Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

The Use Of Argumentation In Socio-Scientific Issues: Enhancing Evolutionary Biology Instruction, Heath R. Marchand

Education and Human Development Master's Theses

With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), further emphasis in science education is being placed on preparing students to become more informed voters regarding social, ethical, economic and political topics that affect contemporary society. Parallel to this shift is a stronger emphasis on integrating evolutionary theory as a unifying concept in the biological sciences. Given that evolution is one of the aforementioned topics commonly discussed and debated about in social and political arenas, ensuring that instruction provides students from all backgrounds a comprehensive understanding of its principals is becoming increasingly important in contemporary science education. Chapter II ...

Using Game-Based Learning To Foster Critical Thinking In Student Discourse, Marc I. Cicchino

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Previous research indicates the importance of student discourse in the construction of knowledge and the fostering of critical thinking skills, especially in the field of problem-based learning (PBL). Further, a growing body of research on game-based learning (GBL) draws parallels between playing certain types of games and the solving of ill-structured problems, citing similar conditions for learning (student centered, small student groups, teachers as facilitators, problems as vehicles for development), and similar learning outcomes (communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration) as PBL. However, there is a gap in understanding how GBL affects critical thinking as embodied by student discourse when implemented ...

A Neoliberal Critique: Conceptualizing The Purpose Of School, Jennifer Desaxe

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

Throughout this manuscript, I discuss the current trend of neoliberalism, privatization, and deregulation within our educational communities and public schools. Throughout this analysis, I examine the ways in which many neoliberal policies aim to takeover public education through such consequences as false meritocracy, high stakes testing, and drastic funding inequities. I argue that we must seek to understand and challenge such policies in order to speak out against ideologies and “reform” movements that frame the purpose of schooling in ways that go against conceptualizing and actualizing it in a democratic and just manner.

What I Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda Learned In Science Class”: Black American Boys’ Narratives Of Past Science Teachers And Visions For A Culturally Responsive Science Teacher, Althea Hoard

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This study follows three Black American, high school boys who participated in a “Men in STEM” book club in an urban school in New York City. Through narrative analysis, the boys describe their vision for a culturally responsive science teacher and connections are made between the boys’ experiences with science teachers and interest in STEM careers. 20 10^th grade Black American boys joined the “Men in STEM” book club and three participants are highlighted due to their differing interests in pursuing a STEM major in college. By triangulation of semi-structured interviews, two open-ended questionnaires, and researcher field notes, four ...

White Privilege And Social Studies Pre-Service Teachers, Kristal Curry

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This article explores the dynamic of the Silenced Dialogue within a graduate-level, teacher preparation diversity course by analyzing student-created reflections about Peggy McIntosh’s article regarding White privilege. The paper compares themes that emerged in White vs. Black student reflections, male vs. female student reflections, and those of students preparing to teach social studies compared to those preparing to teach in other disciplines available in the program. Social studies candidates had complex responses to race. They seemed to feel comfortable with the topic, but were also world-weary and likely to dismiss current racism as being less than it used to ...

Faculty Viewpoints On Teaching Quantway®, Heather Howington, Thomas Hartfield, Cinnamon Hillyard

Numeracy

Quantway is a quantitative reasoning-based pathway for developmental math that has been developed as an alternative to the traditional remedial algebra sequence. To explore the experiences of faculty involved with Quantway, we interviewed eight individuals who have taught the course in the past year to survey their attitudes and opinions about students in their classes, the materials and pedagogies in use, and the collegial interaction of networked faculty. Faculty were selected with the intention of gathering a broad set of opinions resulting from differences of location, experience, and other factors. In this paper, we summarize those interviews by identifying common ...

Quantitative Literacy And Co-Construction In A High School Math Course, Mark Russo

Numeracy

This article reports some of the key findings from a practitioner-action research study that analyzed the impact of co-construction on students’ quantitative literacy (QL) and attitudes towards mathematics. Co-construction is a process where students work alongside their teachers to plan units, lessons, and assessments, and this approach was chosen because of its potential to help students advocate for the specific mathematical contexts that would best develop their QL. This yearlong study took place in a public high school, with forty-five students in two different classes participating. Students formally contributed to the development of the course by completing written questionnaires and ...

