The purpose of this research was to investigate the past art experiences and the beliefs about ability to create art as held by beginning elementary generalist teachers, and the effects of those beliefs on art teaching. Constructivism as a learning theory formed the theoretical framework for this study. An investigation of the related literature explored the topics of ability to create art, elementary generalist teachers of art, beginning teachers, teachers' beliefs, preparation of art teachers, and beginning teachers' images of self as art teacher. The research, consisting of two phases, was conducted using a descriptive case study methodology. Phase one of the study consisted of using semi-structured interviews with eight elementary generalist teachers in order to determine their past art experiences and their beliefs about their ability to create art. Three of those participants formed the purposeful sample for phase two of the study which consisted of observations of five art lessons per participant, along with pre and post interviews. An extended final interview was conducted along with documentation examination and interviews with school personnel. The thesis which emerged from this study is that beliefs about ability to create art were formed from prior experiences with art, and that beliefs about an ability to create art affected the art teaching practice of the participants. The participants believed that they do not have an ability to create art and do not have the natural talent required to be an artist. These beliefs, along with their limited background in art, lack of subject matter knowledge in art, and their status as beginning teachers adversely affected their art teaching practice. This study revealed eight specific connections between beginning teachers' beliefs about their ability to create art and their art teaching practice. Insights into these beliefs about art making and their connections to art teaching suggest important implications. Noteworthy among these implications are the need for teacher education programs to provide for personal art making skill development and the need for schools to provide support and accountability within art education for beginning teachers.

Using a qualitative case study approach, the purpose of the study was to explore the nature of the practical knowledge about teaching constructed by physical education preservice teachers during their practicum experience, that is, to gain insights into the 'sense making' process in which preservice teachers engage as they learn to teach during this experience. In addition, the study examined the factors which enhance or constrain this constructive process. The data analysis was guided by two research questions: What is the nature of the practical knowledge about teaching constructed by physical education preservice teachers during their practicum experience?; and what factors influence (enhance or constrain) the development of this knowledge during the practicum experience? The study was situated within the everyday experiences of four physical education preservice teachers as they completed an extended (thirteen week) practicum in secondary school settings. The methods used to collect data were those associated with qualitative case studies. They included lesson observations, in-depth interviewing, video and stimulated recall sessions of lessons taught by the participants, and journal writing. Separate cases have been written for each of the four participants, while the final chapter discusses the substantive issues that have arisen from the study. There were a number of conclusions that emerged from the study. With regards to the nature of practical knowledge constructed by preservice teachers the findings include its thematic development, the dynamic transformation of 'knowing that' into 'knowing how', how practical knowledge was evident but rarely heard in the practice of preservice teachers, and the role of each participant's image of himself or herself as a physical educator. A number of factors were identified that enhanced or constrained this process. These factors include prior coaching experiences, the role of sponsor teachers, the impact of university faculty advisors, video and stimulated recall sessions, and the teaching of a second subject by each participant. The study concludes by outlining a number of implications for teacher education. First, it suggests that during their teacher education program preservice teachers need to be taught how to learn from experience and that sponsor teachers have a key role to play in this process. Second, that biography has a significant impact in directing what and how preservice teachers learn about teaching during a practicum and that preservice teachers must be encouraged to examine and look beyond their own experiences when learning how to teach.

What might becoming a poet have to do with becoming a teacher? What might becoming a teacher have to do with becoming a poet? Is it possible to invite someone to become a teacher or a poet? What might such an invitation look like? What kinds of conditions are involved in "making poetry"? What might these conditions have to do with "making pedagogy"? Further, what might these conditions — of making poetry or pedagogy — have to do with "making research"? Based on a study of a six-week intensive language across the curriculum course involving a group of prospective Secondary School teachers, this dissertation explores the kinds of conditions that might create an interpretive location in which to entertain and address the above kinds of questions — of the making of poetry and pedagogy and research — i n all their relations. Moving backward and forward — between the lived particulars of a group of preservice teachers' writing practices in a workshop-styled setting, and the writing practice of a researcher/teacher educator/poet curious about the acts of learning and teaching, writing and researching — this work attempts to live well with the necessarily tangled relationships among literacy, aesthetic practice, and the ongoing production of subjectivity in teacher education and our educational researchings of teacher education. The value of writing practice, as this dissertation attempts to enact it, is not only in its offer of further practice — of writing to learn (about writing and teaching and researching) — but also in its offer of a location where we might become curious about the performative nature of learning itself. The dissertation seeks to show the ways that my own writing life, shaped as it is by the work of those who have brought hermeneutics, postmodernism, psychoanalytic theory, and the literary imagination to bear on teacher education, is deeply implicated with other writing lives, others who are always and already writing lives. The invitation to imagine the curious time of researching pedagogy, then, is part of an invitation to think differently about preservice teachers thinking differently about their time together in classrooms, engaged in acts of learning and teaching, writing and researching.

