Browsing by Subject "Teacher education"
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Item An assessment of university instructors' and their pre-service teachers' knowledge of basic language constructs before and after university instructor professional development(Texas A&M University, 2008-10-10) Binks, Emily SuzanneReading is a basic skill for survival and those who have reading difficulties in early grades continue to struggle in school and later in life. Previous studies have shown that instructional procedures that incorporate basic language constructs with literacy instruction are helpful in improving reading skills. It has also been shown that many teachers and reading professionals are not familiar with such concepts. The purpose of this research is to explore reasons for classroom teachers' poor preparation to teach literacy skills and how this situation might be improved. First, a basic language constructs survey assessing self-perception, knowledge, and ability (46 items, Cronbach's a = .903) and based on recommendations by the National Reading Panel and reading research was administered to university instructors of EC-4 reading education (n=114). Forty-eight of these university instructors completed the survey after at least two years of participation in a professional development program (Higher Education Collaborative, HEC) geared towards the incorporation of scientifically-based reading research (SBRR) and research-based reading instruction (RBRI) into teacher preparation. The other sixty-six university instructors completed the survey prior to their participation in the professional development program (HEC). Second, the same survey was administered to pre-service EC-4 teachers (n=173) at the completion of their reading education coursework. Fifty-five of these pre-service teachers had been taught by the "HEC university instructors." The other 118 pre-service teachers had been taught by "non-HEC university instructors." Results indicate non-HEC university instructors and their pre-service are not familiar with basic language constructs and how to teach these concepts to primary level children. However, while room for improvement exists, HEC university instructors and their pre-service teachers did perform statistically significantly better on the survey than their counterparts. This study indicates pre-service teachers need better preparation in teaching the basic language constructs of the English language and university instructors often lack the knowledge to prepare teachers with such information. However, professional development programs designed for university instructors might be one way to help improve the situation.Item Beyond resistance : transgressive white racial knowledge and its limits(2014-05) Crowley, Ryan M; Brown, Anthony L. (Associate professor)This critical case study investigated the experiences of ten White preservice social studies and language arts teachers as they learned about race and racism during the first semester of an urban-focused teacher preparation program. Through observation, interview, and artifact data, this inquiry analyzed how the preservice teachers engaged with the topic of race through the conceptual framework of critical Whiteness studies. This theoretical lens seeks to identify the normalized, oppressive practices of Whiteness with the goal of reorienting those practices in antiracist ways. The author identified two broad themes of transgressive White racial knowledge and conventional White racial knowledge to characterize the progressive and problematic aspects, respectively, of the preservice teachers’ engagement with race. The participants displayed transgressive White racial knowledge through the way they combatted deficit thinking toward urban students and through their knowledge of the mechanics of Whiteness and structural racism. They displayed conventional White racial knowledge through their stories of early experiences with racial difference, their use of subtle resistance discourses during race conversations, and their tendency to misappropriate critical racial discourses. As a whole, the racial knowledge of the ten White preservice teachers points to conflicted, ambivalent feelings at the core of their racial identities. Their desires to talk about race and to develop an antiracist teaching practice were mediated by competing desires to maintain their identities as “good Whites” and to protect their investments in Whiteness. The complex ways that these White preservice teachers engaged with critical racial discourses have significant implications for critical Whiteness studies, teacher education, and social studies education. Their willingness to explore race in a critical fashion should push teacher educators to resist homogenizing, deficit views of the antiracist potential of White teachers. However, their problematic engagement with race points to the importance of viewing White identity as conflicted. If antiracist pedagogies begin with this understanding of White racial identity, they can encourage profound shifts in the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of Whiteness. These shifts can help White teachers to develop racial literacy and to build an antiracist teaching practice.Item Creating art, creating selves : negotiating professional and social identities in preservice teacher education(2012-08) Kraehe, Amelia McCauley, 1977-; Brown, Keffrelyn D.; Urrieta, Jr., Luis; Valenzuela, Angela; Bolin, Paul E.; Carpenter, B. StephenThis critical ethnographic collective case study examined the process of becoming a teacher in the context of visual art education. This longitudinal study was grounded in larger educational concerns regarding the preparation of teachers for socially and culturally diverse U.S. public schools. This framing of teacher learning went beyond traditional dichotomies in educational research that maintain an artificial boundary between learning to teach content and learning to teach all students effectively and equitably. In order to re-integrate the study of teacher learning, this research foregrounds the transactional relationship between a preservice art teacher’s social locations (e.g., race, class, sex-gender, language) and how s/he makes sense of what it means to be an “art