Lessons Learned From A Research Data Management Pilot Course At An Academic Library, Jennifer Muilenburg, Mahria Lebow, Joanne Rich

Journal of eScience Librarianship

Setting and Objective:

From January-March 2014, three librarians from the University of Washington (UW) taught a course in research data management as a pilot for the New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum (NECDMC). The goals of the workshops were to a) pilot the NECDMC curriculum to see how effective it was as an out-of-the box solution for teaching research data management (RDM), and b) to gauge interest in an RDM class among certain UW student populations, and c) to teach UW’s first RDM workshop offered to non-librarians.

Design and Methods:

The NECDMC consists of 7 modules that can be ...

Building The New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum, Donna Kafel, Andrew T. Creamer, Elaine R. Martin

Journal of eScience Librarianship

The need for a curriculum designed for librarians to use for teaching STEM research data management skills to their constituents from diverse STEM disciplines has been widely identified. (Qin and D’Ignazio 2010). From 2012-2014, a collaborative group of New England librarians, led by a project team from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developed lecture notes, presentation slides, assignments, readings, and case studies for teaching research data management. The New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum (NECDMC) is unique in its flexibility; providing subject agnostic instructional materials in a modular format for teaching common data management best practices along with ...

Fusing Literacy And The Arts To Meet Common Core Standards, Justin Jackson

Education and Human Development Master's Theses

The literacy demands of current elementary students continues to increase through the use of state testing and Common Core State Standards while the time devoted to creative exploration suffers on the sidelines. As a way to bridge this increasing gap, educators may look towards new means of integrating literacy with the fine arts to produce a creative, fresh appearance to literacy instruction beyond that of traditional reading and writing instruction. The fine arts can serve either as literacy or as a component to a literacy lesson. This project researches the benefits of including the fine arts in some capacity to ...

Cap Writing: A Novel Technology Approach To Literacy With Reluctant Writers, Joy Barnes-Johnson

Joy Barnes-Johnson

CAP writing is a tiered approach to the writing process. Developed in part to address the needs of reluctant writers, it acknowledges learning style preferences that are oral in nature and attentive to cultural norms and traditions that are based in spoken word. CAP is a celebration of self in the process of writing. Evolving from a social capital—traditional—view of writing, this cultural capital perspective on writing is strengthened by apertures between micro-level, meso-level and macro-level being.

How Patient Educators Teach Students: “Giving A Face To A Story”, Natalie Hedge, Marsha A. Neville, Noralyn Davel Pickens

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Patient Educators are persons with specific pathologies that have participated in an education program in which they learn how to instruct students on physical examinations. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of graduate student experiences with Patient Educators during coursework on occupational therapy clinical internships. A phenomenological design was used to explore the lived experiences of students through a qualitative interview. As participants described their experiences with the Patient Educators, three primary themes emerged: (a) self-awareness, (b) confidence, and (c) empathy. The quotes from the transcriptions were organized into four sequential plot categories: (a) Before the ...

The Business Of Learning To Teach: A Critical Metaphor Analysis Of One Teacher's Journey, Lauren Gatti, Theresa Catalano

Lauren Gatti

This article analyzes the learning to teach process of one novice teacher, Rachael, enrolled in an Urban Teacher Residency (UTR) in Harbor City, United States. Building on Loh and Hu's (2014) scholarship on neoliberalism and novice teachers, we employ Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) to make visible the ways in which Rachael contends with conflicting frames of learning to teach--TEACHING IS A JOURNEY vs. TEACHING IS A BUSINESS--within her program. Rachael encounters three primary obstacles: programmatic incompatibility, pedagogical paralysis, and, ultimately, programmatic abandonment. The discussion explores the potential consequences of learning to teach in neoliberal contexts.

