<p> Teaching in an urban school that serves communities with a high concentration of poverty seems to involve the development of specific, contextually relevant teaching skills. For years, the particular challenges of teaching in under-served schools in the United States have contributed to the attrition of talented, experienced teachers, leaving many urban schools scrambling to find qualified teachers. For this and other reasons, urban charter school leaders frequently hire young, inexperienced teachers. Urban charter school leaders often seek to provide intense support to these teachers in an effort to increase the likelihood of retaining them and providing the students in their classrooms with a high-quality education. This study is grounded in a conceptual framework including three major strands of work: teacher professional development opportunities, professional development for first-year teachers, and teaching in urban environments. This practitioner research study involved collecting contextualized data about professional development opportunities from eighteen first-year teachers at two different points during their first year of teaching. The data from these interviews was used to ascertain how participants reported their experiences of professional development opportunities as influencing their teaching practice. This study’s findings demonstrate that participants focused largely on how strategies that were immediately implementable influenced their teaching practice, especially those related to classroom management. Teachers also reported that their experiences of professional development were supported by the growth stance that exists regarding professional development at Explore Schools. In conclusion, this study offers rich data regarding how first-year teachers report professional development opportunities as influencing their practice and offers evidence to support the idea that first-year teachers in urban charter schools may benefit from opportunities that focus on information that can be immediately implemented. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10256683 |
| Date | 22 June 2017 |
| Creators | Fragomeni, Samuel V. |
| Publisher | University of Pennsylvania |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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