Novice science teachers struggle to incorporate reform-based perspectives of teaching and learning into their planning and instruction. Some argue that this is due to a mismatch between teachers’ beliefs and the goals of reform. However, it is widely recognized that the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and science teaching is tenuous at best. Previous attempts to understand the mismatch between preservice teachers’ espoused beliefs and their classroom practices draw upon models of teacher cognition that consider beliefs and knowledge as the main drivers of their actions. In this study I use a goal-driven model of science teacher cognition as my theoretical framework. This model posits that classroom practices are an attempt to achieve particular goals. Based on this model, I conducted a cross-case analysis using qualitative methods to examine the relationship between teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and goals and the types of learning opportunities they design. Data were collected through participant interviews and document analysis. Findings are consistent with the theoretical premises of this model, suggesting that the goals teachers pursue are influenced by their beliefs about teaching and learning science, together with the contextual characteristics of their placement. Findings suggest that the design and enactment of high cognitive demand learning tasks is facilitated by several factors. First, preservice teachers need to operationalize their beliefs into learning goals for their students, including explicit epistemic goals that seek to engage students in the use of science practices to make sense of disciplinary ideas. Second, in order to achieve their goals, preservice science teachers need to learn how to design scaffolds that bridge students’ classroom practices with the practices of the discipline to make sense of scientific ideas. Finally, the goals of the teacher education program, the school, and the personal goals that preservice teachers aim to pursue may conflict; whether and how they solve these conflicts influence the cognitive demand of the tasks they design. This study suggests that helping student teachers develop and pursuing goals that characterize high cognitive demand tasks have the potential to improve their teaching practices.

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The focus of this study was on the work values of secondary school teachers. Values have been defined in many ways. The common agreement is that values are standards, beliefs, or principles that do guide and direct a person's behavior. The values a teacher holds will influence a student due to the natural role-modeling effect in the classroom. With the advent of career education and exploration of the world of work, the values held toward work become a timely topic. The discussion of values and value clarification in all aspects of a person's life is one that is becoming very popular in education.

This study examined the phenomenon of multiple and continuous change and the adjustments teachers made in response to the phenomenon. The research questions posed by this study are: 1. Is there a phenomenon of multiple and continuous change and if so how is it characterized by the participants? 2. Is there an effect of multiple and continuous change on the participants, if so, how do the participants adjust to the phenomenon and how can these adjustments be described? Methodologically, the strategy for this study was designed to allow for the generation of theory since multiple and continuous change has not been examined as a phenomenon. In-depth interviews were conducted with an "n" of five to allow for in-depth exploratory questioning and comparison and analysis of complex divergent data. The study utilized teachers' descriptions of their lived experience to provide working definitions of multiple and continuous change. Change is experienced as planned change, and change is experienced as unplanned change. Teachers also described paradoxes that characterize their work milieu. The paradoxes create unanswerable conundrums such as classroom versus school focus, depth versus breadth, commitment versus letting go and fidelity versus rigor. The phenomenon of multiple and continuous change provokes adjustments that are behavioral and attitudinal. These adjustments impact the instructional domain, professional domain and personal domain. The adjustments teachers made did not resemble targeted outcomes. Rather, the adjustments teachers made served as metaprescriptions to assist in the navigation of multiple and continuous change. The composite suggests that multiple and continuous change is complex, interactive and exponential. The behaviors and attitudes that the participants learn mitigate institutionalization of innovations and favor simple adjustments that make teaching more manageable under the circumstances but not necessarily more effective. The significance of this study is that change has been misunderstood because the perspective of the teacher has been overlooked. The misunderstanding of what comprises change disrupts and alters strategic planning. Change in schools is experienced as a phenomenon that is continuous. Administrators, change agents, and policy makers must readjust their thinking about change and develop a paradigm for school improvement that reflects the real world of schools.

One of the multitude of factors that can influence the cardiovascular components of children's health related fitness is the classroom teacher's knowledge of attitudes toward and personal participation rate with repect to physical activity. This study explored the possibility of a relationship existing between these teacher variables and children's health-related fitness levels. Nineteen Year Five and Year Six teachers from four suburban Sydney primary schools completed a physical activity attitudinal survey designed to ascertain their background knowledge of minimum physical activity requirements, their involvement rates, both as partcipants and as leaders of physical activity and their attitudes toward physical activity. A physical activity questionnaire was completed by 509 students in classes taught by the nineteen teachers. Results of survey and questionnaire are given and the issue is explored in some depth / Master of Education (Hons)