teacher.” Specifically, the study asked (a) how preservice art teachers negotiated their emerging art teacher identities in a university-based teacher education program, (b) how their social positions were implicated in that process, and (c) how their teacher identities were meditated by cultural narratives, artifacts, and practices. This approach eschewed simplistic and reductive analyses of teacher identities in order to attain a nuanced understanding of the multiple, sometimes contradictory social processes involved in becoming a teacher. This collective case study centered six preservice art teachers with varied racial, class, gender, and sexual identities, all of whom attended the same undergraduate teacher education program in the southwestern U.S. Social practice theory of identity, and critical curriculum and cultural theory were employed in constructing a multi-leveled relational analysis of the commonalities and divergences in participants’ self-understandings over time. Findings showed historical patterns of institutionalized racism, as well as complex class and sex-gendered meanings of art. These inequitable norms were reproduced in ways distinctive to the asocial and apolitical “common sense” knowledge that was mobilized within the world of art teacher education. Some participants experienced alienation and marginalization based on their social positioning in relation to the world of art education. The findings also illuminated the polyvalent nature of identity through the coexistence of hegemonic identities as well as counter-hegemonic agency. Implications and possibilities for generating more critical, equity-oriented teacher education and art education research, practice, and policy are considered.Item Discussing art in the early childhood classroom : an action research study in professional development(2014-05) Kacir, Lucinda Margaret; Mayer, Melinda M.This study uses an action research methodology to create, implement, evaluate, and improve a professional development workshop for early childhood educators. The purpose of the workshop was to provide training in art education for practicing teachers in a childcare center. The workshop was intended to enable teachers to lead art discussions in the early childhood classroom derived from museum education teaching strategies. As a museum educator and early childhood teacher, the researcher was compelled to develop the workshop based on her experience in the field. Realizing that professional development opportunities in art education topics other than art making are not readily available to educators, the researcher used the existing, state mandated annual training requirement to address this void in early childhood teacher education. The learning potential within art discussions is addressed to make a case for the inclusion of these teaching strategies in early childhood classrooms. The findings of this study identify successful elements of professional development workshops for early childhood educators and make suggestions for other teacher-educators designing and leading such workshops.Item An educational formula : critical border education that transcends social and linguistic barriers(2012-08) Villarreal, Elizabeth; Valenzuela, Angela; Urrieta, Luis; Zamora, Emilio; Franquiz, Maria; Salinas, Cynthia S.Student academic achievement is a collective effort of family, community, and school experience (Sloat, Makkonen, & Koehler, 2007). However the biggest burden is placed on teachers who are assumed and expected to possess the skills, knowledge, caring, and commitment to students often without the appropriate support, resources and professional development. With a focus on teacher development this work will listen to the voices of eight veteran educators from the Texas-Mexico border region and trace the steps in their formation and critical understandings of themselves and their professions to better diagnose students’ academic needs. The site of my study is in the southern-most part of the U.S.-Mexico border known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (RGV). This dynamic region of our country was occupied by immigrant settlers in the middle 1700s and has seen much socio-political and cultural change throughout the years. Nucleus to the “browning of America” (Rodriguez, 2002), the demographic shift toward more ethnic/racial diversity, and in particular the ascent of Latinos as the largest minority in the country, the Border and its teachers provide key insights regarding effective ways to educate Latino children because they have served this community the longest. This study is a synthesis of historical sociology and cultural anthropology inquiries based on applied research method of interviews with Border educators. It includes: ethnographic and historical data, and testimonios, or critically documented histories, that address views on educational reform intended to foster academic success among Latino students. Latinos have become the nation’s largest majority at 16.3% of the population. The growth trend is also evident in Texas with a 37.6% and 90.4% for the RGV (Census, 2010). The correlation between poverty and educational attainment places this population at a significant disadvantage in the nation as well as in the RGV. Some observers have expressed concern that Latinos will represent the majority of the population by 2040 as the “poorer, less educated, and productive” (Jillson, 2012, p. xiii). My work challenges this conceptual relationship between poverty and school failure by focusing on a region where the student body has historically been predominantly Latino and economically disadvantaged with a 32.6% poverty rate compared to a national figure of 11.3% (Census, 2010). My findings on the epistemic value of identity demonstrated through my Spotlight Identity (SI) framework, support the notion that aligning students with teachers of similar experiential and cultural backgrounds positively impacts academic achievement and that, generally speaking, these affinities improve relations with families and allow for teachers to better understand the academic and personal challenges that the students are facing. My constructivist analysis suggests that academic success can be achieved, regardless of economic impediments when