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Independently Innovative: Teachers And Change In Successful Schools, Mary Halpin Carter

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores teachers' perceptions of school change and leadership. The study is guided by the question: In an innovative independent school, how do teachers perceive deliberate change efforts and relate to the leaders who lead them. Other issues considered are the role of school culture, professional development and institutional goals in an effective change process. This research is distinctive in that it examines school change from the teachers' perspective and was conducted in a school that had previously demonstrated positive growth. The result is a qualitative, case study of one exemplary, independent school.

In the summer and fall of …

Stories Worth Telling: How One School Navigates Tensions Between Innovation And Standards, Alison Ann Rheingold

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the cultural practice of assessment at King Middle School, a grades 6--8 school in Portland, Maine. I trace this school's reform efforts over 23 years, within the current development of school-wide practices over time, in relation to making work public.

I used a sociocultural framework, which allowed for an examination of the situation-as-a-whole, to see learning as distributed among people, time and objects, and to view artifacts of student work as boundary objects ---sites of negotiation among people from different, but related, social worlds. A sociocultural perspective also allowed for an expansive notion of assessment that included …

Artifact-Based Reflective Interviews For Identifying Pragmatic Epistemological Resources, Christopher Walden Shubert

Doctoral Dissertations

Physics Education Research studies the science of teaching and learning physics. The process of student learning is complex, and the factors that affect it are numerous. Describing students' understanding of physics knowledge and reasoning is the basis for much productive research; however, such research fails to account for certain types of student learning difficulties. In this dissertation, I explore one source of student difficulty: personal epistemology, students' ideas about knowledge and knowing.

Epistemology traditionally answers three questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge created? And, how do we know what we know? An individual's responses to these questions can affect …

"I Remember When You Taught Me That!" Developmental And Gender Differences In Children's Episodic Memories Of Learning Events During The Early School Years, Rhyannon H. Bemis

Doctoral Dissertations

The study presented in this dissertation was designed to investigate young children's ability to accurately recall episodic (i.e., specific-one-moment-in-time) memories of learning events and whether this ability was related to another metacognitive skill, source monitoring. Further, the study investigated possible gender differences in the ability to recall learning events. Sixty children, ages four to six years, participated in two staged learning events about two novel topics, the Aleutian Islands and the visual system. Following a delay, children were interviewed and asked both general factual knowledge questions and questions about the target material learned in the staged events. Children were asked …

Proof And Reasoning In An Inquiry-Oriented Class: The Impact Of Classroom Discourse, Susan D. Generazzo

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decade, mathematics educators and researchers have become increasingly aware of the impact of social interactions on students' learning (NCTM, 2000; Bowers & Nickerson, 2001; Forman, 2003). Current research indicates that the classroom environment, including the activities and discussions that take place, can have a significant effect on the ways students make sense of mathematical concepts (Yackel, 2001). Understanding mathematics involves knowing how to make sense of key concepts through the processes of reasoning and justification. Educators and researchers agree on the importance of providing students with opportunities in class to explore, conjecture, and prove in order to …

Three Elements Of Self-Regulated Learning: Metacognitive Functioning, Self-Efficacy, And Study Behavior, Catherine E. Overson

Doctoral Dissertations

Individuals' metacognitive insight regarding their own performances -- what people think they know about what they know -- is often flawed. Students' metacognitive functioning was examined in two studies. In Study 1, exam performance estimates compared with actual scores were assessed across three in-class exams. Results demonstrated a systematic tendency for lower performers to overestimate their exam performances. Top performers underestimated their performance. In Study 2, an incentive to be as accurate as possible in exam performance estimations ($50 gift card) did not reduce estimation miscalculations for either bottom or top performers.

