“That's more like how they know me as a person”: one primary pre‐service teacher's stories of her personal and ‘professional’ digital practices

In contributing to debates about how student‐teachers might draw from personal experience in addressing digital literacy in the classroom, this paper explores the stories that one primary student‐teacher told of her digital practices during a larger study of the role of digital literacy in student‐teachers' lives. The paper investigates the ‘recognition work’ this student‐teacher did as she aligned herself with different discourses and notes how themes of ‘control’ and ‘professionalism’ seemed to pattern her stories of informal and formal practices both within and beyond her professional education. The paper calls for further research into how student‐teachers perceive the relevance of their personal experience to their professional role and argues for encouraging pre‐service and practising teachers to tell stories of their digital practices and reflect upon the discourses which frame them.     

Professional development to increase teacher behavior‐specific praise: A single‐case design replication

Effective classroom instruction is contingent upon successful classroom management. Unfortunately, not all teachers successfully manage classroom behavior and need in‐service professional development. In this study, we replicated a targeted professional development approach that included a brief one‐on‐one training session and emailed visual performance feedback to increase novice teachers’ use of behavior‐specific praise, an evidence‐based classroom management skill. Dependent variables collected through direct observation included teachers’ behavior‐specific praise along with average student engagement and disruptions. Four elementary teachers participated and, based on a multiple‐baseline single‐case design, we found a functional relationship between the targeted professional development and teachers’ increased use of behavior‐specific praise. However, because of variability and one teacher's limited response, effect sizes were small for behavior‐specific praise and little change was observed in student behaviors. These findings warrant further research to determine which classroom management skills affect student behaviors overall, as well as continued evaluation of this professional development model and using school‐based coaches.     

Charging to the End: Course Activities for Semester‐Long Student Engagement in an Undergraduate Product Development Capstone Course

Setting instructional goals to drive student engagement in the classroom is essential, as research has shown that improved student engagement in a course will affect student success, as well as the development of key personal and professional skills. Student engagement is a multifaceted concept with multiple perspectives. In focusing on the behavioral perspective of student engagement, various effective teaching practices can be implemented to encourage engagement in a diverse study body. Utilizing validated tools, such as the Natl. Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Engagement Themes and Indicators, can ease the development of classroom approaches to student engagement with convenience and flexibility. Semester‐long student engagement in a food science undergraduate product development capstone course was encouraged through instructional approaches styled around the NSSE Engagement Themes and Indicators. The variety of instructional approaches utilized in the capstone food science course are described in detail and discussed in relation to the NSSE Engagement Themes and Indicators with which they align.     

Just‐in‐time pedagogy: teachers' perspectives on the response to intervention framework

The purpose of this mixed methods research is to examine teachers' perspectives on the response to intervention (RTI) framework and its implementation in Michigan and Texas schools. Both states have been leaders in literacy, increasing preservice and in‐service teacher certification standards and developing similar batteries for assessing literacy skills. Using the International Reading Association's RTI principles, the following question directed this inquiry: what are the perspectives of teachers in various educational, geographic, economic and cultural settings of the RTI? The research was developed through questionnaires, focus groups and semi‐structured interviews. Findings revealed that teacher professional development, assessments and collaboration for instruction were highly integrated themes when developing RTI strategies as reforming practice and increasing student literacy. Michigan and Texas teachers were more confident and comfortable in measuring and identifying students with reading difficulties over their ability to prevent learning disabilities through their instruction.     

Supervisors’ Inner World: professional perspectives

The study presents an attempt at revealing some professional perspectives of student‐teachers’ supervisors. The discussions of 12 supervisors in a teachers’ college were protocolled and content‐analysed. Content‐analysis yielded several guiding perspectives: professionalism, values, structure and organisation, integration. In addition, some personal distinct profiles emerged differentiating between emotional and rational orientations. Findings shed some light on the inner world of student‐teachers’ supervisors and these may contribute to better understanding of their supervisory behaviour and guide their professional development.     

Teaching practice in Initial Teacher Education: its impact on student teachers' professional skills and development

This paper describes the main gains resulting from student teachers' first contact with the teaching profession. The Inventory of Experiences and Perceptions at Teaching Practice (IEPTP) was used to assess the range of experiences of a sample of 224 student teachers on five dimensions of teaching practice: (1) learning and professional development; (2) professional and institutional socialisation; (3) socio‐emotional aspects; (4) support/resources/supervision; and (5) vocational development. The results describe the main changes occurring in the student teachers' perceptions between the beginning and the end of teaching practice. They also suggest more significant changes in the areas of vocational development, professional and institutional socialisation, and learning and professional development. Strategies to promote student teachers' learning process and to decrease the difficulties emerging during this period are suggested. Supervisors' role in fostering and supporting the new candidates' professional and personal growth is also addressed.     

