An evaluation of BYU's Local TESOL Minor Internship program shows the strengths and weaknesses of this academic internship program. Students are required to complete 150 hours of TESOL-related work outside of their courses. The interns volunteer in different English-teaching programs in the area. Internship hours include the time in the classroom, preparation, materials development, as well as the time in the Linguistics 496R course. The interns are required to have most of their minor classes finished before they complete their internship so that their internship can be a capstone to and an application of what they have learned thus far. This MA evaluation project reports findings of a formal program evaluation of BYU's Local TESOL Internship program, which has been in place for four years. It specifically looks at how effective the internships are by addressing the program's criteria which are: The internship enhances the student's education, reflects what the students have been taught in their TESOL minor classes, helps the interns become more confident teachers, helps the interns feel more prepared to teach ESL, and creates ties with the community. The paper presents quantitative data collected from surveys of past and present interns as well as program administrators. It also presents qualitative data from the same surveys as well as from summary papers in which the interns have discussed their internship experience. The evaluation also offers suggestions and recommendations for the program, as well as future research recommendations.

This teaching experiment used design-based research (DBR) to document the norms and practices that were established with respect to fractions in a mathematics content course for prospective elementary teachers. The teaching experiment resulted in an instructional theory for teaching fractions to prospective elementary teachers. The focus was on the social perspective, using an emergent framework which coordinates social and individual perspectives of development. Social norms, sociomathematical norms, and classroom mathematical practices were considered. A hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT) including learning goals, instructional tasks, tools and imagery, and possible discourse, was conjectured and implemented in the mathematics class. Video tapes of the class sessions were analyzed for established norms and practices. Resulting social norms were that students would: (a) explain and justify solutions, (b) listen to and try to make sense of other students' thinking, and (c) ask questions or ask for clarification when something is not understood. Three sociomathematical norms were established. These were expectations that students would: (a) know what makes an explanation acceptable, (b) know what counts as a different solution, and (c) use meaningful solution strategies instead of known algorithms. Two classroom mathematical practices with respect to fractions were established. The first was partitioning and unitizing fractional amounts. This included (a) modeling fractions with equal parts, (b) defining the whole, (c) using the relationship of the number of pieces and the size of the pieces, and (d) describing the remainder in a division problem. The second practice was quantifying fractions and using relationships among these quantities. This included: (a) naming and modeling fractions, (b) modeling equivalent values, and (c) using relationships to describe fractions. Finally, recommendations for revising the HLT for a future teaching experiment were made. This will contribute toward the continuing development of an instructional theory for teaching fraction concepts and operations to prospective elementary teachers.

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No description available.

No description available.

Teacher absenteeism, retirement, and attrition have led to a widespread shortage of substitute teachers throughout the United States , resulting in the hiring of individuals who lack teacher certification and educational pedagogy. In the past decade, West Virginia joined many other states confronted with the decreased substitute teacher pool and the hiring of non-certified individuals in the classrooms. With the <i>highly qualified teacher</i> requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), focus was situated on the adequate qualifications of substitute teachers. Many substitute teachers do not have the educational pedagogy or teacher certification necessary to be considered <i>highly qualified</i> by the NCLB. Mandatory training for non-certified substitute teachers lacking proper certification and educational pedagogy became the focus to <i>qualify</i> these individuals for the classroom. This study focuses on the self-efficacy of non-certified individuals attending the substitute teacher training in the Regional Education Service Agencies (RESAs) in the state of West Virginia to determine if their self-efficacy beliefs change after two days of mandatory substitute training or after classroom experience. The Teacher's Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) developed by Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy (2001) was the instrument used to measure the self-efficacy of non-certified substitute teachers. Findings indicate that the teaching self-efficacy of non-certified substitute teachers significantly increased from pre-training to post-training, but significantly decreased from post-training to post-teaching experiences. Additionally, findings revealed that age and gender did not have a significant influence on self-efficacy from pre-training, to post-training, to post-teaching. Finally, applications and ramifications of these results are then discussed. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this thesis is to indicate the scope of the health services that an elementary school needs and to show how these services might be made most fruitful in terms of tangible results.

ABSTRACT AN ASSESSMENT OF THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTRUCTORS WORKING AT A STATE UNIVERSITY Eksi, G&uuml / l M.S., Department of Educational Sciences Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Yesim &Ccedil / apa Aydin December 2010, 88 pages The main purpose of this study was to assess the professional development needs of the English language instructors working at a state university in Istanbul. Ninety-two instructors teaching preparatory classes constituted the population of the study. Within that needs assessment, the instructors&rsquo / perceptions of professional development, the most common professional development activities instructors practice, factors that hindered instructors from attending professional development activities, the most difficult skill to teach and assess, the areas of teaching English where instructors needed a professional development program, and the instructors&rsquo / preferences for delivery methods and formats of the professional development programs were identified. This study also examined the role of year of teaching experience, workload of the instructors, department the instructors graduated, and instructors&rsquo / perceptions of professional development programs in predicting the professional development needs of the instructors. Findings indicated that participants had positive perceptions of professional development. The most common professional development activity type was found to be &ldquo / Sharing experiences with colleagues.&rdquo / The most important factor which hindered participants from attending professional development was determined as &ldquo / inconvenient date/time.&rdquo / The most difficult skill to teach and to assess was reported as &ldquo / Writing.&rdquo / It was found out that the area where the degree of need was the highest was &ldquo / New theories and practices of English language teaching.&rdquo / Most of the participants reported that they preferred professional development activities to be optional workshops at their own institutions. A trainer or an expert from an outside institution was the most preferred speaker type. Findings also showed that instructors preferred sessions which took up to 60 minutes, held on weekday mornings once a month. The result of the regression analyses indicated that only year of teaching experience was significant in predicting professional development needs of the instructors. Year of teaching experience was negatively correlated with the needs indicating that as the teachers got more experience, their degree of professional development needs decreased.

