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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/68749
Description
Title
Growth of a Teacher in a Communication Project
Author(s)
Kau, Ching-Ven James
Issue Date
1981
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Teacher Training
Abstract
This dissertation studies the professional and overall growth of a primary grade teacher, Emily, while she was involved in an exploratory in-service teacher education project--the Mini-CAMP Project--with the author over a period of 2 1/2 years. This study in turn leads to an examination of the fundamental meaning of growth in a person, and of the nature of the interaction, viz., authentic communication carried by a true commitment to treat the other as equals--which, in the project, made Emily's growth possible.
Part I describes the origin of this study in detail and discusses methodological issues. Part II of the dissertation describes Emily's different levels of understanding, performance, and her attitudes toward math teaching, as well as her interactions weith the so-called "resource persons," at each stage of her development. This information amounts to an empirical account of the content and context of Emily's professional growth in math teaching.
The meaning of this growth is then examined further in Part III, in terms of some genral perspectives on professional development; viz., the context of the classroom ecology, the practitioner culture, the acculturation of two professional cultures, and the involvement of the total person. This examination is based on the investigator's intiation experience into Emily's classroom, and uses the method of reconstruction in retrospective consciousness. That is, it (1) reviews the different perspectives, which the participants had of a particular episode or issue in various later contexts at different times, and (2) it reports the author's own various states of consciousness concerning the same phenomenon or issue from different perspectives and/or at different times.
It was found that (1) Emily's professional growth is part of her overall growth experience, and (2) such overall growth seems to be facilitated by the particular communication efforts in the Mini-CAMP Project (detailed results are summarized in Section One of Chapter Ten). A further examination (in Section Two of Chapter Ten) reveals that the essence of such communication is an ethical commitment to human equality, evidenced by authentic person-to-person communication.
Finally, a person-centered approach to in-service teacher education is proposed as an alternative program to present practices. One of the practical steps of such a program would be to surrender the power of teacher educators, which is associated with the facades of knower, director, changer, etc., to the teachers.
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