Critical Pedagogy In Classroom Discourse, Loukia K. Sarroub, Sabrina Quadros

Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education

The classroom is a unique discursive space for the enactment of critical pedagogy. In some ways, all classroom discourse is critical because it is inherently political, and at the heart of critical pedagogy is an implicit understanding that power is negotiated daily by teachers and students. Historically, critical pedagogy is rooted in schools of thought that have emphasized the individual and the self in relation and in contrast to society, sociocultural and ideological forces, and economic factors and social progress. In addressing conceptualizations in Orthodox Marxism (with Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim) in the mid-19th century and the ...

Effects Of Embedded Study-Skills Instruction On High School Students' Attitudes Toward Mathematics, Alberta Diahann Banks

Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The target school used embedded study skills in Algebra I classes to improve attitudes toward mathematics. The purpose of this sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study was to examine the effect of embedded study-skills instruction on students' attitudes toward mathematics. Metacognitive theory was used for this study's framework. Participants were 28 Grade 9 and 10 students who repeated Algebra I. Quantitative data from the Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory assessed students' pre- and post-instruction attitudes toward mathematics in 4 domains. Data were analyzed using 4 independent samples t tests for students who did and did not receive embedded instruction. Qualitative data were ...

Using Qualitative Research Methods To Assess The Degree Of Fit Between Teachers’ Reported Self-Efficacy Beliefs And Their Practical Knowledge During Teacher Education, Mark Wyatt

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Abstract: There is a need for qualitative research into teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs so that the relationship between these beliefs and other cognitions possessed by teachers, including their practical knowledge, can be better understood by teacher educators. Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs may need supporting if they seem too low or challenging if they seem too high. However, clear criteria are needed to facilitate assessment, together with the use of rigorous qualitative methods. This article explores these issues while reporting on research conducted in Oman into the cognitions of two in-service English language teachers. There is a focus on how qualitative case study ...

The Implementation Of Curriculum Mapping At A Private High School, Ellen E. Dutton

Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Using curriculum mapping to align the expected curriculum and the actual curriculum has been demonstrated as an effective approach for ensuring educational equity for all students. To improve student achievement, a private high school in the Midwest implemented curriculum mapping to better align curriculum and eliminate gaps and repetition between and within grade levels. The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine fundamental implementation strategies for the mapping process and teachers' and administrators' perceptions of those strategies. The theoretical framework was based on change theory. Data were collected from 10 participants through individual interviews and observations. Teachers and administrators ...

Sustainability In The Curriculum And Teaching Of Economics: Transforming Introductory Macroeconomics, Madhavi Venkatesan

Economics Faculty Publications

Present models of economic growth primarily focus on the role of expenditures as captured in the commonly cited economic indicator, gross domestic product (GDP), where GDP is defined as the sum of final goods and services sold within a country’s natural borders. Noting that a country’s expenditures are referred to as “aggregate expenditures” and that the majority of spending is specific to consumption or consumer spending, especially in the United States where this spending category is nearly two-thirds of annual GDP (other expenditure categories for GDP include investment spending, government spending and foreign spending as proxied by net ...

An Investigation Of Teacher Librarians' Use Of Interactive Whiteboard Technology For Literacy Instruction, Judith Carroll Stanton

Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although school systems have made investments in technology with the intention of raising student scores on state and national tests, improvements in student achievement have not always followed. The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher librarians' use of interactive whiteboards to improve student literacy. This qualitative case study was guided by the theory of social constructivism, wherein individuals learn through interaction with peers and knowledgeable others. The research questions were focused on how teacher librarians integrated multi-literacies and technological skills into pedagogical goals. Data were collected from a 4-member focus group interview, a questionnaire delivered to a subset ...

The Social Learning Agenda - Briefing Paper - For All Party Parliamentary Group For Children, Sam Frankel, John Fowler

Sam Frankel

The Social Learning Agenda invites schools to invest in children as social learners through 5 key areas of attention, ethos, community, lead, speak and act. This briefing paper outlines the agenda and reflects briefly on some of its impact so far.