In Study 1, higher levels of students' self-efficacy …

Linking Goals To Outcomes: Exploring Students' Achievement Goals, Strategy Use, And Standards Of Success For Learning, Kirsten Nerissa Koritz

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored stability in achievement goals and learning behaviors within a two-part learning project. Based on previous literature exploring stability in achievement goal orientation, it was hypothesized that students' goals and self-efficacy would show evidence of change within and between the two task sessions. This was tested through a series of self-report surveys. Literature on the relationship between achievement goals and reading strategies showed that mastery oriented students used more reading strategies than performance oriented students. This was tested by imposing a performance oriented measure on one half of the participants. Data was analyzed with quantitative methods. Findings from …

Preschool Teachers' Beliefs And Practices: Emergent Literacy In Inclusive Preschools, Leigh Rohde

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines preschool teachers' beliefs and practices related to emergent literacy learning for both children who are typically developing as well as those with identified disabilities. The sixty-eight teachers who worked in preschool programs that enrolled children with and without disabilities were asked to indicate levels of agreement with belief statements about emergent literacy, children with disabilities, and instruction. They were also asked to indicate what specific emergent literacy learning strategies and activities (if any) they used in their classrooms.

A new model of emergent literacy skills and understandings is used as a framework, indicating specific components of emergent …

The Deconstruction Of Ambition: Campus Climate, Stereotype Threat, And The Motivational Goals Of African American Students At A Selective Small Liberal Arts College, Roland S. Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

African American students face many challenges when they attend highly selective, predominantly White institutions. Lack of support for or belief in their academic success on the part of White faculty and peers may contribute to a climate in which it becomes increasingly difficult for African American students to be motivated and believe in their ability to excel academically. Studies suggest that an unsupportive racial climate on campus perpetuates "stereotype threat"---the conception that task performance can be affected by a fear of being evaluated on the basis of, or inadvertently perpetuating a stereotype about one's racial group, and a decade of …

An Analysis Of Appreciative Inquiry As Organizational Development For An Alternative School, Michael Young

Doctoral Dissertations

Schools and youth development programs are continually under pressure to reform and improve. Recent scholarship in the organizational development field suggests that a post modern approach to such efforts may yield new and generative results. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an Action Research methodology used for organizational development that is based on a number of post modern assumptions. Because AI has seen a rapid increase in use, including implementations in educational settings, and because of its potential to offer new insights into organizational development, a further understanding of how it works is warranted.

This interpretive case study, grounded in a social …

"If We Want An Education, We Want An Education It's Our Choice": How Four Youth At Risk Of Dropping Out Of High School Experienced Social Capital, Joanne Mcfarland Malloy

Doctoral Dissertations

Youth who are at risk of dropping out of high school are often challenged by significant emotional and behavioral support needs, and are typically disengaged from the educational process and the social networks that can help them succeed in their homes, in school, and in their communities. This research project investigated the experiences of four youth, two females and two males, who were at significant risk of dropping out of high school as they were engaged in a supportive intervention designed to build skills in self-determination, school-to-adult life transition planning, and leveraging social resources. Using social capital as a sensitizing …

Decoding Minority Student Retention: An Investigation Of Student Experiences And Institutional Characteristics, Stephanie S. Bramlett

Doctoral Dissertations

This study seeks to explain factors that contribute to the retention of black and Hispanic students from their first year through graduation at colleges and universities in the United States. Other studies have investigated the experiences of minority college students (Massey et al. 2006, Steele 1999, and Bowen and Bok 1998) and have focused primarily on student experiences. Using Bourdieu's (1973) conceptualization of capital as the theoretical backdrop, this study is a preliminary investigation of how student experiences and institutional characteristics influence college student graduation.

The study uses data from both the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen and the 2008 …

The Perceived Benefits Associated With Attending College Transition Programs, Kathryn Elaine Thies

Master's Theses and Capstones

The transition to college is critical; it sets the stage for the rest of the student's undergraduate career. Colleges and universities across the nation are building mentor-based transition programs in an attempt to supplement orientation programs and facilitate the successful transition of incoming freshmen students. By applying concepts from the field of Positive Youth Development, we can look at the time spent in college as an extension to adolescence. Furthermore, we can see that students who have successfully transitioned should be capable of maintaining social relationships, passing academic classes, and getting involved in the campus community. Analyzing participants' perceptions of …