Award Date

1-1-2003

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Curriculum and Instruction

First Committee Member

Rebecca Mills

Number of Pages

155

Abstract

Over the past 150 years teacher education has continually been accepted as a necessity for those charged with instructing the young, especially when paired with the common school movement. If all school-aged children were to be in classrooms it followed that teachers trained in educating students needed to be available. As school populations exploded from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, most communities called for teachers in increasing numbers. Such is an example of the link between societal factors and the education of teachers. The political, historic, and societal foundations on which the practice of teacher education is grounded are the focus of this inquiry; This study identifies the role that societal contexts play in how classroom teachers perceive their teacher education and explores whether teachers perceive a pattern linking history, politics, societal development, and the evolution of the instruction of teachers. Through interviews with current and former teachers who were trained as classroom teachers, this study attempts to establish, through an analysis of their personal reflection, the social and historic factors that influenced teacher education programs in the 1980s; Specifically, this study investigates the questions of what experiences and coursework inform the subject's perceptions of their teacher education programs, and in what way(s) do historic, political, and/or social events intersect with what has been taught in teacher education curricula. The study uses the narrative responses of participants in conjunction with researcher constructed timelines of historic and social data in the Critical Praxis Inquiry Process (CPIP), a research tool that allows the convergence or divergence of participant's perceptions with other research data to assess what is understood by the participants about possible links between the political and social factors that effect teacher education; The study finds that while in their teacher education programs, participants were focused on the more vocational aspects of their education and did not voice an understanding of a linkage between political and social forces and their teacher education. Furthermore, participants shared similar opinions of teacher preparation as those noted in previous scholarly research.

Keywords

Education; Factors; Narrative; Perceptions; Societal; Societal Factors; Teachers; Teacher Education

Controlled Subject

Teachers--Training of

File Format

pdf

File Size

4853.76 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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Rights

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