The thesis builds on how contemporary policy documents express an interest in gatekeeping and in controlling teacher competence, for instance in the form of aptitude tests before teacher education or during practicum in teacher education. The thesis is hence characterised by a general interest in teacher competence and what in the governmental official report SOU 2008:109 is referred to as “the essential basis” in terms of teacher competence – a metaphor that serves as a key notion in the thesis. By analysing interviews and surveys from teacher educators who have been involved in failing student teachers during practicum, the aim is to identify what is considered to be the content of this essential basis. The results indicate that the essential basis contains communicative and relational aspects of teaching, about the ability to take space (oneself) and make space (for others). The most fundamental part is however the ability to assume adult responsibility and maturity in relation to children/pupils in pre-school/school. This is described as an important initial value for teacher education and a desirable ”baseline” for those starting a teacher education. However, informants describe how it is possible within teacher education to work in multiple ways with students who need to learn how to distinctly take space (themselves), in order to then assume a more active role in teaching and in the interaction with children or adolescents. An approach based on a theory of recognition and the concept of social visibility (Heidegren, 2009) is used in this part of the analysis, in order to understand the informants’ description of what usually happens when student teachers develop this essential teacher ability. The interpretation is also backed by Polanyi’s theory on tacit knowledge (1962; 1966/2013). Moreover, findings indicate that the “gate” sometimes opens, even though teacher educators doubt whether the student teacher has developed an essential basis or not. An argument for this is that school is a workplace that ”cleans out rather briskly”, as one supervisor puts it, and school is ”not an easy environment to hold on to”. In brief, school itself is regarded to be an active gatekeeper after teacher education. This might explain the tendency to sometimes pass rather than to fail during teacher education. Therefore the thesis suggests and discusses that teacher education from the very beginning pursue what can be characterised as a “pedagogy of honesty”.

This is a biographical case study of science teachers who teach at schools that have consistently produced good results in the examinations despite disabling teaching conditions such as large, under-resourced classes. The study analysed the life experiences, education, school- and community environment of the teachers in an attempt to identify the critical features that inspire and support their classroom commitment to hands-on / minds-on teaching. Evidence was collected through semi-structured interviews with the teachers to get their stories, with groups of learners to assess how they perceived the teachers in the classrooms, and through informal discussions with the principals (school management) and colleagues, for a richer description. Questionnaires were administered to find out what the situations concerning resources were at the schools. Classroom interactions were observed and analysed for more information on the conduct of the teachers in the process of teaching and learning. It was found that both case study teachers had adequate content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and taught in a way that reflected their understanding and belief of the nature of science (NOS). The view that the two participating teachers have of the nature of science was formed during their own formative school years and influenced the view of the nature of science they instill in their learners. The inadequacy of resources at the schools although a frustration to the teachers, did not deter them from teaching science in an experimental way reflective of the nature of the subject matter. The education implications of this study are discussed in relation to lessons that can be learnt from such inspiring teachers. The significance of the study is seen in the contribution it can make to the existing scholarship on effective science teaching and on teacher development programs including factors contributing to effective science teachers in the present South African climate of having large, under-resourced science classes. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

The aim of this paper is to study educators’ understanding of programming in early childhood education and what conditions they find to be necessary to work with programming. This study has taken place in a specific context where the curriculum is in a process of change in Sweden. In the suggestion for a revised curriculum made by Skolverket digital competence has been added and it gives preschools the responsibility for creating possibilities for children to develop their digital competence. In the comment material for the new curriculums by Skolverket programming is defined as a digital tool and also understood in a wider sense as part of every aspect of digital competence. This is a qualitative study and both interviews and a questionnaire form has been used. Eight educators from three different preschools has participated. The educators’ understanding of programming has been analyzed using discourse theory and analysis. The conditions for working with programming is analyzed using the TPCK model for integrating technology in teaching in addition to discourse theory.The results of this study show that the dominating way to understand programming is part of a discourse that lifts the importance of programming as basic or key competences that everyone should have, both for the sake of the individual and for society’s sake. When it comes to the conditions for working with programming in early childhood education knowledge stands out as one of the main factors, much because there is a lack of knowledge on the subject amongst educators. Knowledge is a wide term and the study shows that all the categories of the TPCK model is covered in the educators perceived conditions. Outside of knowledge the driving force of individuals, active leadership, organizational structures and practical experience are also seen as conditions to work with programming.

