Syllabus

Master of Science in Education

EDU 600 Teacher as Leader – Spring A 2016

Credits - 3

Description

This online course respects your significant professional knowledge based upon your classroom experiences. Often though, teachers are unable to share that knowledge with others and collaborate to address significant concerns as well as connect educational research to their practice thereby providing leadership for improvement in their school. This course’s goals are to facilitate your doing just that. This course will enhance your classroom-based experiences by linking those experiences with professional research skills. Designed to foster best practices, the course structure supports acquiring knowledge, skills and cohort experiences that will continue to be threaded through several MSEd courses. Teachers will learn how to locate and critically review a wide range of professional resources. Teachers will take significant steps toward becoming teacher leaders by combining their classroom based knowledge, articulating that knowledge from a research-based framework, successfully navigating school cultures, and learning from their seasoned peers. Exposure to this information will instill in teachers an understanding of their leadership potential and responsibilities in the school setting.

Materials

Learning Objectives and Outcomes

The mission of the Department of Education is to develop–through research, service, and innovative teaching–reflective teachers and school leaders who are competent and caring lifelong learners committed to innovative and effective practices. In addition, four guiding principles are used in development and delivery of all programs and courses (see Student Handbook for more details):

• Rigorous mind

• Compassionate heart

• Reflective stance

• Competent demonstration

We have also aligned our courses with the Maine Teacher Certification Standards (MITSC) and the ISLLC Standards for School Leaders (Interstate Standards for School Leaders).  Given this backdrop, the following objectives have been identified for EDU 600 and matched to the Department’s guiding principles and the MITSC and ISLLC standards.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

1. Search and locate professional education resources [competent demonstration; [Maine Standard 1; ISLLC Standard 1]
2. Articulate key research results and instructional implications regarding: cognitive processes, non-linguistic representations, summarizing and note taking, motivation to learn, and homework [rigorous of mind, competent demonstration; [Maine Standard 4;ISLLC Standard 2]
3. Relate and apply research results to their own classroom, building or district [rigorous of mind, reflective stance, competent demonstration; [Maine Standard 1; ISLLC Standard 2]
4. Describe idealized Professional Learning Community (PLC) models [rigorous of mind, compassionate of heart; [Maine Standard 1; ISLLC Standard 1]
5. Articulate and analyze PLC models to their own school building or district. [rigorous of mind, reflective stance; [Maine Standard 1; ISLLC Standards 1,2]
6. Model and apply the National Educational Technology Standards for Students; [Maine Standard 11]

The MSEd program enacts the mission listed above by recognizing that experienced teachers and administrators provide rich resources for professional development. Online learning provides a unique opportunity for the development of a community of learners. Faculty and students alike are devoted to learning through collaboration in research and service within the degree program and their professional environment.

Assignments

• Throughout the term, class and group discussion boards provide an opportunity for students to discuss and process the material with classmates

• Week 1 APA Quiz – Throughout the MSE program, you are are required to adhere to APA style/format for all discussions and written assignments. This quiz will give you an opportunity to check your understanding of APA style/format and review the APA Publication manual. Note: You can take the quiz as many times as you wish until a perfect score (5) is achieved.

• Week 2 Written Assignment: Choose one of the following topics:

  • Choice One: After reading Chapter 8 in your Classroom Instruction that Works text, select one of the four strategies: comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, or creating analogies. Describe a recent teaching situation when you used with your students that was a similar format as Dean et al. (2012). For example, you might provide a description and explanation of how you taught the similarities and differences skill. Was it more teacher-directed or student-directed? Critique how the students responded with an emphasis on their challenges and how you may address this learning experience differently in the future.

  • Choice Two: After reading Chapter 5 in your Classroom Instruction that Works text, plan and conduct a lesson that requires a graphic organizer for your students. Include the graphic organizer in your paper (copy/paste), and describe how you introduced and presented the information and how you taught the students to use the organizer. Will you use it in the future? Did it help some students more than others? If yes, why do you think it helped those particular students and not others?

• Week 3 Self-Evaluation: After reviewing the Grading Rubric for discussion postings located within the course syllabus, please provide answers to the following questions – a “self reflection” exercise based on your own discussion participation in Weeks 1, 2, and 3.

• Did you participate in the discussion by posting “early” in the discussion and did you participate “over the duration of each part of the discussion?”

  • Look over your initial posts and replies – did they connect to the reading and/or to your own experiences? 

  • Did you provide “support” from references in your posts and were they cited correctly according to APA style? 

  • Did your posts “add to the discussion” by extending or stimulating the conversation or by providing additional insight to the discussion?

Week 4 Written Assignment: Write a 1-2 page response to one of the prompts below.

