Jon Clausen

Beginning Teachers’ Technology Use: First-Year Teacher Development and the Institutional Context’s Affect on New Teachers’ Instructional Technology Use with Students

Abstract This empirical research study addresses the issues of new teacher development and the role of the institutional context on new teachers’ instructional technology use. The study examines two first year teachers, their development during their initial year of classroom experience, and how the institutional context they entered affected their instructional decisions about technology use with students. Results underscore the challenges many beginning teachers face and how those challenges affect instructional decisions of beginning teachers. Results also stress the importance of the institutional context in valuing beginning teachers’ instructional decisions about technology use with students.

Loving out Loud: Community Mentors, Teacher Candidates, and Transformational Learning through a Pedagogy of Care and Connection.

Although there has been significant research examining the practice of culturally responsive teaching, little empirical work to date has examined the role that community-engaged, teacher preparation models play in shaping prospective teachers’ orientation toward cultural responsiveness. This study of 60 preservice teacher candidates enrolled in a program of community-engaged teacher preparation at a midsized Midwestern public university specifically examined the ways in which caring relationships between preservice teachers and volunteer community mentors scaffolded candidates’ contextualized understanding of culture, community, and identity of children and families. Findings provide evidence that as candidates experience authentic caring within the space of supportive relationships, they emerge equipped to care in more authentic, culturally responsive ways for their students.