Since their advent as supplemental staff at community colleges four decades ago, part-time instructors, or adjuncts, have since been employed with increasing frequency and in escalating numbers across all institutional types of American higher education. Currently comprising approximately forty percent of all postsecondary faculty, part-time instructors now outnumber full-time nontenure-track, tenure-track, and tenured faculty respectively on many campuses. This pervasive trend has created a professional climate of uncertainty and, in some cases, even hostility as American colleges and universities struggle to adapt to ever changing enrollment populations, market demands, technological innovations, and political pressure. As the sustainability of traditional faculty tenure hangs in the balance and as opportunities to secure tenure-track appointments continually diminish, the arguably inequitable working conditions of college faculty hired off the tenure track have fallen under public and political scrutiny since these instructors now provide such a large proportion of undergraduate education. This dissertation offers a comprehensive overview of the adjunct staffing model’s development and consequences as well as a proposed solution particularly to chairpersons of academic departments that have become inordinately dependent upon part-time instructors to teach their undergraduate curriculum. Combining personal experience with recent research, the first chapter offers a detailed description of the typical adjunct’s current working conditions, which include heavy workloads, poor compensation, and insufficient time for preparation and professional development. I briefly review the origins of and dramatically increasing reliance upon postsecondary adjunct employment over the past forty years. I situate the present undervaluing of part-time instructors within the context of colleges’ persistently rising “sticker prices,” which most commonly derive from curricular as well as extracurricular amenities and a drastic increase in non-instructional staff. I suggest that colleges cannot afford to ignore the adjunct problem much longer due to growing public and political awareness of the issue. I conclude by encouraging college governing boards, administrators, and faculty to collaborate in order to arrange respectable and sustainable terms of employment. The second chapter analyzes how the current model of adjunct employment adversely affects higher education. In addition to the first chapter’s grievances pertaining specifically to adjuncts, college faculty as a whole suffers from the deprofessionalization and bifurcation resulting from the widespread overdependence upon part-time instruction. Furthermore, college students suffer from part-time instructors’ compromised ethos and resultant “shielding,” last-minute staffing practices by means of which institutions often hire adjuncts, part-time instructors’ inadequate access to instructional resources, and irrational models for adjunct compensation. Finally, the adjunct problem harms the reputations of postsecondary institutions overall, indicating dysfunction and lack of accountability to an already skeptical public. The chapter closes with a call to action, encouraging all postsecondary institutions to consider improved, sustainable employment for all faculty. The third and final chapter proposes a solution in the form of a standardized college faculty position, which I call the core-survey instructor. Based loosely on a specific definition of contingent faculty, such a professor would assume reasonably heavy teaching loads as a full-time employee of one institution in exchange for a respectable salary, renewable multi-year contracts, and limited benefits. I explain how core-survey instructors will benefit postsecondary institutions not only by resolving the detriments listed in the second essay but also via improved remedial instruction, academic advising, and participation in shared governance.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:58:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Valdina Goncalves da Costa.pdf: 1138439 bytes, checksum: 9e0fbcd341d25fbeca36ca90d5b4a019 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-06-25 / This research fits into the field that discusses teacher training in higher education, and in a special way, the work of the professor in teacher training courses. In this context, this study was guided by the following question: How do the professors of the Teacher Training Courses in Mathematics set themselves up as teacher trainers, and what are the specificities of their work? The aims of the study were: catalogue the professors in the Teacher Training Courses in Mathematics in the state of Minas Gerais, understand the work of the teacher training professor and identify the specificities that have been significant in this work. The theoretical support was found in Bourdoncle, Roldão, Altet, Dubar, Sacristán, Contreras, Paquay, Ludke and Boing when talking about the profession and the teaching act itself; in Nóvoa, Lang, Fanfani, Lamy, Jobert and Altet when discussing professionalization; and in Fanfani, Arroyo, Mancebo, Ludke and Boing when discussing about work and teaching conditions. The research field is formed by the Teacher Training Courses in Mathematics in the state of Minas Gerais, and the participants are the teacher training professors