communities, schools, educators, and families work collaboratively with a child-centered approach. For participants in the study, barriers such as low socioeconomic (SES) were not seen as germane to student academic success when all the elements in their “educational equation” were in place. Academic success—construed by participants as significant student yearly progress, meeting grade level requirements, and high school completion—can be achieved, regardless of social and economic factors, when communities, schools, educators, and families work together through child-centered efforts and mediated through “critical bicultural education” (Darder, 1991).Item Enacting critical historical thinking : decision making among novice secondary social studies teachers(2011-05) Blevins, Brooke Erin; Salinas, Cinthia; Adler, Susan; Obenchain, Kathryn; Field, Sherry; Brown, Anthony; De Lissovoy, NoahThis qualitative multiple case study conducted from an interpretive epistemological stance, focused on three novice social studies teachers decision making practices in regards to the use critical historical thinking. In seeking to understand teacher’s decision making practices, this research explored the bodies of knowledge that influence social studies teachers’ use of historical thinking in more critical ways. The theoretical framework guiding this research centered around three major frames: (1) the roots of teacher knowledge, including such things as teacher beliefs, teacher education experiences, and teacher content knowledge, (2) the bodies of teacher knowledge informed by these roots including official knowledge, and emancipatory or counter knowledge, and (3) how these bodies of knowledge lead to curricular enactment of critical historical thinking. Data analysis revealed four results that shaped teachers’ decisions and ability to use critical historical thinking in their classroom. The first three results highlight the bodies of knowledge teachers’ utilized in their decision-making practices, including their experiential knowledge, such as their familial and K-16 schooling experiences, content knowledge, both their knowledge of official and subjugated narratives, and pedagogical content knowledge. The final result explores how these bodies of knowledge interact with teachers’ schooling contexts. Findings suggest that historical positionality shapes not only the learning process, but the teaching process as well. A teachers’ historical positionality influences the way they are able to engage students in more critical renditions of the past. Teachers’ personal experiences inform their historical positionality, including their rationale and commitment to choose particular curriculum and pedagogical practices that address issues of race, class, and gender. Additionally, teachers’ critical content consciousness or the degree to which they are able negotiate the distance between their academic content knowledge and their beliefs about the past also shape their decisions to use critical historical thinking as a regular pedagogical practice. Finally, the last finding highlights the complex process teachers’ engage in as they navigate the external factors that press in on their daily teaching practice in ways that are critically ambitious. As such, the findings from this study have implications for both preservice and inservice teacher preparation.Item Experiencing crisis in schools : examining preservice teachers' reflections on September 11 and their notions of citizenship(2012-05) Bellows, Mary Elizabeth; Field, Sherry L.; Salinas, Cynthia; Brown, Keffrelyn; Obenchain, Kathryn; Larson, BruceTeachers and children who were in schools on September 11, 2001 harbor unique, personal, and accessible memories of the events that occurred that Tuesday morning. Educational research has attended to this (inter)national crisis in a multitude of ways, yet there exists a gap in the literature that attends to how today’s preservice teachers remember the crisis through the lens of citizenship. To add complexity, adolescents who were in classrooms on September 11 are now adults, and some are studying to be teachers. This dissertation study aims to highlight how preservice teachers remember 9/11, how they understand citizenship, and how they plan to teach about 9/11 as an historical event to elementary students. This study presents the findings of a qualitative instrumental case study of five elementary preservice teachers’ memories of September 11, 2001 as experienced as adolescents in school. The author investigates how the preservice teachers’ memories intersect with understandings of citizenship, and how the young teachers plan to teach about 9/11 in an elementary social studies setting. Preservice teachers in the study participated in two interviews and one think-aloud lesson planning session with the researcher. Data analysis indicate the preservice teachers’ understandings of citizenship are still evolving, yet the crisis of 9/11 further complicates—or interrupts—more critical notions of citizenship. The participants’ memories of 9/11 are vivid and include reactions of their classmates and teachers. When participants were asked to create a lesson plan for elementary students, they felt overwhelmed by the amount of resources on the topic, and that they did not know enough about 9/11 to teach about it effectively. Findings suggest the singular understandings of citizenship held by participants are temporal and contextual. During a time of crisis—and specifically during and following 9/11—citizens succumbed to more belligerent notions of citizenship, and later, their memories contribute to their still evolving teacher identities. Drawing from their own civic understandings and memories of 9/11, four of the five preservice teacher participants planned to use their lessons about 9/11 to teach children how citizens come together in a time of crisis. One participant chose to design a week-long unit of instruction that allows students to examine the events of 9/11 in more critical ways. Finally, the study raises questions about the drastic range of possibilities in teaching 9/11 in elementary school, and exposes how teachers choose to include and exclude certain images, narratives, and accounts from the story.Item Identity and participation in social