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Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations, often due to the emotional investment of managing and caring for a classroom of students. In addition to environmental stressors, teacher wellbeing is impacted by relationships with students. While the relation between challenging student behaviors and adverse outcomes for both teachers and students is well-established, less is known about teachers' mental representations and perceptions of challenging behaviors. This study examines preschool teachers' perceptions and interpretations of challenging student behaviors through a reflective writing exercise. Eight Head Start teachers provided reflections on their relationship with a specific student displaying challenging behavior. Through content analysis, we found four distinct themes: balance, malleability, valence, and relational flexibility. Taken together, these themes suggest that, while all teachers' mental representations of their relationship with students are impacted by the challenging behavior, their perceptions of the types of behaviors identified as challenging, the attribution of the challenging behavior, the tone used to describe the relationship, and the beliefs around sources of and solutions for the challenging behavior, vary considerably. By gaining a deeper understanding of teachers' perceptions of their relationships with students displaying challenging behaviors through reflective writing, these findings provide the groundwork for interventions capable of improving overall classroom interaction quality, teacher wellbeing, and student learning and development.

An open classroom climate, one where diverse opinions and discussion of social and political issues are welcome, promotes civic development among youth and fosters critical consciousness. Critical consciousness, defined as the capacity to recognize societal inequity along with the motivation and action taken to challenge such inequity and promote positive social change, also engenders civic development and engagement. Advancements in critical consciousness measurement and changes in the sociopolitical climate over the past two decades suggest the need to reexamine the effects of open classroom climate on critical consciousness. This paper explores the extent to which an open classroom climate is associated with critical consciousness in a contemporary, diverse sample of preadolescent and adolescent youth (n = 4,901, M[subscript age] = 14.69). Results suggest open classroom climate is linked with the reflection, motivation, and action dimensions of critical consciousness. Implications for promoting an open classroom climate and critical consciousness are discussed.

Teachers' expectations of student capabilities can meaningfully affect future achievement. However, the consistency of teachers' expectations over time and their differential impact by student gender and ethnicity have not been thoroughly investigated in the context of students' reading achievement. The current study investigates the longitudinal influence of teacher expectancy effects on student achievement through a novel measurement approach that considers classroom context while drawing on cognitive assessments and teacher ratings collected through the large, nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten data set (N = 8,503 students). Results of the autoregressive cross-lagged models with five time points between kindergarten and eighth grade indicate teachers' expectations of students' reading achievement are not significantly associated from one time point to the next, though their effects increase over time. Significant differences in longitudinal expectancy effects based on student gender and ethnicity were not found. Implications for teaching practice based on these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed methods study examines the impact of online professional development on preschool teachers' self-efficacy, burnout, and stress. Participating teachers (n = 89) were randomly assigned into four groups: one of three treatment conditions (course-only, conference, reflective writing) or a control group. All treatment conditions received a 14-week online course on teacher-child interactions, which included regular homework assignments and community discussion boards. The conference and reflective writing conditions received additional supports. Regression analyses revealed that teachers who were in the course-only treatment condition had decreased self-efficacy and increased emotional exhaustion, a component of burnout, relative to the control group. However, teachers in the conference and reflective writing conditions did not experience such negative effects. Qualitative analyses suggest that all teachers tended to focus on personal challenges within the course, but teachers who had access to conference and reflective writing supports benefited from the availability of emotional outlets and/or opportunities for feedback.

With teacher turnover costing the U.S. as much as $7 billion per year (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2007), and the continuing demand for qualified teachers, it is imperative for schools to increase retention rates among their faculty (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). Retention efforts are especially important among novice teachers, those who are in the first five years of their teaching career, because they leave the profession at higher rates than their more experienced counterparts (Keigher, 2010; Ingersoll, 2003). In the more challenging early years of teaching, novice teachers with a higher sense of teacher self-efficacy are more likely to persist and stay in the profession (Knobloch & Whittington, 2002). This suggests the importance of self-efficacy as a target for growth during teacher preparation, but little is known about how teacher self-efficacy develops in those who are just starting their careers. Traditionally, self-efficacy has been conceived not as a stable trait, but as a situationally bound construct based on information which is being drawn from a particular context (Bandura, 1986). Among new teachers who have spent little time in the classroom, self-efficacy is likely driven by a combination of factors, including experiences and skills in the classroom, knowledge of content and pedagogy, attitudes, and personal dispositions (Bandura, 1997; Gist & Mitchell, 1992; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). This study will address the gap which exists in the current understanding of pre-service teachers' self-efficacy development by examining the joint contribution of pre-service teachers' observed performance during student teaching, and more stable personal features of their personality and beliefs about how children learn, to their teacher self-efficacy upon completion of a teacher preparation program. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

