Kim H. Song

Urban teachers'beliefs on teaching, learning, and students : A pilot study in the United States of America

Less qualified urban teachers may contribute to the achievement gap between urban and nonurban students. A pilot study is conducted in an urban teacher education institution to examine teachers’ beliefs in teaching, learning, and students. The objectives are to describe teachers’ beliefs of the 28 pre-service and 26 in-service teachers in general and to investigate differences in their beliefs on a 26-item survey. Mean scores and standard deviations are used to describe teachers’ beliefs, and a t test is used to examine the differences. The results from the urban pre-service and in-service teachers in this study do not support characteristics of culturally relevant teachers to meet urban students’ needs.

A conceptual model of assessing teaching performance and intellectual development of teacher candidates: a pilot study in the US

A conceptual model was developed in an urban undergraduate education institution in the US to assess teaching performance and intellectual development levels of teacher candidates. Danielsons framework of teaching performance and Perrys pattern of intellectual and ethical development were used for developing a conceptual model. A pilot study was conducted to 282 urban teacher candidates based on the conceptual model to assess their teaching performance and the intellectual development levels. The results from Danielsons and Perrys rubrics showed that the higher students moved to in their teacher education program, the more proficient their teaching performance became and the higher intellectual and ethical development became. Within each of the teaching performance domains and of the intellectual patterns, individual competency patterns varied. This conceptual model may hold promise as a measure of assessing teacher candidates’ growth through their performance-based artifacts rather than through the test scores.

Reflective professional development for urban teachers through videotaping and guided assessment

As a part of the United States Department of Education Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants (TQE) program, a professional development project was conducted to support selected urban teachers from a Professional Development School to think reflectively about their teaching and learning. The 24 survey items were developed based on the three domains of Danielson’s teaching practice. Using the survey, the eight participating teachers and 15 external reviewers were asked to assess the videotaped teaching performances three times. The main goal of the study was to examine if the participants would improve their reflective thinking skills using structured reflective tools, i.e. videotaping, the assessment rubrics, reflective writing guidelines, coaching and the reflective practice model. In addition the study examined if there were any significant differences in the three ratings. The results indicated that several items showed the significances among the ratings, and half of the participants evolved to the stage of evaluation, creating new schemata.