• Choice One: Chapter 6 in our Classroom Instruction That Works text was “filled” with many suggested classroom strategies/practices for teaching summarizing. In your experience, is it helpful for students to be taught these strategies? Please justify your answer and also evaluate whether all the interventions should be used (i.e. the Rule-Based Strategy, the 6 types of Summary Frames, and Reciprocal Teaching). If yes, why? If no, which ones should be taught and which should be eliminated and why?
• Choice Two: Research shows that homework needs to be relevant and not seen as “busy work.” It also should reinforce learning. Examine your classroom expectations, homework philosophy and practice. Are they in line with Dean et al. (2012) theories of best practices? What changes would you suggest making that will be more in line with Dean et al. (2012)? How would you communicate the changes to parents; or, if you feel no revision is necessary, how have you communicated effectively to parents and do you see that they support your policies? 

Evaluate how effective your methods are and how you attend to different cultural or demographic needs of your students. What successes have you had? What struggles are you still facing?

• Week 5 IRP: Part I – 

  1. Include your title on your cover page.

  2. Describe the topic of your study in one paragraph of 50 words or fewer.

  3. Write three (3) focus questions that motivated you to choose the topic of your project.

  4. Describe your research methodology. What strategy or procedure did you use to find your resources? Provide enough detail so that your search strategy/procedure can be replicated. In your description, describe the search terms that you used, the date(s) of search(es), and the database sources (ERIC/EBSCO, ProQuest, Google Scholar, etc.) that you used.

  5. Locate and read five (5) articles that are relevant to your topic and research questions. Make sure to choose articles that have “full text” availability. Then copy/paste the abstracts of those articles into a Word. Include a separate reference list (in proper APA style/format) at the end of your document,

  6. Submit items # 1 through #5, Part I, The Research, of your IRP’s Professional Study, as a single Word file.  I encourage you to save this element of your IRP paper to your Google site portfolio.

• Week 6 Written Assignment: 

  (1) Summarize the Searby & Shaddix article and explain why you think it was successful. 

  (2) How would you assess your current leadership skills based upon the discussion in the article? 

  (3) What steps could you take to improve your own leadership qualities? 

  (4) Describe the leadership climate at your school and compare it to the one discussed in the article. 

  (5) What steps could you take to improve the leadership climate at your school? 

• Week 7 Written Assignment: Respond to one of the following three choices:

  • What does your school have in place for those students who are at risk of failure? When sharing your program/initiative, please provide details about the professional staff involved in each program/initiative, how students are identified, how progress is measured, the leadership involved in the program/initiative, and the results that you have seen with those programs (consider test scores, attendance, discipline referrals, NCLB/AYP, etc.). Consider Chapter 10 in your Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work text, as you discuss how a true PLC might address the problems with at risk students in your school? How will you share your ideas with your school’s leadership?

  • Comment on how the role of the individual teacher (Chapter 11) and the role of the principal (Chapter 12) can play a “key part” in a school becoming a true PLC. Be sure to compare the roles as they exist now in your school, and then propose recommendations for change as DuFour et al. (2008) might suggest.

  • Share the role that parents currently play in your school: how they are informed about classroom/school functions and programs, how they are encouraged to be an active part of your school, what committees on which they currently serve, what forums are present for discussing parent concerns, how technology has helped with parent communications, and how parents are informed about the research that is available to them concerning their school and district. Once that is done, what suggestions (Chapter 14) are you prepared to bring to your leadership team to encourage more meaningful parental involvement? Be sure to include strategies/programs/suggestions that would include community members without children in school – remembering that they are taxpayers as well.

• Week 8 IRP: Part II – Write a literature review that integrates the key findings that you have read from the five articles.  The literature review should have an introduction that provides an overview of the paper, a review of articles and a conclusion. Include your reference page from the Part I assignment, making sure that it matches your citations. APA format should be used throughout the paper. Papers should be between 1200-1800 words in length.   Students are encouraged to save this final IRP Literature Review paper to their web portfolios.

Grading Policy

Your grade in this course will be determined by the following criteria:

Grade Breakdown

Assignment	Point Value	Percentage of Grade
4 Written Assignments	4X10 points each	40%
6 Threaded Discussions: 3 Class; 3 Group	6X5 points each	30%
Week Three Threaded Group Discussion	2 points	2%
Self-Evaluation	3 points	3%
Part I Independent Research Project (Research Summary)	10 points	10%
Part II Independent Research Project (Literature Review)	10 points	10%
Quiz on APA Style/Format	5 points	5%
Total:	100 points	100%

Grade Scale

Grade	Points Grade	Point Average (GPA)
A	94 – 100%	4.00
A-	90 – 93%	3.75
B+	87 – 89%	3.50
B	84 – 86%	3.00
B-	80 – 83%	2.75
C+	77 – 79%	2.50
C	74 – 76%	2.00
C-	70 – 73%	1.75
D	64 – 69%	1.00
F	00 – 63%	0.00