experience of professional identity of five Early Years Teachers, formerly Early Years Professionals (EYPs), working in a variety of early years settings in England. Early Years Teacher Status is a government-funded, standards-based graduate status for the birth to five sector, which replaced Early Years Professional Status (EYPS) in 2013. All EYPs are now entitled to call themselves Early Years Teachers. Both are part of a continued drive to professionalise the early years workforce, raise outcomes for children from birth to five and ensure children are ready for school. Concerns have been raised in the sector about the parity of pay, working conditions and status of Early Years Teachers when compared to those with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). The research study uses an in-depth phenomenological approach and an innovative data gathering method, Learning Walks, to investigate how five EYPs, rebranded as Early Years Teachers, have made meaning of their new identity while working in a variety of early years settings: a pre-school, children's centre, home child-minding setting, Higher Education and nursery. Issues of identity, pedagogical leadership, power, agency and status are examined through the perspectives of the participants using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The findings emphasise the unique experiences of these Early Years Teachers, which are contextual to their workplace and influenced by personal experience and belief systems. Their confidence in a multi-disciplinary pedagogical approach is very visible, embedded within their previous identity as an EYP. However, the study underlines some of the tensions, issues and challenges which come from an imposed shift of professional identity from EYP to teacher, without the same pay and working conditions as QTS, and situated within a traditionally complex and marginalised workforce beset by notions of hierarchy and status. It provides new insight into the reality of such an abrupt, imposed and regulated identity change within a shifting policy field, which is reconceptualising early years education and care as preparation for school.

Assessment is integral to teaching and learning and external assessment is a logical sequel to the interaction between teachers and their students because it represents an account of this interaction to the public. External assessments, especially those that have high stakes, such as the end-of-cycle examinations, are known to have an influence on teaching and learning in the years that precede them. The effect of external assessments on teaching and learning has been extensively researched. The test items which transmit the influence have also been thoroughly analysed in terms of the kind of thinking that they demand from students. However, the aspect of external assessment that has not received much attention is the test developers who originate the test items and are therefore ultimately responsible for the type of effect the items have on teaching and learning. External assessment in sub-Saharan African countries especially, demand mainly recall of facts with very little demand on the thinking and problem solving abilities of students. This type of question tends to induce teaching and learning mainly for recall. This research aims to throw light on the intentions of test developers for Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in Ghana when they write items for this end-of-cycle examination. A broadly qualitative approach was adopted for this research but quantitative data was used in addition. Seven test developers were interviewed extensively on how they perform their test development activities. In order to have a fuller understanding of the external examination, the teachers and students who experience its influence were included in the study. Forty teachers and 120 students completed questionnaires relating to their beliefs about the BECE and eight each of the participating teachers and students were subsequently interviewed. The findings suggest that the test developers were aware that the level of thinking in their questions was low and would prefer questions that demand higher levels of thinking. They were also aware that past questions influence teaching and learning and were of the opinion that the standard of education is low. However, the test developers did not have the intention to change teaching and learning with their tests because they could not see a relation between their test items and the quality of teaching and learning. It was also found that their personal interpretations and concerns about the social impact of the examination are more influential in determining the type of items they write. This is significant because item writing is presumed to be a neutral and objective activity devoid of subjective considerations. The findings further suggest that the examination influences what teachers teach and how they teach it and the teachers' self-worth, prestige and public esteem depend on the performance of their students in the examination. The students believed the BECE prevents them from learning other things and from developing their talents and they saw the examination as the fairest means of competing for selection to senior high school because it is less partial when compared with their teachers' continuous assessment marks. It was also found that past questions serve as an alternative curriculum because they determine the standard of the examination questions and also influence teaching and learning. Through the medium of past questions, the examination is able to influence policy by circumventing it or diverting attention away from it. It was concluded that the influence of social considerations in item writing has created a vicious cycle of low level questions that induce teaching and learning aimed at recall which does not equip students to use knowledge acquired to solve the problems that attract the sympathy of the item writers. It will require awareness creation among stakeholders about the central role of the external assessment in determining the quality of teaching and learning to break the cycle by improving the quality of the test items.

This thesis proposes a critical enquiry into the issue of creativity, focussing on teacher education in the English Lifelong Learning (LLL) sector. I examine the role of creativity in this context and link sector research and practice to an alternative, immanent, form of ethics. My thesis has three parts, the first of which identifies and contests current approaches to creativity and redefines it from the perspective of teacher education in LLL. To tackle this complex problem, I draw on recent literature in the field in conjunction with the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). I recast the notion of lifelong learning as an event in order to explicitly relate practice, creativity and ethics. Drawing on this analysis, the second part of my argument describes an alternative, “operative” model of creativity and provides examples of its implication in practice. The films and creative practices of acclaimed director Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) are used to exemplify the sort of “shock to thought” which Deleuze equates with certain types of cinema, and which, I suggest, can contribute to creative teaching and learning practices. I bring together Deleuze’s ideas about how creative “stutters” and “interstices” function, providing a set of interlinked parameters with which to think about creative teacher education practices in LLL. Improvisation, chance and error are investigated from the viewpoint of the ethical practices immanent to them. These parameters structure the third part of my thesis, which critically examines the extent to which research and practice in LLL might actually achieve the ambitious goals this implies. Drawing on Deleuze’s positions on moral and ethical behaviour, I develop an ambitious re-statement of ethical practice which aims to better relate to practices of teacher education in LLL and their creative potential.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1979. / Title from title page screen, viewed Feb. 11, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Jack Hobbs (chair), John Sharpham, Max Rennels, Lanny Morreau, Fred Mills. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-115) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Additional advisors: John A. Dantzler, Rose Mary Newton, Jerry Patterson, George Theodore. Description based on contents viewed June 3, 2009; title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-112).