Ensuring Content‐Area Learning by Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities

Three factors tied with secondary student success in content‐area reading are demonstrated: (a) validated teacher‐focused and student‐focused interventions, (b) integrated and comprehensive service delivery systems, and (c) well‐designed, data‐based professional developmental programs. Difficult challenges face secondary students with LD and their teachers with regard to these students’ participation and success in required general education classes. Recently, instructional methods and materials have been developed and validated for promoting these students’ success. Some of them focus on how general education teachers plan and teach their content‐area courses; others focus on giving students the strategies they need to respond independently to the demands of their courses. This article describes these instructional methods, a service‐delivery model for implementing these interventions in secondary schools, and professional‐development mechanisms and administrative support that must be in place for the model to be maintained effectively.     

An Investigation of the Use of E‐Mail as a Supplemental Modality for Clinical Supervision

The authors investigated the use of student‐initiated e‐mail as a supplemental modality for supervision. Nineteen students e‐mailed their instructors weekly during their 15‐week practicum; these e‐mails were analyzed across 3 time periods using the categories of the discrimination model (J. M. Bernard, 1979, 1997) and an adaptation of W. Lanning's (1986) professional behavior category. Although patterns of e‐mails were similar across time, there was a significant decline in the number of e‐mails as the practicum progressed. Significance was found for message focus, with personalization messages and professional behavior/practicum class messages accounting for more than half of the messages across 3 time periods.     

Teaching nature of science through inquiry: Results of a 3‐year professional development program

This study assessed the influence of a 3‐year professional development program on elementary teachers' views of nature of science (NOS), instructional practice to promote students' appropriate NOS views, and the influence of participants' instruction on elementary student NOS views. Using the VNOS‐B and associated interviews the researchers tracked the changes in NOS views of teacher participants throughout the professional development program. The teachers participated in explicit–reflective activities, embedded in a program that emphasized scientific inquiry and inquiry‐based instruction, to help them improve their own elementary students' views of NOS. Elementary students were interviewed using the VNOS‐D to track changes in their NOS views, using classroom observations to note teacher influences on student ideas. Analysis of the VNOS‐B and VNOS‐D showed that teachers and most grades of elementary students showed positive changes in their views of NOS. The teachers also improved in their science pedagogy, as evidenced by analysis of their teaching. Implications for teacher professional development programs are made. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 653–680, 2007     

Student‐to‐Student Interaction Revisited: A Case Study of Working Adult Business Students in Online Courses*

Faculty teaching in online environments are universally encouraged to incorporate a variety of student‐to‐student learning activities into their courses. Although there is a body of both theoretical and empirical work supporting this, adult professional students participating in an online MBA program at an urban business school reported being at best indifferent and often negative regarding these learning activities. A case study was performed to explore how pervasive this attitude was and the possible reasons for it. Through various sources of data and exploration, we discovered that common interactive modalities are not associated with either perceived learning or satisfaction. A content analysis of a data analysis course revealed that 64.5% of responses recalled student‐to‐student interactivities when responding to a “learned least from” query. We identified three possible reasons for these negative responses: time inefficiency, interaction dysfunction, and flexibility intrusion. We conclude that, although some working professional students probably do learn from student‐to‐student interactivity, the costs incurred may be too great. If working adult students present a different profile than those students typically represented in academic research and thus have different needs and expectations, we may need to rethink the design of online education delivered to them.     

PERSONAL AND SCHOOL CULTURAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS’ EFFICACY IN HANDLING STUDENT MISBEHAVIOR

One approach for understanding teachers’ behavioral responses to classroom student misbehavior is through the perceptions of efficacy in handling this stressor. The present study investigated the relationship and predictive ability of personal and school cultural factors as they relate to perceptions of teachers’ efficacy in handling student misbehavior (TEHSM). Participants were 344 primary (n = 189) and secondary (n = 155), full‐time, public school teachers from a southeastern state in the USA. Teachers completed online self‐report measures of TEHSM and all personal and school cultural factors. Student socioeconomic status (SES) information was provided by the school districts. Structure equation modeling (SEM) results indicated the final empirical model to account for 66% of the variance in TESHM, with professional development and student SES having the strongest association with TEHSM. This study provides a vital step towards understanding factors that drive teachers’ perceptions of their efficacy in handling misbehaving students.     