networking sites amongst pre-service elementary school teachers(2012-08) Kimmons, Royce M.; Veletsianos, George; Wetzel, Melissa; Hughes, Joan; French, Karen; Armour, MarilynRecent trends in social networking site (SNS) use amongst teachers have led to some alarming circumstances. Practicing and pre-service teachers have been fired or otherwise punished (e.g. suspension, licensure revocation, etc.) for a variety of offenses related to their SNS use, ranging from sinister to morally ambiguous offenses, and have been encouraged or required by school administrators, professors, and others in positions of power to use SNS in particular ways. Past research on the topic of SNS in education and SNS professionalism has focused on issues of implementation (e.g. how to use SNS to support learning) or utility (e.g. how to use SNS to successfully achieve career goals). Missing from this discussion, however, is an understanding of how teachers (and those preparing to become teachers) naturally come to participate in SNS, why they participate in the ways that they do, and how this use is related to their identity. This study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by understanding pre-service teachers’ uses of SNS in terms of previous experiences, cultural expectations, social benefits, connections to identity construction and maintenance, and how these uses and beliefs regarding SNS begin to change in response to professionalization processes. Grounded theory is employed to generate an explanatory construct, which I refer to as the Acceptable Identity Fragment (AIF). The AIF is then used to understand and illustrate issues surrounding SNS use in education. Major findings suggest that 1) pre-service teachers’ identities in SNS represent a fragment of their authentic identities, 2) pre-service teachers use various SNS differently in conjunction with each SNS’s embedded values and assumptions about identity, 3) SNS use raises various problematic issues surrounding identity and how pre-service teachers are perceived and judged as individuals (e.g. digital persistence, lateral surveillance, etc.), and 4) professionalization processes alter and restrict pre-service teachers’ ability and comfort to express themselves in SNS. These findings lead to discussion, implications, and recommendations on a variety of topics including the following: institutional uses of SNS in education, relationships between fragmented and authentic identities, SNS literacy development, and cultural issues of SNS use.Item Landscapes of practice : stories of teacher development and change(2010-12) Masterson, Lynn Ashman; Maloch, Beth; Fairbanks, Colleen M.; Worthy, Mary Jo; Schallert, Diane L.; Cary, Lisa J.The purpose of this study was to explore (1) how teachers build knowledge, (2) the influence of prior beliefs on the ways in which teachers internalize this knowledge, and (3) the degree to which teachers use this new knowledge to facilitate changes in their practice. The use of landscape as a metaphorical representation for this study satisfied two needs. First, this study took place on two fundamentally different landscapes—a summer writing institute where the teachers took the role of learner, and in three teachers’ classrooms where they were to enact what they learned. However, in a more abstract sense, these landscapes, considered “exterior” (Lopez, 1995) were also places in which people lived, sharing their thoughts about families, teaching, learning, schools, and children. Thought of as “interior landscapes,” (Lopez, 1995) these conversations revealed the dialogic nature of the relationship between the two and made it possible to engage in a Bahktinian analysis of the interplay between internally persuasive and authoritative discourses voiced in the narratives. Utilizing a narrative inquiry approach (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as a methodological base, the study focused on the relationship between professional development and the possibilities for change in each of the teacher’s classrooms. The representation of the data consisted of the many stories that took place on the two landscapes of the institute and the classrooms—stories of the teacher, school, district, community, and the state. The findings suggest that strategies alone will not improve the instruction in writing classrooms and that researchers, teacher educators, and those who provide professional development need to rethink the cultural narrative of “change.” Consideration must be given to the dialogic interplay among the various discourses, both authoritative and internally persuasive, that live on the interior landscapes of the teachers and the role each plays in the change process. Therefore, professional development settings need to become places where teachers are guided through a process to examine their deeply held assumptions of students, writing curriculum, and what constitutes knowledge.Item Learning to teach, teaching to learn : a longitudinal case study of becoming a literacy teacher(2014-12) Russell, Katherine Winton; Hoffman, James V.; Maloch, BethThis longitudinal case study followed a beginning teacher from the first semester of her teacher education program into her fifth year of teaching. Using situated learning theory, this dissertation reports the influences on her journey in becoming a literacy teacher before, during, and after her teacher education program. Data sources included interviews, classroom observations, and documents that were collected over six and a half years and across multiple contexts (e.g., tutoring, student teaching, community-based learning, coursework, two elementary schools). Using constant comparative (Glaser & Strauss, 2009) and longitudinal coding methods (Saldaña, 2009), the analysis suggests that the participant developed the following understandings over time and across contexts: she intends to be a lifelong learner; she values and validates students’ interests, histories, and contributions; she is committed to teaching for social justice; and she believes a safe, trusting, and flexible community is essential to learning. Findings indicated that her ability to enact these understandings in practice, even in difficult school contexts, was made possible by her reflective stance and her