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This dissertation explores the life and work of a philosophy of education and multicultural education teacher, through the use of narrative inquiry. As a Palestinian/Lebanese Canadian researcher, teacher, mother, activist and writer, I present the journey of freeing myself from colonial grand narratives through the construction of my personal, practical knowledge and values, while providing an answer to the question: "What does it mean to be situated on the boundary between the English West and the Middle Eastern Arab world?" I demonstrate how the Orientalist tradition, as defined by Edward Said (1978), served to confuse, frustrate, and alienate me as an embodied person situated within a web of historical, ethnic, linguistic, social, and cultural tensions. I describe how, having been educated in an English missionary school in the context of a Palestinian culture of dispossession and Diaspora, this education served to paradoxically both estrange and enrich me. I demonstrate how narrative inquiry, modeled after Clandinin and Connelly (1995, 2000), has enabled me to understand and communicate who I really am as an educator in the multiple social contexts I have known. Through story-ing my epistemology, I illustrate how the Canon in philosophy and the grand meta-narratives underpinning it served to oppress and alienate me over the years. I emphasize that education is not value-neutral. My autobiographical writing in this dissertation explores how the constructs of ethnicity, gender, religion, culture, language, and class serve to shape thinking and values. Since I believe that who we are is a blend of the personal and the social, and that 'we teach who we are,' I critically assess my experiences and share aspects of that experience that have empowered me as a female, Palestinian educator. Going back and forth, and in and out of my life, narrating it and commenting critically on it in the three-dimensional space of narrative inquiry, I convey what I mean by the statement "the personal is political" and what was involved in the process of seeking freedom from the bondage of intellectual subservience. My voice and my signature (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) within the text reveal what I mean pedagogically by a dynamic curriculum and a transformative education. Methodologically, this dissertation extends the boundaries of narrative inquiry through a nuanced use of auto-ethnography while providing insight into the life of a Palestinian teacher and writer within the Canadian context.

This is a case study to explore the effect of a principal’s leadership on teachers‟ shared sense of mission, through the mediating factor of culture. Culture is defined as a metaphor of the school, i.e. the school „is‟ culture. The analysis of culture is conducted through dissecting the core values as expressed in its practice: symbols, rituals and heroes. The study analyzed the principal’s values to picture his mission, since mission is a symbolic expression of values. Teachers‟ operational goals might vary in form, but were found to be highly consistent with the principal’s mission. Hence, they had a shared sense of mission. The study concludes that this was due to a high level of consistency between the principal’s personal values and the core values of the school. Thanks to the principal’s leadership, his personal values were firmly established in the power contest with other forces at the core of the culture, through his influence on the daily practice of culture: symbols, rituals and heroes. The study offers a discussion on the outcome of principal’s influence other than student assessment – teachers‟ shared sense of mission. This hopefully will encourage more efforts by other researchers in the future to investigate principal’s effects in addition to student outcomes. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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This study was designed to discover, using an interview technique, patterns in perceptions of self, teaching context, and relationships between the two, of selected teachers in alternative secondary education programs. A theoretical framework derived from perceptual psychology was used as the basis of the interview schedule and the analyses of responses. An interview schedule was developed and field-tested prior to use in the study. Teachers from three metropolitan school districts in 10 alternative programs were contacted by letter asking for volunteers. Most of the programs were designed for disaffected students. Twenty-three teachers were interviewed by the investigator. Tape-recorded responses to the questions were analyzed in two ways according to selected concepts from perceptual psychology. In the first analysis, questions analyzed for perceptions of self, context, and the relationships between the two generated responses from which patterns seemed to emerge. Patterns in perceptions of self indicated that teachers focused on the importance of satisfying needs, of total life experiences, and of personal freedom in their work. Patterns in perceptions of context, i.e., alternative secondary education programs, showed that teachers focused on the importance of education as process and of dealing with students as individual persons. They advocated changes in traditional programs in these directions. Patterns in perceptions of relationship between self and context suggested that teachers focused on a personal and positive interaction between themselves and their work while being aware of inherent limitations and hindrances. In the second analysis, patterns analyzed for characteristics of perceptual field and the adequate self yielded the following findings ranked in order of expressed importance. First, perceptual field characteristics which emerged were: direction (87% of responses), and fluidity (58% of responses). Stability, resistance to change, did not seem to emerge. Teachers demonstrated prominently their awareness of satisfying needs, their own and their students', indicating the direction of their perceptual field. This awareness was followed by a less prevalent but still noteworthy readiness to change their methods and behaviors, fluidity of field, in order to accomplish their goals. Perhaps the prevalence of these two characteristics explains the absence of the characteristic of stability. Second, characteristics of the adequate self which emerged were: possession of rich and available perceptual field (94% of responses), openness to experience (90% of responses), positive self-perceptions (68% of responses), and capacity to identify with others (47% of responses). The teachers' responses indicated that they drew on past experiences and were open to new ones in order to function in their work. Their view of themselves was positive. Capacity to identify with others was the least evident. Four teachers emerged as having some atypical perceptions. They worked in two programs, one designed for academically able students and the other for senior students seriously interested in pursuing professional careers. This group perceived content as having more prominence than process and considered their role to be more similar to that of traditional teacher and academic counselor. Conclusions based on perceptions of these teachers were as follows: First, teachers tended to be person-oriented, aware of their own and students' needs. Second, teachers appeared to be process-oriented, favoring educational alternatives so that more students be educated. Third, teachers seemed aware of the total context of their work, the gratifying dimensions as well as the limitations. Fourth, teachers accented person and process in responses indicating the characteristics of direction and fluidity in their perceptual field. Fifth, teachers appeared to demonstrate two characteristics of the adequate person, openness to experience and possession of a rich perceptual field, lightly more than others.