Browsing by Author "Murphy, Susan B."
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- Characterizing the Conversation: A Historical Re-view of Maria Montessori's Visits to the United States 1913-1918Zell, Stacy Kay (Virginia Tech, 1997-01-02)This historical re-view of the events and interactions of Maria Montessori's visit to the United States between the years 1913 and 1918 begins by examining Montessori's personal history, with an emphasis on her educational background leading up to her becoming the first female physician in Italy. After discussing her scientific background briefly, the document specifically addresses several of Montessori's educational concepts. Next, this study examines specific nuances of organization, power and intent found in the educational system of the United States at the time of her visits. Particular emphasis is placed on the implications of industrialization, increasing immigration and the response of the educational establishment to these issues. Interactions and events from her visits in the United States follow. Montessori's influences on and experiences with prominent figures in the U.S. at that time are accentuated through the events that highlight her travels. After detailing each visit in the historical context in which it occurred, the piece continues with the author's discussion of how the dissertation applies to teaching history in the foundations. The piece concludes with conceptual suggestions of ways to increase diverse social awareness and encourage community-based responses of pre-service and in-service public school educators.
- Creative Inquiry: Five Preservice Teachers' Interpretations of LiteracyBustle, Lynn S. (Virginia Tech, 1997-11-13)This qualitative study examines how five preservice teachers use multiple forms of representation (photography, spoken discourse, and written reflection) to interpret literacy. Eisner (1994) defines multiple forms of representations as "the devices that humans use to make public, conceptions that are privately held"(39). By better understanding preservice teachers' interpretations of literacy through multiple forms, teacher educators can promote a more holistic view of the literate qualities that define students as literate beings. Data included: individual and group interview transcripts, photographs, literacy autobiographies, literacy portfolios, journal entries, and other written reflections. Five collective themes emerged across the data: self and self esteem, literacy as a social act, the environment, and growth. From these themes creative inquiry, a framework for literacy inquiry evolved. Creative inquiry is a circular or spiral process of interpretation, hermeneutic in form, whereby interpretations return us to a new self. Although collective themes were revealed, the participants engaged with the multiple forms in undividual ways throughout the process of creative inquiry helping shape personal interpretations of literacy.
- A descriptive study of the interaction behaviors in a language video program and in live elementary language classes using that video programLopes, Solange Aparecida (Virginia Tech, 1996-03-15)The primary purpose of this study was to describe: 1) the predominant types of interaction behaviors encountered in a foreign language video program; and 2) the types of teacher-student interaction features that resulted from use of the instructional video in elementary school classrooms. Based on the findings, the second purpose of the study was to examine how these interaction behaviors shaped amount of teacher and student talk in the two sources of data. The researcher examined two sources of data: the language video program and elementary level language classes in two schools in Southeastern United States. The examination of interaction behaviors involved the description of interaction behaviors between all the players in the video program and those in the classroom scene. F or the description of interaction behaviors in the video program, twenty-five video lessons were analyzed and coded (N=3,269 behaviors) using The Observational System for Instructional Analysis (AOSIA) (Hough & Duncan, 1970). In order to examine features of classroom interaction, twenty-four groups of elementary level language classrooms in grades K through five were videotaped during their twenty-minute language lessons on one occasion each during a four-week period (N=3,223 behaviors). Classroom behaviors were also coded using the OSIA system.
