Sueanne E. McKinney

Developing Teachers for High-Poverty Schools The Role of the Internship Experience

This investigation sought to determine if there was a difference in the development of effective urban teacher characteristics after completing a traditional internship experience or a Professional Development School internship experience. The Urban Teacher Selection Interview was used to assess 10 characteristics including persistence, value of childrens learning, putting ideas into practice, approach to at-risk students, professional/personal orientation to students, the bureaucracy, fallibility, teacher success, student success, and planning and organization. Assessments were completed before and after subjects participated in urban internships. Pre- and posttest scores were compared using descriptive statistics and a paired-samples t test. Results communicated no significant difference between pre- and posttest scores when student interns completed a traditional or Professional Development School internship experience. This suggests that although the internship experience is often viewed as the capstone experience of teacher preparation programs, short-term experiences do not adequately prepare teacher candidates for urban school teaching.

Embracing the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics: An Inquiry into the Pedagogical and Instructional Practices of Mathematics Teachers in High-Poverty Middle Schools.

Principles and Standards for School Mathematics outlines essential features crucial to teaching mathematics so that all students have opportunities to learn mathematics content with conceptual understanding. Although the document outlines extensive goals for the teaching and learning of mathematics, the majority of classrooms fall short in its implementation, especially high-poverty middle schools. Therefore, the authors investigated the mathematics pedagogical and instructional skills of sixty-four in-service teachers who teach in high-poverty middle schools (grades six through eight). The results indicated that although the subjects are implementing a variety of practices, lecture, drill and practice, and teacher-directed instruction continue to dominate many high-poverty classrooms.

Investigating Estimation: Influences of Time and Confidence of Urban Middle School Students

This study sought to determine the estimation processes used by 10 urban middle school students for solving computational estimation problems, and if there was a difference in the estimation processes utilized for straight computation and application problems. An adapted model of the Accessing Computational Estimation Test (ACE) was used to determine the estimation strategies employed by the subjects within timed and un-timed settings. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data. The timed ACE tests were administered using an interview format and included computation and application problems. The findings indicated that there were no differences in estimation processes for straight computation and application problems; however, students performed better on timed tests for application problems.