This study investigated the barriers to technology integration of teachers that are technology proficient and work in school settings where Type I barriers, such as lack of access, insufficient time to plan, and lack of support, have been systematically removed. The results of this case study are intended to provide practical recommendations for practitioners such as technology coordinators, principals and teachers, and recommend future areas of study. The participants in this qualitative study consisted of eight teachers, three principals and one technology supervisor. Six of the eight teachers were interviewed, and all eight were observed teaching a lesson that utilized technology. The observations were rated using the Technology Integration Matrix. The findings from this study implicate that time for professional development is the barrier that needs to be overcome, and that the professional development should be designed to match the current level of technology integration and the current beliefs of the teachers concerning professional development. Further study into the digital disconnect should focus on how to connect what teachers know about curriculum, students, and teaching to what they know about technology.

This study was conducted in two case-study teachers public middle school classrooms in south Louisiana and a survey in three public school districts. A qualitative research focus with the research design taken from work of Michael Pattons (2002) Qualitative Research Evaluation Methods and James Spradley and David McCurdys (1975) Anthropology: The Cultural Perspective. The survey was developed from the work of Tourangeau, Rips, and Rasinskis (2002) The Psychology of Survey Responses. The researcher assumed the role of participant observer for three months which resulted in two themes: first, traditional teaching methods in the teaching of writing, and secondly, teacher perceptions influence writing (composing) choices. Findings include the teachers modification of the Writing Process (Emig, 1971) omitting social learning aspects, pervasiveness of formula writing, teachers desire for professional development in the teaching of writing, and finally, teachers may interpret the Writing Process as writing instruction.

What does it mean to teach well? What does it mean to be a good teacher? These are questions that have been asked for hundreds if not thousands of years; yet, an unequivocal answer has not been reached. Drawing on Thomas Kuhns (1962/1996) concept of a paradigm, it is easy to see that the field of curriculum is anything but paradigmatic. Competing philosophical, psychological, and sociological schools of thought, for example, all support differing ideas of what good teaching looks like, and teacher education programs often reflect this diversity of thought. The situation does not end at the borders of campuses, either. Not only must teachers aspire to live up to their own ever-evolving ideas of what it means to be a good teacher, but they must also grapple with often differing conceptions of what good teaching means to their coworkers, their schools administration, their students, their students parents, and others. This dissertation is a meditation on my experiences of teaching and being taughtit is about being caught between conflicting and sometimes incommensurable ideas about what it means to teach well and how teachers can find a space to work productively and sanely in the tensions that abound. It has both personal and communal aspects and fluctuates between the subjective and social. On the one hand, it is a way to work through curricular issues I have faced as well as a way to help me think about issues I encounter in daily life. On the other hand, it is a way to share some of my experiences and insights with those in the field of education and to engage with them in a conversation about teaching. While this dissertation focuses on a recursive analysis of my teaching-learning experiences over three decades, it also attempts more. It endeavors to place those experiences within a larger social and cultural frame. In this manner, I hope a deeper understanding of what each readerteacher educator or practitioner in the fieldbelieves constitutes "good teaching" may emerge.

Public education has long been the subject of public discontent. Historical events such as the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and repeated media reports that U.S. students were outscored by students in many other countries on international tests each prompted federal and state legislation aimed to reform public education. Following a presentation of the relative standing of the United States on three international tests, the history of public schooling in six states, Texas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Maryland, Florida, and Louisiana, is discussed. The central focus of the study is student outcomes in Louisiana since the passage of Act 478 in 1997, which provided for the states present accountability system. Among a number of programs intended to improve public education, Act 478, consistent with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, supported the creating of the high stakes test, LEAP. The purpose of the present study was to use trend analysis to examine changes in three student outcomes: (a) student achievement, (b) student matriculation, and (c) student disciplinary actions, particularly suspension and expulsion rates and juvenile arrests. The study was bounded by the years 1997, when Act 478 was passed, to 2005, prior to the landfall of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Because Black and White students composed approximately 98% of the public school student population during those years, trends are reported in aggregate and disaggregated by race, except for juvenile arrests for which disaggregated data were not available. The analysis resulted in 30 trends, which revealed that statewide, student achievement had improved for both Black and White students, but not substantially. Contrary to national trends, dropout percentages improved, but the in-grade retention of students increased, especially after LEAP became high stakes in 2000. Suspensions and expulsions trended upwards, but juvenile arrests decreased. The achievement gap between Black and White students persisted though it narrowed slightly in some instances. Finally, more Black than White students were retained, suspended and expelled, and dropped out of school.

Few qualitative studies have been done in Cambodia, a country held hostage by the murderous Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Still struggling to recover from these atrocities, Cambodia looks to education to aid in its redevelopment. This ethnographically-informed case study describes the professional literacy life of a female Cambodian primary school teacher in the post Pol Pot era. This study describes this womans professional and personal life as she strives to build literacy in a small village. Her work is considered in the context of her colleagues and village. Additionally, the research portrays forces that impact literacy development, ways in which literacy is exhibited in this village, juxtaposing one Cambodian teachers literacy practice with the community literacies that surround her. Using both Paulo Freires work and a feminist lens as suggested by Sara Lawrence- Lightfoot, field work was conducted in Cambodia using a variety of data sources: observations, interviews, a focus group, casual conversations, and document analysis. Analyzing these data using the Portraiture Approach resulted in a complex picture of this teachers professional life within the village and school and of ways literacy is shared in rural areas of the developing country. Findings from this case study reveal a rich foundation on which to build literacy within Cambodian while also addressing the needs voiced by this participant teacher and her fellow rural teachers. Based on this research, specific recommendations are suggested to Cambodian officials seeking to develop a literate nation and other recommendations are made for those United States agencies and nongovernmental organizations interested in assisting Cambodian teachers and schools.