- Framing Games: an Exploration Into the Speaking Activity of a Chinese-English Bilingual ChildNowalk, Thomas J. (Virginia Tech, 1999-03-01)The study applies an ethnography of speaking to the study of a bilingual child, with the construct of a frame as the unit of analysis. The child was observed and tape recorded playing a commercial game in Chinese with her mother, and in English with her father. Both activity frames and conceptual frames were analyzed toward answering (1) what frames were performed during game play (2) how those frames differed between Chinese and English (3) what conceptual frames were produced in languages spoken and (4) how those conceptual frames differed between each language. In brief, the study applied an ethnographic perspective toward describing how the organization of activity and language compared between both languages, through the play of a single game. The study discovered that each parent enacted different roles with the daughter during the play of the game. Whereas the mother, who had previous experience with game, performed an expert-novice role during game play, the father with his lack of experience in playing the game, took a novice-expert stance with respect to the daughter. The activity frames and conceptual frames followed accordingly, with the games in Chinese dominated by frames featuring directing and reporting on the part of the mother. In contrast, the English games reported the daughter dominating talk with informing and reporting functions of frames. Of the conceptual frames, Chinese presented game objects and events as changes of state; objects were evaluated according to notions of permission and convention. Conversely, English conceptualized objects as independent things existing with attributes, and events as discrete objects with defined spans of time. The study discovered a tight relationship between utterance, its function, and its frame for embedding topic-relationships. This relationship hints at dual activity-conceptual systems among bilingual children, warranting further attention by educators to integrate three dimensions into language classroom instruction: grammar form, speech function, and conceptual contents. As this study demonstrates, bilingual children do much more than talk in two languages.
- Learning to Negotiate Difference: Narratives of Experience in Inclusive EducationAltieri, Elizabeth M. (Virginia Tech, 2001-10-05)This narrative inquiry examined how a small group of general educators constructed three essential understandings of themselves as teachers within the context of inclusive education: (a) To move past their fear of disabilities and negative perceptions of students with disabilities, they had to learn to see children with disabilities in new ways, identify what it was about their differences that mattered, and respond to them as valued members of their classrooms; (b) To move past feelings of inadequacy and incompetence, they had to figure out how to negotiate those learning differences that mattered the most; and (c) To keep from being overwhelmed with the additional demands inclusion placed on them as teachers, they needed to garner support through a variety of relationships, and work through conflicts that arose from trying on new roles and patterns of interaction. These understandings were constructed through two interrelated processes: Learning through experience, and learning through narrative, specifically, informal talk, structured dialogue, and stories. The representation of this inquiry was a polyvocal text which privileged what the teachers had to say, and which featured their voices in solo and in dialogue with others. This alternative format was used to convey the evolving nature of the teachers' practice, as well as the contradictions and complexities that expand our understanding of teacher learning and development in inclusive educational settings.
- Lessons of the heart: teaching and the poetic life of mind "full" possibilitiesO'Quinn, Elaine (Virginia Tech, 1998-04-22)Education should grow the delicate flowers of our emotional hearts and souls as well as the sturdy plants of our minds; it should awaken us to depths of which the mind alone is not capable. This study presents reasoning for the necessary nurturing of students as whole people. The style in which it is written is indicative of the content itself; unrestricted and constant in motion, much like a free verse poem, the study achieves its wholeness not by wild abandonment of form, but by the embracing of a particular design that is self-generated rather than regulated. The point is to show that just as our lives cannot fruitfully be assembled then categorized, neither can teaching which is linear and disembodied provide a meaning "full" education for teacher or student. The themes of risk and vulnerability, self-knowledge, self-reflection, and self-hood, the incredible necessity to see our lives as large rather than small, and the overwhelming challenge to open up to instead of shut out the sounds of our lives are the strains that are herein taken up. Another time, another space and the issues would have presented themselves in an entirely different, but just as meaningful light. Again, the point made is how the unforeseen element of creativity rises up when thought is allowed to intertwine itself with the experiences of our lives. When allowed to self-generate, it connects all things to form a whole that once could only have been imagined. It integrates the private unfolding of a person with the concern of the public message to bear new beginnings to the conduct of things. Though this study is about teachers and teaching, in its deepest moments it is equally about students. For without the active presence of students no study can begin to ask teachers to consider the on-going need to open not just their minds, but their hearts and souls to the young people with whom they daily interact. Without the active presence of students the spirit of a "poetic" life is reduced to the singular lyrical pieces of experience rather than the encompassing epic tale that we understand is the real truth of our educations. Without the active presence of students the work of a teacher is but an accounting ledger of isolated method, a reductive energy that in the end is much about product, but little about life.