commitment to surrounding herself with communities of like-minded people to support her in similar ways as had been the case in her teacher education program. The results of this study provide evidence that over time the understandings developed in a teacher education program have the potential to fully emerge in practice inside teachers’ classrooms. This study has implications for how we prepare teachers, how teacher education programs can continue to support their graduates, the types of school communities that seem to support beginning teachers, and how policy makers might direct future funding towards responsible teacher education.Item "Lucky" Mexicans and White Hispanics: Latina/o teachers and racial identity(2015-08) Bybee, John Eric; Urrieta, Luis; De Lissovoy, Noah; Valenzuela, Angela; Brown, Keffrelyn; Palmer, DeborahMy dissertation is study is a two-year critical ethnography of the racial identity productions of a cohort of Latina/o teachers in the bilingual education program at a large, public university. The goals of this project are 1) to explore how Latina/o preservice teachers of varying racial self-identifications and cultural backgrounds author identities as bilingual educators; 2) to investigate how distinct racial, class, linguistic, and immigration backgrounds are used to construct intra-ethnic identity differences in the bilingual cohort; and 3) to explore how and why some Latina/o bilingual cohort members produce white racial identities. To this end, I ask preservice teacher participants to narrate how family, K-12 schooling, and university bilingual teacher education experiences have shaped their notions of racial identity and whiteness, while paying particular attention to changes in teacher education and the broader cultural history of Latino whiteness in the United States. The aim of exploring these issues is to present a broad picture of the role of schooling and society in producing white racial identities for Latinas/os. My theoretical framework draws upon theories of figured worlds and racial formation as entry points for understanding the complex socio-historical and everyday processes that produce Latina/o racial identities and whiteness. I use methods such as participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and life history to construct vignettes of the identities of each participant. The data sources include preservice teacher interviews, classroom observations, and educational autobiographies submitted by the Latina/o bilingual preservice teachers. The findings of the study are presented in two chapters. Chapter 5 presents the ways that socialization in family and schooling contexts produced whiteness in various settings and also investigates how participants thought about Hispanic, Latina/o, and Mexicana/o identities. Chapter 6 discusses the role of the bilingual program producing and creating distinctions between Latina/o, Hispanic, Mexicana/o and White participants. I argue that the bilingual program inverted the dominant social capital relationships by creating a figured world that emphasized Latina/o linguistic and cultural knowledge. Implications for this research include creating spaces where the dominant linguistic and social capital of mainstream schooling is challenged in order to develop reflective and empathic bilingual educators.Item Managing the three-ring circus : a study of student teachers’ understanding and learning of classroom management decision making(2011-05) Cassady, Allison Hanna; Field, Sherry L.Learning to manage a classroom of twenty-two elementary students is often likened to conducting a three-ring circus, particularly in the eyes of student teachers. As they enter the field, student teachers are given their first opportunities to observe and experience the delicate art of managing a classroom. They are faced with the challenges of handling the various aspects of teaching. Concurrently, they are enrolled in various methods courses as assigned by their university teacher preparation program, instructing them in various theories and best practices of their craft. In addition to enduring these challenges, student teachers must learn to think and make decisions as teachers. They are instructed to teach using explicit steps and procedures, yet the decision-making processes necessary for becoming a successful educator and manager are not addressed. Through qualitative case study, five student teachers share their observations and experiences as they met the challenges of learning to manage a classroom, focusing upon the need for sound decision making skills. Data for this investigation was taken from observations, interviews, reflections, and archived documents. Cross-case analyses revealed that participants felt anxious and unprepared when managing a classroom and lacked the decision-making skills necessary for successful management. The themes and findings derived from the data suggest that a great deal of management learning and decision-making skills come from time in the elementary classroom in conjunction with explicit teaching and conversations concerning these skills. Likewise, the relationship between the cooperating teacher and the student teacher, the authority the student teacher possesses in the classroom, as well as the teaching philosophies held by both greatly affect the successful acquisition of management decision-making skills. This study holds implications for the preparation student teachers receive, with regard to classroom management decision making, in their field-placement classrooms and university teacher preparation programs.Item A mixed-methods study of mid-career science teachers : the growth of professional empowerment(2011-05) Moreland, Amy Laphelia; Barufaldi, James P.; Carmona-Dominguez, Guadalupe; Hobbs, Mary; Marshall, Jill; Richardson, Richard H.The purpose of this concurrent, mixed methods study was to examine the professional empowerment qualities of mid-career (years 4-8), science teachers. I used the construct of professional empowerment as the theoretical frame to explore K-12 mid-career science teachers’ career trajectories and consider how they can be supported professionally and ideally retained over time. In investigating the qualities of these teachers, I also constructed a new teaching trajectory