who work in them. The research happened in two phases. At the beginning of the data collection phase, the teacher training professors received a questionnaire which identified their profile and characteristics of their work. Later, interviews were carried out with seventeen teacher training professors from eight private and public institutions, aiming at understanding and identifying the specificities of their work. The teacher training professors statements were analysed concerning their personal and professional development in relation to the work in the higher education institution in which they are staff members. The research showed that the process of setting themselves up as teacher developers is dynamic and made up of different moments through which they pass along their personal and processionals walk. The results also showed that various factors, motivated by neo-liberal politics, have affected work, and the teaching condition of the subjects who were interviewed, and point to their intensification, fragmentation, isolation and control, with the illusion of a false autonomy and freedom of work. Theoretically, this thesis aims at opening up new discussions about the teaching act itself of teacher training professors in our days / Esta pesquisa se insere na problemática que discute a formação de professores no ensino superior e, em especial, o trabalho do professor formador nos cursos de licenciatura. Nesse contexto, este estudo foi orientado pela questão: Como os professores dos cursos de Licenciatura em Matemática se constituem como formadores de professores e quais as especificidades do seu trabalho? O estudo teve como objetivos: fazer um mapeamento dos professores formadores dos cursos de Licenciatura em Matemática do estado de Minas Gerais, compreender o trabalho do professor formador e identificar as especificidades que têm marcado esse trabalho. Os referenciais teóricos foram buscados em Bourdoncle, Roldão, Altet, Dubar, Sacristán, Contreras, Paquay, Ludke e Boing para discutir a profissão e a profissionalidade docente; em Nóvoa, Lang, Fanfani, Lamy, Jobert e Altet para discutir a profissionalização; e em Fanfani, Arroyo, Mancebo, Ludke e Boing para discutir o trabalho e a condição docente. O campo de pesquisa são os cursos de Licenciatura em Matemática do estado de Minas Gerais, tendo como participantes os professores formadores que neles atuam. A pesquisa desenvolveu-se em duas fases. Num primeiro momento da coleta de dados, foi aplicado um questionário que identificou o perfil dos professores formadores e características de seu trabalho. Posteriormente, foram realizadas entrevistas com dezessete professores formadores de oito instituições, públicas e privadas, com a intenção de compreender e identificar as especificidades do seu trabalho. Foram analisadas as narrativas dos professores formadores em relação à trajetória pessoal e profissional e em relação ao trabalho na instituição de ensino superior em que atuam. A pesquisa revelou que o processo de constituição desses professores, como formadores, é dinâmico e composto por diferentes momentos, pelos quais os sujeitos vão passando ao longo de sua trajetória pessoal e profissional. Os resultados também mostraram que vários fatores, impulsionados pelas políticas neoliberais, têm afetado o trabalho e a condição docente dos entrevistados e apontam para sua intensificação, fragmentação, isolamento e controle, com a ilusão de uma falsa autonomia e liberdade de trabalho. Teoricamente, esta tese busca trazer novas discussões acerca da profissionalidade docente dos professores formadores nos dias atuais

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:45:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissABL.pdf: 6341606 bytes, checksum: 16c0c100fd3c16c4089f0b78475d5ef7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-02-28 / Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos / The present study investigated the effects of the training of psychology students in the application of a software developed for teaching reading skills to children with reported academic failure. This training was composed by teaching conditions proposed from the elaboration of a teaching program. These conditions was developed for promoting those children s learning, based on a technology derived from the experimental analysis of behavior in the context special education. For the implementation of the training, the students were presented with different suggested teaching conditions: presentation of the exercises in the classroom; visit to the laboratory, which included a presentation of how the computerized program works; simulation of settings in which the program was applied; participative supervision of the participant s performance; reading of the manual with written instructions. A follow up on the upholding of learning in the participant s performance was also performed with no direct interference by the experimenter (final observation). The teaching conditions were assessed in terms of the contribution of each condition in the development of educational capabilities in the participants, as well as in terms of possibilities of improvement of each condition. The target behaviors (skills to be developed in the participants) were observed and recorded in terms of occurrence, non-occurrence, or aided occurrence; a different set of target behaviors were recorded as they