This thesis explores the early twentieth century beginnings of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, when that university first accepted responsibility for the education of secondary teachers. The university's participation came in successive stages, beginning with summer school sessions, moving to a shared training responsibility for high school teachers with the Normal School, and eventually to total responsibility for the training of high school teachers. In addition to documenting the steps by which high school teacher training became established as a program of university studies, this study analyzes the academic, social and political forces that combined to create a perceived need for, and then to legitimize, the creation of a new university department. The University of British Columbia's acceptance of responsibility for this training was a culmination of a complex social interaction of three groups (including the state, the teachers, and university administrators and faculty) all of whose values were shaped by the newly dominant ideology of professionalism. Accordingly, fundamental assumptions about "appropriate" training for teachers were embedded in a social milieu where professionalization, bureaucratization, and gender issues were compelling forces. The perceived centrality of professionals in a increasingly technocratic society led to pressure being exerted from a number of quarters in British Columbia for the institutionalization of high school teacher training in an appropriately scientific arena - the university. This study focuses on the theoretical principles underlying the dialectic of ideological determinism and human agency, as well as the historical evidence of the way that one such ideology (professionalism) shaped the transition of social policy (high school teacher training). The study concludes by utilizing contemporary theoretical perspectives to discuss the premises which inform not only the ideology of professionalism but also any metanarrative which purports to identify the true way for training teachers and by expressing hope that, as the type of knowledge associated with social power shifts, those who establish any new framework for teacher education will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The purpose of this study was to explore changes that occurred in physical education since the introduction of the New York State Standards in 1996 and ways teacher educators perceive related changes in both school and Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programs. With the release of State and National Standards (NASPE, 1995), associated educational reform, assessment, and accountability have become important in physical education. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with six participants considered experts in state standards. Cote, Salmela, and Russell's (1995) guidelines were used to inductively analyze and interpret the qualitative data. The results of the analysis yielded three categories: (a) reasoning behind standards, which included rationales, developments, and comparisons, (b) impacts of standards, which involved PE effects, PETE reactions, and negative responses, and (c) actions resulting from standards which focused on implementation, leadership, assessments and accountability, and forward directions. Relationships between the properties within each category produced four areas of greatest interest/importance: implementation, PE effects, rationales, and forward directions. The result of this study is a focused look at standards-based reforms in New York State upon which teachers, administrators, PETE professionals, and educational policy makers may reflect.

This study investigated the academic adaptation of five Mainland Chinese doctoral students in the Faculty of Education at McGill University, Quebec, Canada. Using individual interviewing as the primary research method, the study revealed 12 major challenge areas, i.e., English as a second language, financial difficulties, outsider feelings, worries about career paths, course work, research network, TA/RA experiences, differences between doctoral and master's studies, isolation, pace of the PhD, motherhood and doctoral study, and adjusting research directions. Through comparing the findings with the literature and the data from secondary sources, this study concluded that the academic adaptation of Mainland Chinese doctoral students in Canada is a process in which cross-cultural adaptation intertwines with disciplinary socialization. The study contributes to literature by (1) documenting an under-researched group---PhD students in education from Mainland China in Canada; and (2) looking at academic adaptation through two lenses: cross-cultural adaptation and disciplinary socialization.