The purpose of the study is two-fold. The primary concern is to specify to what degree the senior students of the Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) at Abant izzet Baysal University and those, authorized with a teaching certificate, of the Department of English Language and Literature (ELL) at Erciyes University feel knowledgeable and competent in meeting the international standards that an English Language teacher should have. The secondary concern is to identify to what degree the methodology courses offered by the ELT and Certificate Programs seem adequate to provide the students with those standards in terms of general aims, the contents and the number of methodology courses.In this study, various methods of gathering data were utilized: A two-part questionnaire (i.e., knowledge and performance) were given to the senior students of the two departments, and interviews were conducted with the instructors who teach methodology courses in these programs.The findings related to the first concern of the study revealed that the senior students of the ELT Department felt better prepared than those of the ELL Department in achieving the desired standards. In the &ldquo / Language and Awareness&rdquo / domain of the knowledge and performance parts of the questionnaire, ELT students got the lowest mean scores. Among the five, only in this domain, did the students from the ELL department outrank the students from the ELT department. In other words, the ELL students felt more knowledgeable and competent in many aspects of language and culture than the ELT students. Yet, the t-test results indicated that the difference between the students&rsquo / perceptions of their knowledge and competence in this domain of the two parts of the questionnaire is not statistically significant. In the other domains, &ldquo / Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Classroom Environment&rdquo / of the knowledge and performance parts of the questionnaire, the ELT students seemed to be more satisfied with the input and practice when compared to the ELL students, but the t-test results of both groups indicated that the perceptions showed a statistically significant difference only in &ldquo / Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Classroom Environment&rdquo / domains of the performance part of the questionnaire.The findings related to the second concern of the study indicated that the two programs (i.e., ELT and Certificate) seemed adequate, to a certain degree, in providing prospective English Language teachers with desired standards. However, based on the opinions of students and instructors, it could be concluded that those programs had some deficiencies in terms of the contents and the number of the methodology courses.In the light of the data collected and analyzed, some recommendations are made about the revealed deficiencies in the ELT and Certificate Programs in the last chapter to ensure that the prospective teachers are equipped with the best qualities and standards required to be a professionally qualified English teacher.

Le but de la recherche était de révéler et d'analyser les bases théoriques et pratiques du système de la formation des enseignants de langues en France et en Ukraine, de révéler les principales tendances du développement de ces système et de poser la « première pierre » pour une réelle harmonisation de la formation des enseignants de langues étrangères en Europe à partir de la problématique franco-ukrainienne. L'hypothèse est la suivante : les systèmes français et ukrainien de la formation des enseignants de langues sur leur voie vers l'harmonisation européenne sont freinés par la représentation sociale du métier d'enseignant dans chaque système ce qui a des incidences sur certains éléments composants sur les finalités de ces systèmes. Les outils européens encadrant la formation des enseignants de langues étrangères en Europe pourraient servir de véhicule à l'harmonisation de la formation des enseignants de langues étrangères. Ainsi, nos tâches étaient de définir la représentation du métier d'enseignant dans les deux systèmes ; de rechercher des moyens et des outils afin de la faire évoluer ; étudier le processus actuel de la formation des enseignants de langues et les exemples des réformes des deux pays pour surmonter les raisons des blocages ; étudier la possibilité de les surmonter à l'aide des outils européens. Notre hypothèse ayant été vérifiée et confirmée, nous a permis de déduire une nouvelle représentation du professeur de langues de type européen basée sur les outils européens et de faire des propositions vers la conception d'un modèle commun franco-ukrainien de formation des enseignants de langues étrangères dans le cadre de la dimension européenne. / The objective of this research was to reveal and analyse the theoretical and practical bases of the foreign language teacher training system in France and Ukraine, to find out the main tendencies of the development of these systems and to lay the foundation of the real harmonization of foreign language teacher training in Europe through the franco-ukrainian set of issues.The hypothesis we had put forward were the following: the Ukrainian and French foreign language teacher training systems on their way towards the harmonisation are slowed down by the social representation of the foreign language teaching profession within each system which has an impact on some of their components and especially on the relations between them of structural and functional nature as well as on the final results of these systems. Thus, the European tools which determine the foreign language teacher training policy in Europe could serve as a vehicle for their harmonisation.So our task was to define the social representation of the teacher profession in either system; to find means and tools to upgrade it; to study the process of foreign teacher training and the examples of reforms in both countries and to identify the deadlocks caused by those representations; to study the possibilities to overcome them with the help of the European tools. Our hypotheses having been verified and confirmed allowed us to deduce a new representation of a foreign language teacher of European type based on the European tools and finally, to make propositions towards the conception of a common franco-ukrainian model of foreign language teacher training within the confines of the European dimension.