model and tested the differences between mid-career and veteran science teachers. I analyzed seventy-eight surveys of mid-career science teachers across Texas, including six in-depth, interview-based case studies. The qualitative piece used behavior-over-time graphing combined with the interviews and the quantitative component used survey data from the Teacher Empowerment Survey (TES). Results indicated that science content knowledge gain through professional development opportunities was an especially important factor in supporting mid-career teachers’ sense of empowerment. This increased content knowledge connected positively with the dimensions of decision-making, status, and impact. In a between-group analysis using a larger subset of TES data, I analyzed 254 surveys by conducting a nonparametric statistical test. A statistically significant difference was found between the two groups, in that mid-career science teachers had a lower sense of “status” than their more experienced counterparts (p < .05). I could infer that, for this sample, as teaching experience increases, so does at least one dimension of empowerment. The study was situated within a broader scope of exploring how educational leaders and professional development providers can understand and support science teachers of varying experience levels. A well-designed and possibly differentiated professional development program could successfully connect with these kind of empowered and receptive mid-career science teachers, and thus increase the probability of implementing quality science education programs, content, and pedagogy into schools. The results of this study also have the potential to provide self-reflective career empowerment information to science teachers in their mid-career years.Item Preparing 21st century teachers : the relationship of technology integration, digital equity, and the preparation of new teachers(2013-05) Dholakia, Gloria Gonzales; Hughes, Joan E.This study aimed to understand the relationship between (a) student teachers' conceptions of classroom technology use and digital equity and (b) the teacher education programs in which they study. This mixed method study occurred during the spring semester of 2012. Forty-one student teachers enrolled in two different university teacher certification programs completed an online survey in regards to their technology attitude and beliefs, technology knowledge and skills, technology support and infrastructure, and digital equity perceptions near their graduation date. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 of the participants to allow for student teachers to expand upon their conceptions of classroom technology use and their understanding of digital equity. The study found that student teachers in both programs were inclined to integrate technology in their future classrooms, but were lacking in experiences of student-centric, faculty modeling of technology integration within their subject, content areas. In regard to digital equity, student teachers that completed a formal educational technology course had a more complex and conscious conception of digital equity and its impact on the classroom than student teachers lacking a formal educational technology course. Discussion focuses on (a) persistent traditionalist power and pedagogy, (b) lack of content-based modeling, (c) dodging digital equity, (d) varying digital equity conceptions, and (e) persistent societal inequalities within these two teacher education programs. I then introduce 'critical transformative technology integration' (CTTI), which needs to be established in teacher education. CTTI provides students with opportunities for contextually and culturally relevant integration of technology into subject-content areas. Additionally, CTTI considers existing power relations, and aims to empower action and change. Student teachers possessing an understanding of technology integration and an awareness of digital equity will be better equipped to offer CTTI in their future classrooms. By providing all PK-12 students with opportunities for CTTI, teachers can reduce classroom digital inequities. To empower future teachers with the knowledge, skills, and conceptions necessary for CTTI, teacher education programs must consider their approach to technology integration and the development of digital equity.Item A qualitative case study : an in-service pre kindergarten teacher's perceptions and teaching experience with culturally and linguistically diverse children and families(2011-05) Lee, Hyun Ju; Reifel, Robert Stuart; Brown, Christopher P.; Palmer, Deborah K.; Salinas, Cynthia S.; Schallert, Diane L.This study explores a teacher’s perceptions and teaching practice with culturally and linguistically diverse children and families. A qualitative case study, it follows one in-service pre-kindergarten teacher at a public school. To provide rationales of the study, the researcher adopt culturally responsive teaching, funds of knowledge, developmentally appropriate practice, anti-bias multicultural education and English as a second language learning theories as the conceptual framework. Data were collected through formal interviews, informal conversations, and observations and analyzed using the constant-comparative method. The findings display the results of the study in three aspects: creating a cohesive multicultural community, helping culturally and linguistically diverse children’s English development utilizing their home languages and cultures, and establishing reciprocal relationships with those families. The study finds that a cohesive multicultural community can be created by building caring relationships among community members, by reflecting the children’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds in teaching practice and by practicing anti-bias multicultural education. This study shows the ways of helping the children’s English development according to five themes: understanding the children’s different English abilities, creating a class environment reflecting the children’s home languages and cultures, matching language mates, collaborating with bilingual teachers, and utilizing children as the language experts. This study also finds that reciprocal relationships with culturally and