UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Cultivating Collaborative Relationships: A Case Study of Teacher Collaboration and Professional Development(2016) Jorisch, Renee; Rosenfield, Sylvia; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Students often receive instruction from specialists, professionals other than their general educators, such as special educators, reading specialists, and ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) teachers. The purpose of this study was to examine how general educators and specialists develop collaborative relationships over time within the context of receiving professional development. While collaboration is considered essential to increasing student achievement, improving teachers’ practice, and creating comprehensive school reform, collaborative partnerships take time to develop and require multiple sources of support. Additionally, both practitioners and researchers often conflate collaboration with structural reforms such as co-teaching. This study used a retrospective single case study with a grounded theory approach to analysis. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with thirteen teachers and an administrator after three workshops were conducted throughout the school year. The theory, Cultivating Interprofessional Collaboration, describes how interprofessional relationships grow as teachers engage in a cycle of learning, constructing partnership, and reflecting. As relationships deepen some partners experience a seamless dimension to their work. A variety of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and external factors work in concert to promote this growth, which is strengthened through professional development. In this theory, professional development provides a common ground for strengthening relationships, knowledge about the collaborative process, and a reflective space to create new collaborative practices. Effective collaborative practice can lead to aligned instruction and teachers’ own professional growth. This study has implications for school interventions, professional development, and future research on collaboration in schools.Item A Qualitative Investigation of Collaboration Between General Education and Instructional Support Teachers(2013) Jorisch, Renee; Rosenfield, Sylvia; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)General education students often receive instruction from multiple school staff, such as reading specialists and English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers. This study's purpose was to explore how instructional support teachers and general education teachers collaborate in order to align instruction, and employed grounded theory methodology to code and analyze teacher interviews in a public school system. Research questions included perceptions of how these two types of school professionals work together, along with perceptions about school level collaboration and administrative support. Results show that factors from the district to the intrapersonal level, along with different modes of communication, cumulatively affect the interactions between these two types of school professionals. Subsequently, the nature of these interactions has an effect on both teachers and students. This study has implications for school interventions, professional development, and future research on collaboration in schools.Item Applications of Dweck's Model of Implicit Theories to Teachers' Self-Efficacy and Emotional Experiences(2012) Williams, Alexis Ymon; Wentzel, Kathryn R.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study explored Dweck's (1999; Dweck & Leggett, 1988) model of implicit theories in the context of teaching in order to establish its usefulness for describing teachers' beliefs about students' ability and social behavior. Further it sought to explain the connections between teachers' implicit beliefs and their efficacy for instruction and classroom management, and their positive and negative emotional experiences. The factor structure of survey data for teachers in mid-Atlantic school districts was examined to test for classes reflecting implicit and entity beliefs, or beliefs that student attributes are malleable or fixed and unchangeable. Given that previous work in other populations has reflected important connections between individuals' implicit theories, their cognitive and emotional functioning, and their interactions with others, the current study explored whether implicit theories have similar implications for teaching. The categorical distinction between entity and incremental theories was not supported in the analyses. Further analyses were conducted using structural equation models for implicit theories, efficacy, and emotional outcomes, including symptoms of burnout. Implicit theories were associated with efficacy such that tendencies toward incremental beliefs correlated with higher efficacy in well-fitting models. Although implicit theories predicted emotional outcomes in some models such that incremental beliefs were associated with positive emotional outcomes, the effect of the implicit theory variable was not significant in models that included the efficacy variable. In these models, only efficacy was a significant predictor of emotions such that higher efficacy was associated with positive outcomes. Finally, the interaction between implicit theory and efficacy was not significant. These findings fail to support the theoretical connections between the two variables in the implicit theory framework, where low efficacy is expected to predict negative emotional outcomes in the presence of entity but not incremental theories. Instead, with respect to emotional outcomes, teaching self-efficacy appeared to be a more salient predictor than student-directed implicit theories of teachers' emotional experiences overall. Keywords: teachers, teaching motivation, implicit theories, teaching self-efficacy, emotions, affect, burnout.