- Making sense of school: an ecological examination of students' definitions of reading tasksMurphy, Susan B. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1987)What students do as they work to complete academic tasks will determine what they learn from those tasks, Teachers often receive unexpected responses on completed tasks, indicating that the students did, perhaps, unexpected things as they completed those tasks, The purpose of this study was to describe how students, given similar instruction, responded differently to academic reading tasks in the elementary school classroom. This study describes what students did as they worked through classroom reading tasks--the ways they defined the tasks, the goals they set, and the strategies and resources they used to complete the tasks, It also describes the factors within the classroom which may have influenced what those students did--the dimensions of the task as set by the teacher and the text, as well as the social and environmental demands impacting on the student. The principal research question was: what are the dimensions of the task environment and the features of task definitions that contribute to students' successful or unsuccessful completion of assigned tasks in elementary classrooms? Data was collected from one fifth-grade classroom. Four focal students, differing in their success as school readers, were selected for in-depth study. Participant observation, interviews, and protocol analysis were the primary data collection techniques used in this study. Analysis of the data indicated that though students were asked to complete some comprehension and rote memory tasks, most reading tasks which required a written response were procedural. Those tasks which were ambiguous or procedurally complex were the most problematic for the students. This study suggests that though students sometimes did not attend, occasionally chose not to respond. and at times lacked content knowledge crucial to task completion, these were not the main reasons for their failure to respond to tasks as the teacher expected. Most often they provided unexpected responses to reading tasks because the tasks were ambiguous and they did not understand what the task was asking them to do.
- Negotiating uncertainty: making sense of the student teaching experienceStrehle, Elizabeth L. (Virginia Tech, 1995)This year long qualitative study unravels the student teacher's journey through student teaching as she gains entry into the classroom of her supervising teacher and begins to understand her own concept of teaching. The study describes how each student teacher gains entry and begins to think about her own understanding of the student teaching experience. Four case studies are constructed from the perspective of each student teacher's personal history and captures her experience of moving from the induction period of student teaching to full participation in teaching. As an observer in the classroom, the student teacher begins to understand her supervising teachers' classroom instruction. As a participant-observer, the student teacher begins to plan the classroom instruction and works with students in small groups. The student teacher, who is successful in developing a relationship with her supervising teacher during this period of induction, gains entry to full participation, and is given an opportunity to explore her own concept of teaching. The student teacher who experiences difficulty in developing a relationship with her supervising teacher is relegated to a participant-observer role and is unable to engage in the full range of teaching opportunities in the classroom. During the student teaching experience, the student teacher operates in a remarkably uncertain environment as she engages in the two-sided challenge of learning to student teach and teach at the same time. To make sense of the experience, the student teacher acquires strategies such as observing, initiating instruction, engaging in conversation with others, learning to teach through trial and error, and being responsive to the needs of the students in the classroom. A successful student teaching experience is achieved when the student teacher negotiates entry into the supervising teacher's classroom and spends time exploring her own concept of teaching. This negotiation depends on a complex interaction of factors that are often not adequately addressed by the structure inherent in the field placement.
- A study of teacher-researcher collaboration on reading instruction for Chapter one studentsMagalhaes, Maria Cecilia Camargo (Virginia Tech, 1990-01-15)This study examines a collaborative endeavor in which a Chapter One teacher and a researcher worked together to plan, conduct and reflect on a reading instruction designed to promote strategic reading. For eleven weeks, data were collected during conversations and reflective/planning sessions conducted by the teacher and the researcher and during instruction for a group of fourth- and fifth-grade students. Ethnographic methods such as participant observation, interviews, document collections and research journal writing were used as data collection techniques. Two methods of data analysis were used - discrepant case analysis (Erickson, 1986) and constant comparison method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The findings suggest that the teacher-researcher collaboration motivated changes in the teacher, the researcher and the students. That is, the collaborative work helped the teacher learn to use a process approach to teaching reading comprehension. It also helped students learn about the reading process and reading strategies. Finally, this study helped the researcher learn about ways to assist teachers in becoming more knowledgeable and reflective.
