Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
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Item Working with Student Teachers: A Mixed Methods Study to Examine the Roles and Self-Identified Dispositions of Cooperating Teachers(2016) Rivera, Danielle Alliene; Valli, Linda R; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A critical component of teacher education is the field experience during which candidates practice under the supervision of experienced teachers. Programs use the InTASC Standards to define the requisite knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching. Practicing teachers are familiar with the concepts of knowledge and skills, but they are less familiar with dispositions. Practicing teachers who mentor prospective teachers are underrepresented in the literature, but they are critical to teacher preparation. The research goals were to describe the self-identified dispositions of cooperating teachers, identify what cooperating teachers consider their role in preparing prospective teachers, and explain challenges that cooperating teachers face. Using a mixed methods design, I conducted a quantitative survey followed by a qualitative case study. When I compared survey and case study data, cooperating teachers report possessing InTASC critical dispositions described in Standard 2: Learning Differences, Standard 3: Learning Environments, and Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice, but not Standard 6: Assessment and Standard 10: Leadership and Collaboration. Cooperating teachers assume the roles of modeler, mentor and advisor, and informal evaluator. They explain student teachers often lack skills and dispositions to assume full teaching responsibilities and recommend that universities better prepare candidates for classrooms. Cooperating teachers felt university evaluations were not relevant to teaching reality. I recommend modifying field experiences to increase the quantity and duration of classroom placements. I suggest further research to detail cooperating teacher dispositions, compare cooperating teachers who work with different universities, and determine if cooperating teacher dispositions influence student teacher dispositions.Item Recruiting the "Best and Brightest": Factors that Influence Academically-Talented Undergraduates' Teaching-Related Career Decisions(2015) Bowsher, Amanda Nicole; Rice, Jennifer K; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although researchers have established a positive relationship between teachers' academic skills and their students' achievement, evidence indicates that academically-strong prospective teachers are less likely to progress through the teacher pipeline than their peers. To date, initiatives to recruit academically-talented individuals to teaching have been designed with an incomplete understanding of the factors that influence the "best and brightest" prospective teachers' career decisions. Guided by a theoretical framework based on expectancy-value theory, this study (a) examines the factors that undergraduate students with an interest in teaching (i.e., uncommitted prospective teachers) weigh when deciding whether to teach; (b) deciphers how these factors affect high-achieving students; and (c) identifies promising recruitment policies. This investigation employs a mixed methods design utilizing survey and focus group data from undergraduate students at one large, Research 1, mid-Atlantic university. Analytic methods include ordinal logistic regression and chi-square analyses for the quantitative data and constant comparison analysis for the qualitative data. The quantitative analysis identified three significant predictors of uncommitted prospective teachers' intentions to pursue a teaching career: SAT score, interest/ability/encouragement, and social utility. For higher-achieving students, interest/ability/encouragement, social utility, salary perceptions, and prior teaching and learning experiences were statistically significant predictors of teaching intentions. Qualitative data identified dissuading messages about teaching as well as perceptions about teachers' salary, social status, and opportunities for professional growth in the field as the most influential factors in higher-achieving students' teaching decisions. Results also revealed complex relationships among these factors and students' perceptions of themselves as intelligent, high-achieving individuals. Findings indicate that uncommitted prospective teachers may be deterred from undergraduate-level teacher preparation when they perceive it will extend their graduation time frame. High-achieving students may also be frequently dissuaded from teacher preparation because they perceive education to be an easy major that leads to a career with a low salary, minimal professional growth, and little social prestige. These findings provide justification for policymakers to continue efforts to develop career ladder and differentiated pay initiatives for teachers and for higher education administrators to offer rigorous education courses and effective degree planning initiatives.Item Organizational changes in state education agencies: Responses to standards-based accountability(2011) Zhang, Ying; Valli, Linda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines organizational changes in state education agencies (SEAs) in the context of current standards-based accountability policies. It identifies the changing organizational characteristics of SEAs and depicts the organizational motivations and strategies adopted to bring about change. Based on institutional theory and empirical evidence from state departments of education, the study proposes a theoretical framework that explains the organizational change process. The organizational level analysis illustrates the impact of standards-based accountability policy on the structure and networks of SEAs and highlights the importance of organizational analysis in the policy design process. The study employs a mixed-methods design to investigation the changing experience of state departments of education in the past two decades with a focus on the post-No Child Left Behind era. Together with primary and secondary texts and documents, it draws data from interviews with state officials in ten state departments of education and national surveys of 50 states in 2003, 2004 and 2007. The study identifies internal changes regarding organizational structure, staffing, and technology as well as external changes in terms of their functions and working relationships with other educational agencies. To understand the process of organizational change, the study examines the organizational motivations and strategies that state departments of education used to bring about these changes. The study finds that, since early 1990s, state departments of education have gradually changed their role in the U.S. education system from monitoring finance administration to compliance with federal requirements to provide technical assistance. The organizational structure is changed to increase internal efficiency accompanied by a decrease in administrative staff but an increase in the need for technical staff, particularly staff that can help with the increasing technology in the organizations' data systems. State departments of education developed new relationships with local educational agencies with unprecedented attention on student academic performance and school management. These changes were pushed by both state and federal reforms that highlight the positive role state agencies can play to improve school performance. To make these changes happen, state departments have used networking as a way to expand organizational capacity and pushed cross-level collaboration to improve organizational efficiency.