The purpose of this explanatory study was to examine levels of spirituality self-reported by collegiate student-athletes participating in individual and team sports. Student-athletes levels of spirituality were measured using Astins (2004) College Students Beliefs and Values Survey (CSBV). Conceptually, this study was grounded in the works of Fowler (1981) and Parks (2000), leading researchers in measuring spiritual development. The sample of student-athletes was taken from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a large, doctoral granting, high research activity, NCAA Division I institution. The data for this study was collected at the end of the spring semester on April 27, 2009 at a presentation on the balance between student and athlete with a particular focus on life after athletics in terms of career choices. The CSBV survey was administered prior to the speakers presentation. Of the 338 student-athletes who attended the presentation and were given a survey, 226 completed the CSBV survey and 200 were included in the study. Student affairs researchers have recently begun to focus on the roles of religion and faith as legitimate areas for analysis (Love & Talbot, 1999; Love, 2001; Chickering et al., 2006). With calls from UCLAs Higher Education Research Institute and Chickering et al. (2006) to research trends in contemporary college students spiritual development processes, the time was ripe to examine the self-reported levels of spirituality of student-athletes. While results of this study were not statistically significant in regard to finding differences between groups of student-athletes participating in team and individual sports, findings indicating student-athletes are developing spiritually in college were significant. Student-athletes in the current study reported higher mean scores in half of the subscales measured by the CSBV survey as compared to Astins (2007) original sample population of college students nationwide. This particular finding is critical to this study, in that it solidifies the fact that student-athletes are developing spiritually and reporting higher mean scores than the average student body. Implications resulting from this finding include a need for higher education administrators to provide opportunities for spiritual development to collegiate student-athletes and to monitor this developmental process throughout student-athletes collegiate careers.

Hip-hop music and its place in education has been thoroughly researched over the last two decades by many scholars and educators from all over the world. This research paper discusses hip-hops merit in the classroom, building upon prior research from books and journal articles, along with my own research that I conducted with students at a southern Louisiana high school. Educators in the field of language arts must find new methods when it comes to teaching our youth and leave behind many of the traditional ways that previous generations were accustomed to. The idea of hip-hop in education, in this paper, is that it is a genre of not only music, but also history and it is able to teach, promote discussion, and make connections to students lives in a realistic way. Hip-hop can also parallel classic literature and can serve as a model for discussing current and historic events. This research was conducted over a 4 month span, but in all actuality, the process of reviewing the literature to concluding results takes place over a years time. Hip-hop can be a discourse that teaches youth through not only lyrics, but also from a historic and pop cultural perspective. The intentions of this paper are to make its readers aware of the power of hip-hop and its ability to engage our youth and keep them interested school and promote encouragement and enlightenment.

This study explored reading strategy-based reading instruction using science expository text between grades 2-5. The exploration revealed that elementary teachers used a variety of reading strategies using expository text for science instruction in grades 2-5, and that time barriers exist for strategy-based instruction using informational text. Spradleys (1980) Developmental Reading Sequence, interviews, observations, and case studies of elementary science teachers in grades 2-5 were research techniques utilized for this study. This study centered on case studies of six elementary teachers and how they used reading strategies during science instruction. The findings of the study revealed that although the teachers use of expository text was limited during this study, the teachers utilized reading strategies that extended and elaborated the students oral discussions during science instruction. The classroom conversations about science topics extended the students background knowledge of the science concepts that related to science expository text materials in grades 2-5. This study revealed that the teachers in this study were concerned with the readability level of the science texts that are available in grades 2-5, and that time barriers that exist for science instruction during the school day. Implications for further research may include alignment of reading strategy instruction with science instruction using printed materials that are matched with the students instructional reading levels. Implications for further research include delving into why time is a barrier for science instruction related to expository text in the elementary grades. Further research may include how teachers can align the basal reader expository text selections with the science curriculum in elementary grades.

This study is primarily designed to address the relationships between teachers beliefs, attitudes, anxiety, perceptions and barriers with respect to their use of technology in promoting students learning. Unlike most previous studies of technology integration, this study is conducted at a gender specific, technology-rich, religious-based private school. In addition the study aims at identifying the various levels of technology adoption of teachers in this technology rich school environment and potentially suggesting why or why not the different levels are observed. Teachers in general nationwide have increased their technology integration and adoption over the past five years, although they still do not have access to technology they need to use technology fully in their instruction. However for the school currently under research, the technology integration trend goes as far back as a decade well before the enactment of the No Child Left behind (NCLB) act of 2001. While teachers in general nationwide continue to use traditional sources for their technology training, they also continue to perceive and experience moderate barriers that prevent their use of technology. Data collection for this study included surveys, interviews and document reviews for teachers and administrators. The results from this study indicate that the level of technology adoption by the teachers is inversely related to barriers experienced when using technology and anxiety towards the use of technology. The study also revealed that both school support and school environment positively make an impact on the level of technology adoption by the teachers into their instructions.

Teachers face increasing demands in the twenty-first century as they engage with students, administrators, coworkers, staff, and parents. High demands and stressors may generate feelings of emotional exhaustion in educators. If left ignored or untreated the emotional exhaustion may eventually lead to burnout and impairment. This prospectus highlights a study designed to explore a preventative option to mitigate the experience of stress felt by student teachers through a structured, guided mindfulness training practice: loving kindness meditation.