linguistically diverse families can be established by understanding diverse families’ backgrounds, by increasing cross-cultural communications, and by utilizing family resources in her teaching practice. This study reveals that the children’s learning experience can be enhanced when integrating their cultural and linguistic knowledge into class learning. The presented examples and descriptions in this study demonstrates the explicit and practical ways of how teachers can cultivate the children’s cultural and linguistic knowledge base, reflect this knowledge base in their class learning, help the children’s English development, and establish reciprocal relationships with families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Thus, this study will be a source of detailed practical information for teachers, teachers’ educators, and educational administrators in early childhood education.Item Reading, interpreting, and teaching African American history : examining how African American history influences the curricular and pedagogical decisions of pre-service teachers(2012-05) King, Lagarrett Jarriel; Brown, Anthony L. (Associate professor); Field, Sherry; Salinas, Cinthia; Brown, Keffrelyn; Moore, LeonardAfrican American history and how it is taught in classroom spaces have been a point of contention with activists, historians, and educators for decades. In it current form, African American history narratives often are ambiguous and truncated, leaving students with a disjointed construction about U.S. history. Additionally, the pedagogical decisions made by teachers regarding African American history are sometimes problematic. To fix this problem, critical scholars have surmised that both pre- and in-service teachers need to be more knowledgeable about African American history. This knowledge will help teachers move past simplistic constructions of the past and provide a transformative educational experience. In essence, these scholars believe that teachers cannot teach [African American history] because they do not know it. This study, however, examines what if they do know [African American history], will they teach it? The purpose of this study was to investigate how knowledge influences teachers’ pedagogical decisions. Using the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of cultural memory and knowledge construction, this qualitative case study explores how four pre-service teachers interpreted African American history after engaging in a summer reading program and how that knowledge was implemented in their classroom during their student teaching semester. The reader, entitled A Winding River, was a collection of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and primary and secondary source documents. Data collection measures included three classroom observations, reflective journals, three interviews, and other classroom documents related to the participant’s student teaching experience. Findings indicate that knowledge acquisition is complex and the process to teach is a generative process. Although knowledge is an important component in teaching, sociocultural factors also influenced the divergent ways African American history was interpreted and taught. The study indicates that the access of African American history is not always a prerequisite in teaching the subject in transformative ways.Item Searching for social justice : an ethnographic study of a historically black university's PETE classroom(2014-12) Clark, Langston David; Harrison, Louis, 1955-Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have played and continue to play an important role in uplifting African Americans through education. Most of these institutions began as normal schools designed to prepare teachers who would train and educate students of color— a population that has been historically marginalized and oppressed. Scholarly conversations regarding teaching and teacher education for social justice omit the contributions of HBCUs. Likewise, scholarship about social justice within the field of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) has been minimal. These trends including the current overemphasis on the training of a monolithic White female middle class teaching force served to justify the ethnographic study in an historically Black PETE program. Rooted in situated learning theory, this study used ethnographic methods and methodology to explore the manifestations of social justice and (physical education) teacher education at Jackie Robinson University— an HBCU. This study uncovered several cultural manifestations of social justice within JRU using interviews, artifact analyses, and observations of several cultural manifestations about social justice and teacher educating for social justice were uncovered. One of the most prominent manifestations is “The Gap”, a theme that can be seen throughout the historical and contemporary culture of JRU. In one sense, “The Gap” represents the void filled by the university as it provides opportunities for education for students with limited educational options. In another sense, “The Gap” represents tensions within the institution. These tensions exist as gaps among students, faculty, administration, and the university as a whole. Despite “The Gap”, Teacher Education for social justice exists in the culture of JRU as forms of care and culturally relevant pedagogy. While these cultural manifestations were located within specific classrooms, they represent the ethos of the university as a whole. The findings of this study offer both theoretical and practical value. From a theoretical perspective, the findings shed insight into the meaning of social justice and (physical education) teacher education for social justice in an ethnically diverse context. In a practical sense, the strategies utilized by (physical education) teacher educators at JRU foster a classroom culture of holistic education.Item Situating Korean EFL teacher education in a CMC environment : online exchanges between preservice English teachers and elementary school students(2011-12) Chun, Sun Young, 1976-; Schallert, Diane L.; Horwitz, Elaine K.; Palmer, Deborah K.; Wilson, Jennifer C.; Svinicki, Marilla D.; French, Karen D.The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the characteristics