occurred during the sessions of application of the software. The results from 22 participants that were presented with the different conditions of the training program were grouped by the 10 possible sequences of presentation of the conditions. In general, all participants showed an increase in the percentage of target behaviors performed, with a decrease in the percentage of occurrence and aided occurrence recorded between the first and the last condition. In addition, was analyzed the conditions individually (simulation, supervision and final observation) independent of the sequence of conditions to which they were presented. An evaluation of the teaching conditions by the participants was also used, with the assessment of their opinion on the positive and negative aspects of the training. The main conclusions on the relative contribution of each condition were: the simulation condition seemed to be more efficient in reducing the frequency of non-occurrence of the target behaviors; the supervision condition seemed to be more efficient in reducing aided occurrence of the target behaviors; it was not possible to make inferences about the impact of reading the manual, as participants that were not presented with this condition had a similar performance when compared with the participants the were presented with that condition performance of the participants was unstable, which suggests the need for revising relevant aspects to the development of teaching programs; the number of sessions might have played a more important role in the participants performance than the sequence of conditions to which they were presented. Finally, the present study raised important issues to be considered in the training of new agents, and suggests further experiments to investigate the limitations observed. / Este estudo investigou o impacto da capacitação de estudantes de Psicologia na aplicação de um programa informatizado, software especialmente desenvolvido para ensinar leitura e escrita a crianças com histórico de fracasso escolar. A capacitação foi composta por diferentes condições de ensino, as quais foram propostas a partir da elaboração de um programa de ensino desenvolvido para promover a aprendizagem dos estudantes; a proposta teve como base a tecnologia derivada da Análise Experimental do Comportamento e sua aplicação no contexto da Educação Especial. Para a implementação do programa de capacitação, os participantes do estudo foram exposto às diferentes condições de ensino propostas, sendo: apresentação das atividades em sala de aula; visita ao laboratório com demonstração do funcionamento do programa informatizado; simulação de situações de aplicação do programa informatizado; monitoramento participativo do desempenho dos participantes; leitura do manual com instruções escritas. Houve ainda uma situação em que foi feita a observação da manutenção da aprendizagem, sem interferência direta do pesquisador no desempenho dos participantes (observação final). As condições de ensino foram avaliadas em termos da contribuição de cada uma delas para desenvolver competências educativas nos participantes, bem como para obter subsídios para o aperfeiçoamento destas condições. Os comportamentos-alvo (habilidades a serem desenvolvidas nos participantes) foram observados e registrados conforme sua ocorrência, não-ocorrência ou ocorrência com ajuda de outra pessoa; um outro conjunto de comportamentos-alvo foi registrado conforme a freqüência de ocorrência durante as sessões de aplicação do programa informatizado. Os resultados são de 22 participantes nas diferentes condições do programa de capacitação, agrupados de acordo com as seqüências de apresentação das condições pelas quais eles passaram, num total de dez seqüências dentre as possíveis combinações. De modo geral, todos os participantes apresentaram aumentos nas percentagens de ocorrência dos comportamentos-alvo e redução de não-ocorrência e ocorrência com ajuda entre a primeira e a última condição observada. Foi analisado ainda, o desempenho dos participantes em cada condição isoladamente (simulação, monitoramento e observação final), independente da seqüência de condições realizada por eles. Ocorreu, também, uma avaliação feita pelos participantes sobre as condições de ensino e os aspectos positivos e negativos da capacitação. As principais conclusões sobre o grau de contribuição das diferentes condições, a partir dos dados de desempenho dos participantes foram: a condição de simulação parece ter sido mais eficaz na redução da não-ocorrência dos comportamentos-alvo; a condição de monitoramento parece ter sido mais eficaz na redução da ocorrência dos comportamentos-alvo com ajuda; não foi possível concluir o impacto da condição de Leitura do Manual, já que participantes que não foram expostos a essa condição tiveram um desempenho semelhante a outros participantes que foram expostos a essa condição; houve variações de desempenho dos participantes que pode indicar a necessidade de rever aspectos relevantes para a construção de Programas de Ensino; o número de sessões realizadas pelos participantes parece ter tido maior impacto no desempenho dos participantes do que a seqüência de condições realizadas por eles. Por fim, há a indicação de aspectos importantes a serem considerados na capacitação de novos agentes, com sugestões de estudos futuros para investigar algumas limitações encontradas neste estudo.