Teachers' learning to facilitate high‐level student thinking: Impact of a video‐based professional development

Attaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS‐inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating students' engagement in high‐level thinking as they work on these tasks will become an increasingly important instructional challenge to address. This study reports findings from a video‐based professional development effort (i.e., professional development [PD] that use video‐clips of instruction as the main artifact of practice to support teacher learning) to support teachers' learning to select cognitively demanding tasks and to support students' learning during the enactment of these tasks in ways that are aligned with the NGSS vision. Particularly, we focused on the NGSS's charge to get students to make sense of and deeply think about scientific ideas as students try to explain phenomena. Analyses of teachers' pre‐ and post‐PD instruction indicate that PD‐participants began to adopt instructional practices associated with facilitating these kinds of student thinking in their own classrooms. The study has implications for the design of video‐based professional development for science teachers who are learning to facilitate the NGSS vision in science classrooms.     

A study of the effect of sustained,whole‐school professional development on student achievement in science

This longitudinal study of middle school science teachers explored the relationship, if any, between teacher participation in whole‐school, sustained, collaborative professional development and student achievement in science. Eleven teachers from Glendale Middle School participated in the Discovery Model Schools Initiative 2‐week summer institute, followed by monthly release day professional development sessions focused on implementing instruction outlined in the National Science Education Standards. Student achievement was assessed using the Discovery Inquiry Test in Science. The same students completed the test in grades 6–8. Students of teachers at Glendale Middle School significantly outperformed students at the control school. Findings in this study revealed the positive impact that whole‐school, sustained, collaborative professional development programs have on student achievement, indicating that programs of this nature could be a means to narrowing or eliminating achievement gaps in science. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 775–786, 2007     

Professional Identity Development: A Grounded Theory of Transformational Tasks of New Counselors

Professional identity development is an important professional issue. Examining the lived experiences of counselors‐in‐training (CITs), the authors used grounded theory methodology to describe the transformational tasks that are required for professional identity development. Tasks include finding a personal definition of counseling, internalizing responsibility for professional growth, and developing a systemic identity—all simultaneously manifesting as students progress from focus on experts to self‐validation. Counselor educators can facilitate movement through these transformational tasks by helping CITs to increase self‐evaluating, self‐motivating, and self‐locating within a professional community.     

Assessing and Promoting Self‐Regulated Strategy Use

College counselors can assist students in enhancing their academic performance by assessing student self‐regulated strategies. Key aspects of self‐regulated strategy use (SRSU) are identified, and a semistructured interview to assess SRSU is presented. The rich data collected in the interview can assist the counselor in designing academic counseling interventions consistent with the needs and life situation of the individual student.     

The Effect of Team‐Based Learning on Student Attitudes and Satisfaction

We examined student attitudes toward a team‐based learning method known as the readiness assurance process encompassing team exams to model how student satisfaction is initially shaped and subsequently changed over time as a function of scholastic performance and perceived development of professional skills (PS). We found that students were generally positively disposed toward the learning method and recognized its benefits in terms of developing teamwork skills. A regression analysis of student responses to an instrument distributed directly after each of four quizzes given over the course of a semester leads to the inferences that satisfaction with the method depends minimally upon the immediate feedback provided by student performance on a quiz and more critically upon student perceptions of how it has enhanced their PS. There is also shown to be a strong carryover effect in satisfaction with the method in successive uses. The results suggest that student attitudes are shaped by multiple, high‐level goals, and not just scholastic performance. The study also evidences the need to study learning interventions over multiple uses rather than through a one‐shot design.     

The impact of a Framework‐aligned science professional development program on literacy and mathematics achievement of K‐3 students

This study investigates the effect of a Framework‐aligned professional development program at the PreK‐3 level. The NSF funded program integrated science with literacy and mathematics learning and provided teacher professional development, along with materials and programming for parents to encourage science investigations and discourse around science in the home. This quasi‐experimental study used a three‐level hierarchical linear model to compare the Renaissance STAR Early Literacy, Reading, and Mathematics scores from 2015 to 2016 of K‐3 students in treatment and control classrooms in a large Midwestern urban school district. The statistically significant results indicate that, on average, every year that a student has a program teacher adds 8.6 points to a student's spring STAR Early Literacy score, 17.0 points to a student's STAR Mathematics score, and 41.4 points to a student's STAR Reading score compared to control students. Implications for early elementary teacher education and policy are discussed. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 54:1174–1196, 2017     

Athletic Participation and Wellness: Implications for Counseling College Student‐Athletes

This study used a holistic wellness paradigm to explore the adjustment of student‐athletes and nonathletes at a Division I institution. Results were that nonathletes reported higher levels of wellness than did student‐athletes. The authors discuss the ways in which wellness may affect student‐athletes' physical and mental health at different points in time during their collegiate experience. Implications for college counselors and other student affairs professionals who support student‐athletes are presented.