- Teacher learning within a transactional processPotts, Ann D. (Virginia Tech, 1996)This qualitative case study explored a professional development project designed to support teacher learning. A group of teachers and instructional supervisors met regularly for an academic year to create alternative assessment practices for the elementary classroom. The team of instructional supervisors planned and led meetings that encouraged the development of knowledge through interaction among teachers and reflections on classroom practice. In the study I explored the following questions: a) What were the actions of the instructional supervisors as they planned and worked with teachers? b) How did teachers interact within the environment designed for the social construction of knowledge? c) What actions created ambiguity for the participants and what actions accommodated the ambiguity? d) How does knowledge I constructed through this research enhance my practice as a teacher educator? The theoretical frame for this study was grounded in the work of researchers such as Dewey (1904), Vygotsky (1978, 1981), Lave & Wenger (1991), Rogoff (1990), and Short and Burke (1991) who suggested a social constructive perspective on knowledge. These researchers argued that knowledge is constructed through interactions among individuals. The interaction involves a process that is both dynamic and fluid. Through this process knowledge is constructed and reconstructed. Subsequently, the participants take more control over their thinking and their actions within the practice. Materials that were gathered and interpreted for this study were accumulated over the period of a school year from September 1993 through June 1994. They included fieldnotes from sessions with the teachers, transcriptions of audio recordings of interviews with the teachers, transcriptions of audio recordings of planning meetings with the instructional supervisors, analytical notes on the research process, anda research journal. Analysis of materials was a continuous process that began with the writing of analytical notes during the transcription process. I identified major themes from the collected materials and selected the theme of ambiguity as an important theme for understanding the nature of the environments studied. I wrote descriptions of both the learning environment created for the teachers and the planning sessions conducted by the team of supervisors. I described the role ambiguity played in the project and how the instructional supervisors and the teachers accommodated ambiguity. As a result of my research I developed several meaningful insights; through working with the planning team members I developed an appreciation for the complexity of organizing a transactional process in order to accommodate teachers' inquiry. Within the sessions with the teachers I recognized how the providing of opportunities for conversation enhanced interactions. I came to appreciate the complex nature of ambiguity as I understood how ambiguity is a part of the learning process. However, it is important to develop and then implement processes to accommodate ambiguity before that ambiguity reaches a critical point. If one does so then the participants in the learning environment are not overwhelmed. If the ambiguity is accommodated within the environment then the participants are encouraged to seek out multiple perspectives.
- Transitioning Students to the Middle school: A Case StudyDutrow, Anita Marceca (Virginia Tech, 1997-04-21)The purpose of this study was to describe how students moving from a school for students with learning disabilities to a regular public school classroom adjusted to the new school setting. The questions guiding the study were derived from issues identified by Dweck and Elliot in Fisher and Cooper (1990) as important to students when they change schools. The guiding questions are: What are the education settings in each school and how does the student adjust to the differences? How does the student react to the presentation of structured, sequential instruction in one school and to varied instructional techniques in another? What is the student's relationship with the teachers in each school? What is the student's relationship with peers in each school? Three students participated in this case study. They were observed and interviewed in both the private and public school settings. Data include school histories, academic records, observations and interviews. Student observations took place in classes, school hallways and while they participated in school programs. Interviews were conducted with the students, their parents and their teachers in both schools. The findings of the data analysis indicated that when the students changed schools they adjusted easily to the larger school setting and to the new instructional methods. Two of the students worried about grades and their academic progress in both settings and were able to find ways to meet their learning needs in their new environment. The three students described themselves as being happy, making friends and establishing relationships with their teachers within the first six weeks in their new school. Suggestions for further research include following these students for a longer period of time. Another study might compare the school experience of students with similar learning characteristics who are not considered to be students with a learning disability.