Browsing by Author "Stallings, Martha Ann"

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    Building a Professional Support Program for the Beginning Teacher
    Stallings, Martha Ann (Virginia Tech, 1998-09-02)
    This qualitative study described the development and implementation of a professional support program for beginning teachers in a school division for the 1997-98 school year. The community members including mentor teachers, principals, and central office staff, supported specific needs in a structured program to assist beginning teachers to learn how to teach. The study involved 25 beginning teachers with no years of experience who were paired with mentor teachers from their elementary schools. The study focused on the experiences and perceptions of the beginning teachers and mentors in the program building process. Phase one description includes components of program planning and development including design, collaboration, and resources. Identified beginning teacher needs, professional support community needed to provide support for the beginning teachers, program contents, and a timeline of activities, complete the description. The description of phase two of program delivery includes specific activities for beginning teacher meetings, recommendations for school-based activities between beginning teachers and mentor teachers, mentor teacher meetings, and connections to school principals. Methodology included a combination of questionnaires, participant observation and field notes from program planning meetings, beginning teachers meetings, and mentor teacher meetings, research journal, and collection of documents. Text was created from these methods looking at larger themes and issues that emerged to allow for an understanding of beginning teachers and what is involved in their necessary support. This study suggests that there are several key program essentials for providing support for the beginning teachers. Program essentials include: (1) building program awareness;(2) establishing goals; (3) determining beginning teachers' needs; (4) having a broad-based program participation; (5) preparing participants for their support roles; (6) identifying benefits to program participants; and (7) providing a program structure. A program structure includes: (1) a kick-off of the program and orientation for beginning teachers; (2) a recommended school-based activity schedule of times and topics for a collaborative relationship between beginning teachers and mentor teachers; (3) beginning teacher meetings held three times during the year for beginning teachers to meet together; (4) and mentor teacher meetings for mentor teachers to meet together. Time is an important issue for beginning teacher support with time needed to plan and develop the program and to build trust among program participants. While mentor teachers find the process of supporting beginners satisfying, they also appreciate receiving tangible benefits such as stipends, release time to work with beginning teachers, and program training. These rewards provide verification of the school division's valuing of the enterprise. An ongoing program evaluation system contributed to program planning decision making and assessment of program effectiveness. With a support program designed to meet individualized needs, beginning teachers feel supported and appreciated in their first year of teaching. In addition, a school division gains an understanding of what is needed to build support and community building for the beginning teachers and how to assist the mentor teachers as they support the beginning teachers.
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    The Effects of Substitute Teacher Training on the Teaching Efficacy of Prospective Substitute Teachers in the State of West Virginia
    Trull, Cheryl (Virginia Tech, 2004-04-05)
    Teacher absenteeism, retirement, and attrition have led to a widespread shortage of substitute teachers throughout the United States , resulting in the hiring of individuals who lack teacher certification and educational pedagogy. In the past decade, West Virginia joined many other states confronted with the decreased substitute teacher pool and the hiring of non-certified individuals in the classrooms. With the highly qualified teacher requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), focus was situated on the adequate qualifications of substitute teachers. Many substitute teachers do not have the educational pedagogy or teacher certification necessary to be considered highly qualified by the NCLB. Mandatory training for non-certified substitute teachers lacking proper certification and educational pedagogy became the focus to qualify these individuals for the classroom. This study focuses on the self-efficacy of non-certified individuals attending the substitute teacher training in the Regional Education Service Agencies (RESAs) in the state of West Virginia to determine if their self-efficacy beliefs change after two days of mandatory substitute training or after classroom experience. The Teacher's Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) developed by Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy (2001) was the instrument used to measure the self-efficacy of non-certified substitute teachers. Findings indicate that the teaching self-efficacy of non-certified substitute teachers significantly increased from pre-training to post-training, but significantly decreased from post-training to post-teaching experiences. Additionally, findings revealed that age and gender did not have a significant influence on self-efficacy from pre-training, to post-training, to post-teaching. Finally, applications and ramifications of these results are then discussed.
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    Theory Meets Practice in Teacher Education: A Case Study of a Computer-Mediated Community of Learners
    Greene, H. Carol (Virginia Tech, 2003-07-02)
    This research investigated the uses of computer-mediated communication in providing an online field experience in an educational psychology course for pre-service teachers at a large research university in the southeastern United States. Twenty-seven pre-service teachers in one section of a Psychological Foundations of Educational Psychology course for pre-service teachers, eight practicing teachers, and eight university professors participated in this study. The participants viewed CD-ROM based video case studies as part of an online field experience component and communicated electronically through chat rooms and threaded discussion lists. Data sources included transcripts of all chat room and threaded communication, surveys, field notes, observations, and student tasks and reflections, as well as interviews with the pre-service teachers, practicing teachers, university professors, and one technical support person. The methodology involved a mixed method approach. A template organizing approach with the constant comparative method was used in order to develop patterns and themes. Content analysis was applied to the content of the chat transcriptions. Finally, a quantitative component was included in the analysis of the thread transcripts with a measurement of the development of the pre-service teachers' reflective comments over time using an analysis of variance test of within subjects effects. This document reports the findings concerning the nature of the conversations among the participants as they developed across time; the learning outcomes of the students, teachers, and professors; how a computer-mediated learning environment supports reflection; the benefits and challenges of using computer-mediated communication to study and learn about educational psychology and teaching; and the benefits and challenges of creating and maintaining such a learning environment.