Teacher-learning researcher receives early career honor

Diane Yendol-Hoppey, assistant professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at the College of Education, received the 2006 Kappa Delta Pi/AERA Early Career Award recently at the American Educational Research Association’s national meeting in San Francisco.
In her studies, Yendol-Hoppey challenges the belief that teaching can be standardized and, instead, recognizes the complexity of teaching and the process of learning how to teach.
 
“Rather than deliver quick-fix solutions that might meet a short-term goal but leave the child without access to a full education, teachers need to develop an elaborate toolbox of instructional tools,” Yendol-Hoppey said. “Only by helping teachers develop the toolbox and systematically study their teaching can they determine the effects of their instructional approach on children in their classroom.”

“This is an entirely different approach than the type of instruction and teacher learning evolving from today’s high-stakes accountability pressures.”

Yendol-Hoppey’s studies explored how different learning contexts and the diverse needs of students—along with such factors as demographic differences in schools—can affect teacher learning and teacher leadership related to instructional decision-making and school improvement.

Yendol-Hoppey now is investigating how teachers learn about the complexity of teaching and how to attend to the needs of diverse students within alternative pathways to teaching including alternative certification, online programs and professional development schools.

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Writer
Chan Tran, ctran@ufl.edu, 352-392-0726, ext. 246