Neoliberalism has been described by many as the greatest threat to global democracy. Few studies have attempted to locate the influences of neoliberalism at the interpersonal level on individual educators involved in university-based teacher education. Given this absence, I undertook an exploratory qualitative case study within one…

Complex Instruction (Cohen & Lotan, 2014) is a groupwork pedagogy aimed at making classrooms equitable. The notion of status is at the core of this pedagogy and guides how teachers ought to respond to inequitable groupwork. In this dissertation study, I consider how the concept of status (from Expectation States Theory) is applied within…

While the teaching population in the U.S. is predominantly (84%) White (National Council of Education Statistics, 2010), students of Color will comprise 41% of the total school population by the year 2020, with 67% in urban areas (NCES, 2010). Studies show that children of Color are regularly disenfranchised through inequitable instructional,…

This research investigates how three preservice elementary teachers were prepared to teach science using a Discursive Model of Meaning Making. The research is divided into two parts. The first consists of the nature of the participants' learning experiences in a science methods course within a school-university Professional Development School…

This study explores the identity constructions of two cohorts of preservice teachers enrolled in English methods courses during a semester of field experience. This research employs a qualitative methodology and documents the nature of participant's responses posted to online wiki forum. Data sources include archived electronic interactions…

This study examined the discourse of preservice teacher candidates in order to better identify those practices and experiences by which they shape their identity and conceptualize their role in teaching. The study's purpose was to find out (a) how secondary preservice teacher candidates conceptualize the practice of their teaching, (b) what…

Reform in the fields of adolescent and content area literacy have focused on broadening a definition of literacy beyond the ability to read and write. In a broader definition the language processes of reading, writing, speaking and listening become literacy tools to engage students in the learning of concepts and afford the learner ways to…