Picturing the teacher : arts-based research and reflection in student teachers

textPreservice art educators come to a pointed change during their student teaching semester. Not only do daily demands and expectations increase, but dedicated studio time typically diminishes. Therefore, this grounded theory study examined how incorporating arts-based research during the student teaching semester could contribute to the reflection and growth of four student teachers. This study collected data through the categories of: blog posts, in-class discussions, a triptych art-making assignment, and semi-structured interviews. The student teachers exhibited varying degrees of reflective understanding and art-making within the following themes: identity, reflection, growth and change, teaching and learning, relationships, and reflexivity. The data were analyzed using Pearse's (1983) and Rolling's (2013) Models of Understanding/Art-Making. Results indicate that reflection, facilitated through supportive group discussions, individualized arts-based research, and blogging contributed to these student teachers' understanding of their development from students, to student teachers, to teachers.Art Educatio

Elementary school teachers’ perceptions of the role of physical activity in schools

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine and describe elementary school teachers’ perceptions of physical activity among children in an urban, Title I, school in Tennessee. Twelve elementary teachers in Second and Third grade were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. The interview protocol was developed to guide participants from broader concepts regarding physical activity to more focused discussions on the use of physical activity during the school day. Data presented examines the perceptions of teachers’ overall view of physical activity among children during school hours, the amount of physical activity children engaged in during school hours, the impact of physical activity on children’s overall wellbeing and academic performance, and ways physical activity is used as a behavior modifier. Findings suggest that the majority of teachers believed that physical activity was important to the wellbeing of children. Obstacles to increasing physical activity among children while at school included a strict focus on academic instructional requirements that do not afford time for additional activities, the perception that physical activity is not an end-of-year test requirement for children, pressure on teachers to increase standardized test scores as a measure of their performance evaluation, and the perception that physical activity is met simply through time allocated to PE and recess. Perceptions of social and mental benefits of physical activity, as well as, perceived benefits of physical activity for increasing academic performance are discussed

Ethical Adventures: Speculative Fiction's Distinctive Contribution to Moral Understanding

This thesis identifies a distinctive contribution to ethical understanding made by Speculative fictions. Plausibly, written fictions bear a connection to the ethical world. But how ought one to make sense of this connection, and of that world, if one is willing to entertain that possibility seriously? Accepting and modifying one promising strategy pursued in the literature, this thesis proposes adopting a version of Neo-Aristotelian ethical investigation, here dubbed ‘Ethical Adventuring’. To the Ethical Adventurer, written fictions function as guides in an experimental, ex-periential quest to achieve moral understanding. Which guides ought the Adven-turer to consult, then, and what form does their guidance take? Early on, the choice is made to consult Speculative fictions. Several accounts of how written fic-tions, more broadly, may make contributions to ethical understanding are then outlined and critiqued. The decisive criticism of these accounts is that none of them convincingly identifies a distinctive way in which written fictions, of any va-riety, make contributions to ethical understanding. In search of a solution, the dis-cussion turns to the experiences generated by reading fiction. Two new accounts are supplied. First, a way of enriching present descriptions of the phenomenology of fiction reading. Second, a way of accounting for a special kind of content en-countered most often in the experiences created by reading Speculative fiction. Ex-periences with this special kind of content, it is argued, attune readers to the limits of our human mode of being in a way that encounters with quotidian qualia can-not. It is concluded that Speculative written fictions make distinctive contributions to moral understanding, and so, to an Ethical Adventure, in virtue of engendering these experiences

International teachers for tomorrow\u27s school. Opportunities and challenges of the professional re-entry of international teachers in selected European countries

Global migration movements are also reflected in classrooms. However, the professional re-entry of migrant teachers with and without a refugee background has been neglected for a long time. This publication, which was developed in the European project "International Teachers for Tomorrow\u27s School" (ITTS), is dedicated to this question. In seven country contributions, the opportunities and challenges of returning to work in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Poland, Slovenia and Türkiye are examined - for some of the countries, new ground was broken. It is shown which conditions favour, challenge or prevent a new professional start. In addition, the results of the cross-national ITTS study are presented, in which high satisfaction values are reflected among those teachers who succeeded in re-entering the profession despite many hurdles. Finally, the findings of the project are condensed into a series of hints and recommendations. (DIPF/Orig.