This study examined how overall quality and within-day consistency in fifth graders' teacher-student interactions related to feelings about, engagement, and academic performance in school. Participants were 956 children in a national study. Students who experienced higher quality interactions reported more positive feelings about school, were more engaged, performed better in math and reading, and had more closeness and less conflict with teachers. Independent of overall interaction quality, students who experienced less consistency in their interactions with teachers, whether it was with the same teacher or across teachers, were less engaged and had more teacher-reported conflict. Findings emphasize the separate contributions of both high quality and consistency of teacher-student interactions to students' success.

The success of new pedagogies depends on teachers' beliefs about what they entail, and the promises and challenges they hold. This study uses a mixed-methods approach to understand the beliefs of early childhood teachers who attended a professional development conference on STEAM teaching, an emerging approach that combine STEM disciplines and the arts through problem-based learning to engage students and push deep thinking. Data from a post-conference survey (N = 41) and follow-up interviews (N = 4) showed teachers varied in their beliefs about STEAM and the supports they needed to implement it successfully. Implications for teacher education are discussed.

Teacher reflection has been at the core of teacher development efforts for almost 100 years, yet inconsistency in the literature results from a lack of clarity on how reflection is conceptualized--from its purpose to processes, and how they relate to refining teacher practice. This article draws from research in cognitive science to explain how engaging in an ongoing reflection approach, focused on observations of real classrooms, can help teachers refine their responses to classroom situations over time. The authors also provide examples of this reflective approach from an online course for early childhood teachers focused on improving teacher--child interactions in the classroom.

The current study uses a large, nationally representative data set and a new method for computing teacher expectations to better understand the developmental effect of mathematics teacher expectations on future student achievement. The study utilizes autoregressive cross-lagged models with 5 time points between kindergarten and 8th grade as well as multigroup modeling to examine group differences in teacher expectancy effects on achievement for girls and minority students. Results indicate that students' experiences with teacher expectations from 1 time point to the next are not significantly associated with one another, but their association with future student achievement grows over time. Teacher expectancy effects in mathematics are stronger for White girls, minority girls, and minority boys than they are for White boys. Implications for teaching are discussed.

STEAM, where the "A" represents arts and humanities, is considered a transdisciplinary learning process that has the potential to increase diverse participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. However, a well-defined conceptual model that clearly articulates essential components of the STEAM approach is needed to conduct empirical research on STEAM's efficacy--in particular, the teaching content that should be considered when enacting STEAM teaching practices. This paper proposes a conceptual model of STEAM, providing educators with the opportunity to teach effectively using transdisciplinary inquiry. The instructional content domain of the model includes problem-based delivery, discipline integration, and problem-solving skills.

Contemporary education reforms focus on assessing teachers' performance and developing selection mechanisms for hiring effective teachers. Tools that enable the prediction of teachers' classroom performance promote schools' ability to hire teachers more likely to be successful in the classroom. In addition, these assessment tools can be used for teacher training and preparation that contributes to improved student performance. This article summarizes the theoretical and empirical support for a direct assessment of teachers' skill in detecting and identifying effective classroom interactions--the Video Assessment of Interaction and Learning (VAIL). Findings from a study of 270 preschool teachers suggest that the VAIL reliably measures teachers' interaction detection and identification skills. Teachers who can accurately detect effective interactions on video exemplars tend to have more years of education and display more effective interactions with the students in their classroom. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications for teacher selection, preparation, and training.