Schools, institutionally designed to formalize education, often leave individuals longing for something more. Multiple disciplines attribute the pursuit of something more to transformation. While a common discussion in academic literature, transformation is underdeveloped in education. This dissertation explored transformational education from a…

Teacher training and preparation are important topics to consider in the field of education because of the direct impact quality of instruction and resulting student achievement. Teacher preparation programs and training help teachers develop classroom management skills, learn to lesson plan, and disaggregate data. The purpose of this qualitative…

The study investigates the journey of the PRDE's PADE Academy accelerated English teacher preparation program, in preparing special recruitment and permanent PRDE teachers for the English content area re/certification. Through qualitative research using a case study design, the research examines various aspects of the program, including academic…

This study explores the learning theories communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1978) in the context of mentor teaching. The landscape of teacher education preparation programs is shifting its focus to practice-based teacher education, with the inclusion of high-leverage teaching practices.…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate first-year classroom teachers' sense of self-efficacy when entering the classroom and to identify whether the implementation of transformative learning theory practices would improve their self-efficacy regarding their instructional practices and approach to teaching. Teacher…

This qualitative case study explored the development of equity consciousness in multiple subject preservice teachers following completion of a hybrid teacher preparation program at San Francisco State University. The study used a two-interview protocol to explore beliefs and attitudes pre- and post-teacher preparation. A conceptual framework…

Through adventure-based learning (ABL), individuals analyze unique experiences in order to generalize and apply critical skills and dispositions to their homes, schools, workplaces, and communities (Dillon, Tannehill, & O'Sullivan, 2010). However, there is a lack of research documenting the transferability of ABL to other contexts (Kraft,…

As English has become a global lingua franca used by a greater number of nonnative speakers than native speakers, a focus on native speaker norms in English language teaching (ELT) has become obsolete. There has been a call to incorporate different varieties of Englishes (native, nonnative, and nativized) and related cultures in both teacher…

Science teachers in the United States are not prepared to teach the students in their classrooms. Teachers are most often White females, while the children in their classrooms are from diverse backgrounds. Multicultural pedagogies exist, but teachers must be educated during their teacher preparation courses to understand their own relationship…

Recently there has been a call to disrupt the continuous cycle of (re)production from within university-based programs through the development of transformative approaches rooted in the cultural norms of traditionally marginalized populations. This study aimed to explore how one such approach, critical hip-hop pedagogy (CHHP), manifests within the…

This qualitative case study explored how a pre-service training program developed through a partnership between a university and a charter school, and specifically created to prepare and retain urban educators, may lead to efficacious classroom practices. To address the manner in which teachers can be ill-prepared for the realities of urban school…

Aspiring teachers seeking licensure in New York State are required to prepare a portfolio of materials demonstrating their readiness to teach during their student teaching clinical experience, as per edTPA (a teacher performance assessment developed by Stanford University). This research considered how cooperating teachers in the student teaching…

The public education system in the U.S. has been under assault with the latest neoliberal education reforms. Those reforms are characterized by their antidemocratic and homogenizing assessment system, which reinforces a banking model of education. Such model goes against teachers and teaching, linguistic and cultural diversity and bilingual…

With the intent of informing music teacher education practices and developing more culturally responsive and relevant teachers, the purpose of this research was to explore pre-service music teachers' understandings of culture and diversity, and to examine the impact of a short-term cultural immersion field experience on pre-service music teachers'…

This sequential explanatory mixed methods study investigated 24 college and university syllabi for content consisting of multicultural education that used the framework for multicultural education devised by James A. Banks (2006). This framework was used to analyze data collected using descriptive statistics for quantitative phase one. The four…