Saints Action Research Program As Professional Development: A Program Evaluation

Action research (AR) is a form of systematic inquiry by which practitioners address their own problems of practice. Professional development (PD) is a means by which teachers contribute to school improvement and student achievement. Too little research has gathered the qualitative perceptions of former participants in action-oriented professional learning programs, particularly in the realm of single-sex independent schools. This study’s goal, therefore, was to gain insight into how teachers recall experiencing action research as professional development. Two evaluation questions guided the study: (1) To what degree does the Saints Action Research Program reflect an effective model of professional development as evidenced by each of the five levels of Guskey’s model for evaluating professional development? (2) What are the perceptions of program alumni and the instructional leadership team regarding the advantages and limitations of participating in the Saints Action Research Program? To answer both questions, I generated data from four sources: (a) a participant survey, (b) semi-structured participant interviews, (c) a document review process of participant research briefs, and (d) a group interview with the instructional leadership team. Collectively, their experiences revealed that they practice action research as a multi-step process. However, the process is not ongoing, nor does it account for student learning outcomes. Instead, action research is time-consuming because the program requirements do not sufficiently differentiate based on participant needs. Ultimately, these findings offer strong support for discontinuing the current iteration of the evaluand; fill a qualitative gap in action-oriented teacher-led projects; and offer facilitators of professional development insight into how these teachers understand and practice action research as professional development

Pre-Raphaelitism and the professional ideal : art, criticism, and sexuality

This dissertation examines the professional ideal in relation to the development and transformation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood between the late 1840s and the 1880s. The first chapter examines how one might relate the recent theoretical work on nineteenth-century professionalism by Harold Perkin to the distinctive art practice of the Pre-Raphaelites. In chapter two, the discussion focuses on how the professional ideal was shaped by the development of a frequently hostile periodical press that insisted on seeing the Pre-Raphaelites as a distinctive group. The third chapter considers how the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood developed professional identities that diverged from the careers of those artists sponsored by the Royal Academy. The chapter looks in particular at the innovative exhibiting strategies that the Pre-Raphaelites undertook to market their work. Chapter Four compares how differently John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti responded to attacks on Pre-Raphaelitism, and how they were ultimately drawn to contrasting aspects of professionalism. Their divergent careers reveal a major tension between entrepreneurial and professional ideals in the art market. The final chapter examines the 'fleshly school' controversy that surrounded Rossetti and the early Aesthetes of the 1870s. This concluding study reveals how Rossetti's contentious representation of sexual subject-matter played a crucial role in the consolidation of the professional ideal

Youth Organizers As Essential Partners In Teacher Education: Implications From A Community-Based Action Research Project

The primary purpose of this critical qualitative action research project is to analyze the possibilities, contradictions, and limitations of youth organizers as essential partners in teacher education. More specifically, this research project examines the impact of designing and implementing a community-based social studies methods course alongside youth organizers and their adult allies. There is limited research in teacher education literature about partnering with youth-centered and youth-led grassroots organizations. In addition, research pertaining to community-based teacher education does not adequately affirm and center the voices and lived experiences of youth organizers who are social change agents in schools and communities. In turn, this action research project acknowledges and disrupts existing systemic barriers in order to bring teacher candidates and youth organizers together through dialogue and reflection for transformative action. This process enhances teacher candidates’ understanding and use of community-based pedagogy while supporting youth organizers in their social justice work within schools and communities. Informed by participatory and community-based methodologies, the findings of this action research project provide implications for teacher educators who are seeking to foster collaborative partnerships with youth-centered community organizations and intergenerational community members. In this way, teacher educators may curate community-based teacher education programs that are stimulated by and benefit local schools and communities. Importantly, the collection and analysis of data sources is reciprocal and accountable to participants in order to support their ongoing efforts to grow as organizers, educators, and community members. Such practices are informed by place-conscious and culturally sustaining pedagogies in order to seek and sustain transformative social change through education

Smell, smells and smelling in Victorian supernatural fiction of the fin de siècle

PhD ThesisMy PhD examines how writers at the fin de siècle responded to new understandings of smell, smells and smelling in their representations of the supernatural, demonstrating how those understandings were harnessed to nascent disciplines and technologies concerned with the limits and potential of the human subject. It recovers a lost history of smell and explains how shifts in the meaning of ‘smell’ (verb and noun) were witnessed and interrogated by writers in the period. Drawing attention to significant omissions from foundational accounts of olfaction in the nineteenth century, the thesis performs five key reclamatory readings to illuminate a number of supernatural stories. Firstly, it considers cross-channel influences on the articulation and reception of smell- description, drawing out a specifically British experience of scent that relates to the defaecalisation of the River Thames between 1858 and 1875. It then uncovers the origin, and demonstrates the literary manifestation, of analogies between music and scent. The thesis analyses how smells and noses in fin-de-siècle supernatural tales responded to new discursive possibilities afforded by late nineteenth-century developments in rhinoplasty, anaesthesia, nursing and Tractarian theology. The possible over-estimation of H. G. Wells’s reputation for early alignment with Darwinian theory is also considered through a recuperation of George William Piesse’s The Art of Perfumery (1855). Finally, it considers smellers and noses in Henry Rider Haggard’s She (1887), Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and a range of prose fiction by Vernon Lee and Arthur Machen. Overall, it argues that in fin-de-siècle supernatural fiction the epistemology of smell, smells and smelling provided writers with new ways of testing, expanding and representing the boundaries of human identity