of student-teacher interactions between Korean EFL preservice teachers and elementary school students during online exchanges and of the preservice teachers’ overall impressions and perceptions of teaching English to elementary school students and interacting with them online. The participants in this study were 31 Korean preservice elementary school teachers and 10 Korean elementary school students who were learning English as a foreign language. Ten groups with an average of three preservice teachers were paired with one child partner per group and engaged in one-on-one email exchanges, mostly using English, in discussing English books. Data came from multiple sources, including transcripts of the online exchanges between the preservice teachers and the child partner, preservice teachers’ collaborative dialogue scripts, their responses to questionnaires, their group reflection journals, individual final reflection papers, and researcher field notes. These data were analyzed using a combination of inductive and deductive data analysis methods. Through inductive analysis using the constant comparative analysis method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), I derived themes that captured the experience of online interactions and the strategies that the preservice teachers used to maintain the exchange. Through deductive analysis, I identified groups that were more and less successful and described their experiences. Results indicated that the online exchanges with elementary students provided Korean EFL preservice teachers opportunities to practice teaching skills, as well as to develop close personal and social relationships with their child partners. Also, how the preservice teachers approached the exchanges and their specific online “actions” seemed to make a difference in their child partners’ responses, thereby yielding results in which some groups were more successful and others less successful. The preservice teachers reported that their participation in the project was beneficial for them as future elementary teachers of English and that they enjoyed interacting with their child partners online. Finally, the participation in the project appeared to have many benefits for the preservice teachers’ professional development, including newly-gained insights into the benefits of using technology as a valuable instructional tool in their future teaching practices as well as an increase in their confidence in using English to teach English to elementary students.Item The synergy between scientists and experienced educators : an examination of dialogues for professional development opportunities within a team of university instructors who prepare pre-service secondary STEM teachers at an RU/VH research university(2011-05) Buckley, Deanna H.; Barufaldi, James P.; Marshall, Jill A.; Marder, Michael; Brown, Keffrelyn; Walker, MaryProfessional development is an essential component to maintaining quality teaching in mathematics and science (Monk, 1994; Milken, 2000; Loucks-Horsley et al, 2003). University mathematics and science faculty have been subject to criticism regarding professional development and teaching practices (CSMEE, 2000; NRC, 1999; NSES, 1996). Undergraduate students in secondary pre-service Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teacher training programs adopt the models that they have experienced as learners in the university setting (NRC, 1999). This qualitative case study followed a team of three research faculty, one lecturer, one master teacher, and two graduate teaching assistants who team taught an upper level inquiry- based science research methods science course in a STEM teacher preparation program in the College of Natural Sciences at a large public Midwestern research university. Course instructor dialogue between members was recorded, transcribed and triangulated with teaching sequences, course materials, and student interaction during two semesters. The study detailed how faculty members’ and graduate teaching assistants’ content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning were confronted, challenged, and transformed using interdependent disquisition via regular weekly meetings and team teaching practices. Examples of actual dialogue and meeting characteristics are presented compared and discussed against best practices in science education. Four themes emerged from the data: (1) students’ inquiries drive the conversation, (2) confrontations sort out what works from what doesn’t, (3) leadership seems to contribute to learning opportunities for the team and (4) humor indicates the divergent creative abilities of the members of the team and engaging in humorous episodes facilitates learning between team members. Students were directly connected to team members’ developmental processes. This analysis suggests that measurable professional development opportunities exist in team meetings for science faculty and graduate teaching assistants when team teaching inquiry based undergraduate science courses.Item Theory and practice : preservice teachers negotiating critical literacy(2016-12) Wiebe, Molly Trinh; Worthy, Jo; Wetzel, Melissa; De Lissovoy, Noah; Martínez, Ramón A; Keating, Elizabeth LIn this qualitative research study, I examined how preservice teachers learned to implement critical literacy. I looked at four preservice teachers’ critical literacy teaching and learning experiences across contexts, from early schooling experiences to program coursework into student teaching experience. Ethnographic methods were used to collect data across one academic school year. The data corpus included observations in multiple contexts, field notes, interviews, and documents. Critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996; Freire & Macedo, 1978) and critical literacy theory (Lewison et al., 2002) provided the theoretical underpinnings for this study. The research findings revealed that student teaching in a public school with a rigid schedule is a challenging place to learn to do critical literacy. The findings also point to the importance of developing mentorship models with an emphasis on cooperating teacher-preservice teacher reflections. Implications for practitioners, teacher educators and researchers, and policy are discussed.