Date of Award

2006-5

Degree Name

EdD Doctor of Education

Dissertation Committee

Nancy Farnan; Donna Barnes; Pamela Ross

Keywords

Education, Highly qualified, Profession, Teachers

Abstract

This qualitative study presents the perspectives of current, full time Kindergarten through twelfth grade classroom instructors regarding how they define a "highly qualified" teacher for themselves and their profession. The investigator collected survey, focus group, and interview data by soliciting responses from 467 teachers in a large urban district.

The theoretical basis for this study builds on the work of Sanders, Rivers and Collins, as well as that of Darling-Hammond that has shown a positive correlation between teacher quality and student achievement. Additionally, in the last decade there has been growing concern that teachers become increasingly involved in research about teaching as proposed by Lind, Little, and Wenglinsky in various publications. Teachers' narratives are needed in the corpus of research on teaching efficacy and to identify those attributes of "highly qualified" practitioners. The aim of this study is to bring teachers' voices forward in research regarding how quality is defined in their profession.

Document Type

Dissertation: USD Users Only

Department

Education

Share

COinS