The use of computers in the classroom could allow both educators and learners to achieve new capabilities. There are underlying factors, however, that are obstructing the adoption rate of computer use for instructional purposes in schools. The study focused on these problems with a view to determining which critical success factors promote a higher adoption rate of computer usage in education. This study derived its theoretical framework from various technology adoption and educational models Methodology: The nature of the study required a . Furthermore, it investigated ways in which computer technology could enhance learning. mixed methods approach to be employed, making use of both quantitative and qualitative data. Two questionnaires, one for the educators and one for the principals of the schools were hand-delivered to 60 secondary schools. Exploratory factor analysis and various internal consistency measures were used to assess and analyse the data.Conclusion: Educationists and policy-makers must include all principals and educators when technological innovations are introduced into schools. All these role-players need to be cognisant of the implications if innovations are not appropriately implemented. Including the use of computers in educator training programs is important so that pre-service educators can see the benefits of using the computer in their own teaching.

The purpose of this study was to initiate integration of HIV and AIDS curriculum in / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

This investigation is a case-study of adolescent literacy practices and some of the texts arising from them. Forty-five texts were initially analysed for their generic structure and semiotic composition from within the traditions of the sociolinguistic paradigm. Findings from these two processes of analysis were then reinterpreted from a Deleuzean perspective with the aim of opening out otherwise imperceptible generative forces implicated in differences between the creation of online texts such as MXIT instant messages; Facebook texts and emails, and traditional print-and-paper school based writing. The context for the study was a Pietermaritzburg government girls’ only high school. A mixed-methods approach was used throughout the research process. The sample of twelve learners was purposefully selected from across two grade 9 classes to whom subject-English was taught. The core component of the data is a single writing exercise in which the pupils were asked to write a film appraisal as 1) a MXIT or SMS message; 2) an email; 3) a Facebook message and 4) a conventional film review. There are two major findings from this study. First, in some contexts, adolescents demonstrate a high degree of differentiated control over the structural, linguistic and semiotic composition of their writing in English; second, in online literacy, there is a complex configuration of motivating contextual variables that teenagers co-opt. These generate dynamic forces that serve adolescents’ own social and affective purposes and which can supersede, subvert or cooperate with the stated purpose of a genre. A Deleuzean framework helps reveal the complex processes underlying adolescent literacies and enables the beginning of an interrogation of the pedagogic implications of recent innovations in communication technology and practices. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

The purpose of this study was to extend our knowledge about mathematical literacy learning with the focus on a foundational preservice teacher education module required for prospective teachers. The construct of mathematical proficiency provided a framework for understanding how successful learning depends on a multiplicity of competences, and in particular to highlight the pivotal role of a productive disposition towards mathematics in becoming mathematically literate. The main questions that guided the study were as follows: What is the nature and strength of the productive disposition strand of mathematical proficiency evident in preservice teachers entering a Mathematical Literacy module and how does this productive disposition change over the course of the module? and What pedagogical practices and learning behaviours best enable preservice teachers to achieve mathematical literacy? The study was undertaken as two overlapping case studies, the first describing the preservice teachers at the onset of their studies in the Mathematical Literacy for Educators module, and in the second, a three part story-telling case study of the unfolding of the module over three years from 2003 to 2005. The mathematics autobiographies of 254 preservice teachers and the data obtained from a premodule questionnaire and introductory class activities contributed to the first case study which was summarised in the form of three fictional letters. Written reflections, final module evaluations and the insights of my co-workers contributed to the second case study which documented the successes and struggles of the preservice teachers as the module unfolded each year. Complementary mixed methods techniques were used to analyse the multiple sources of data and to weave strong ropes of evidence to support the findings. Statistical analysis pointed to themes which were supported or tempered by qualitative evidence reported in the voices of the preservice teachers themselves. The analysis revealed that many of the preservice teachers entering the Mathematical Literacy for Educators module had found their school experience of mathematics to be dispiriting and consequently had developed negative dispositions towards the subject. The change in this disposition depended on their success in the module and the empathy shown by the lecturer. Helpful pedagogical practices were found to be those that supported language difficulties in learning mathematics, assisted in organising learning, remediated for poor schooling background in mathematics and took account of the diversity amongst the students. I argue that many of the lessons learned and insights gained from teaching the Mathematical Literacy for Educators module are relevant to the expanding number of mathematics courses required as part of humanities programmes. In addition, they can inform practices at school level and in both in mathematics and mathematical literacy teacher education. / Thesis (PhD.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.