Education Commons^™

Developing Metacognition: Leveraging A Spiral Curriculum To Enhance Strategy-Learning Programming, Matthew Brooks

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

There is significant converging literature that emphasizes the value of learning metacognitive strategies. Current approaches to teaching metacognition focus disproportionately on domain-specific strategies. These strategies emphasize domain-specific subject material rather than the metacognition itself. The following intervention proposal aims to develop a multi-level (5th-12th grade) metacognition program designed using a spiral curriculum. This novel approach flips the paradigm and chooses to center metacognition. Additionally, this program leverages encoding, retrieval, transfer-appropriate processing and, delivered specifically through the spiral curriculum, delivers content in a manner that encourages distributed practice, a concept that has been well-documented to be beneficial for learners. The proposed …

Course Portfolio For Mech 300: Thermal Systems And Design, Spring 2021, Mohammad Ghashami

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Thermal Systems and Design (MECH 300) is a three-credit course for junior students at the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering (MME) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is taught every fall and spring semester. The usual enrollment in this course is about 40 undergraduate students most of whom are junior or sophomore students from the MME department. This course plays a significant role in completing students’ learning from MECH-200 and linking that to more advanced systems and real-life applications. There are two purposes for this portfolio. The first aim is that this portfolio serves to collect and document the …

Reflections On Teaching Cyaf 374, Curriculum Planning In Early Childhood Education: A Peer Review Of Teaching Portfolio, Christine Kiewra

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

In this course portfolio, I reflect on teaching methods and materials as they relate to course goals and learning outcomes for an undergraduate early childhood education course, CYAF 374. This course offers students a developmental, child-centered approach to designing, implementing, and evaluating learning experiences for children from birth to grade 3. The course is for students who are preparing to teach in Early Childhood, Inclusive Early Childhood, or Primary classrooms. The focus of my reflection and evaluation is on principles of effective teaching practice, experiential learning, reflective practice, and collaboration implemented throughout the course. Finally, I reflect upon successes and …

Cyaf374: Purposeful Planning—Reflection And Practice In Enriching Students’ Lesson Design, Kelley Buchheister

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio documents my process of embracing, modeling, and implementing reflective teaching practices to enhance the lesson designs of my prospective early childhood professionals in CYAF374: Curriculum Planning in Early Childhood. Throughout this project I attended to and applied five critical components emphasized in the peer review of teaching project and integrated these ideas within the foundational elements of Japanese lesson study in order to implement instructional practices that would benefit my students. These five elements are extensively discussed throughout the portfolio on multiple levels: (a) understanding the role of reflective practice, (b) identifying goals through backward design, (c) outlining …

Mech 350: Introduction To Dynamics And Controls Of Engineering Systems—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Benjamin S. Terry

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

There are two purposes of this portfolio. The first purpose is to outline and explain my approach to teaching this classic and fundamental course. I highlight in detail the purpose and curricula, the desired outcomes, and the goals and objectives. I also describe how the course activities and my teaching methodology support the course objectives. The second purpose of this portfolio is to describe a simple course modification—the introduction of a recitation session—and to test in a preliminary way the effect of this change on students’ attitudes towards the examples worked out in class. The results show that in the …

Reconceptualizing Pedagogical And Curricular Knowledge Development Through Making, Steven Greenstein, Justin Olmanson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

While making is typically tethered to narratives of entrepreneurship and business, it can provide a gateway to meaningful interaction and deepened understanding of both content and pedagogy. In this article we provide descriptions of two courses—one each at the pre-service and in-service levels—that engage teachers in making and design practices that we hypothesized would inform their pedagogical and curricular thinking. With a focus on the design of new tools to support teaching and learning through the use of human-centered design practices and digital fabrication technologies, these courses have teachers exploring at the intersection of content, pedagogy, and making. Specifically, they …

Caught In The Tractor Beam Of Larger Influences: The Filtration Of Innovation In Education Technology Design, Justin Olmanson, Fitsum Abebe, Valerie Jones, Eric Kyle, Lyrica Lucas, Katie Robbins, Guieswende Rouamba, Xianquan Liu

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

While emerging technologies continue to emerge, research into their use in learning contexts often focuses on a subset of educational practices and ways of using technologies. In this study we begin to explore the extent to which educational designs are influenced by larger societal and education-related factors not usually explicitly considered when designing or identifying technology-supported education experiences for research study. We examine patterns within and between factors via a content analysis across ten years and 19 different journals of published peer-reviewed research on technology-supported writing. Our findings have implications for how researchers, designers, and educators approach technology-supported educational design …

Planning And Enacting Mathematical Tasks Of High Cognitive Demand In The Primary Classroom, Kelly Georgius

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study offers an examination of two primary-grades teachers as they learn to transfer knowledge from professional development into their classrooms. I engaged in planning sessions with each teacher to help plan tasks of high cognitive demand, including anticipating and planning for classroom discourse that would occur around the task. A detailed description of the planning and teaching that took place during the study provides information about how a teacher can learn and what a teacher learns to consider in order to plan and implement meaningful mathematical lessons. This design experiment describes the work of two teachers who participated in …

Narrative Understandings Of A School Policy: Intersecting Student, Teacher, Parent And Administrator Perspectives, Elaine Chan, Vicki Ross

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this article, we examine one school’s experience with policy, as a means of shedding light on the intersection of factors contributing to challenges of implementing policies to support the academic achievement and social adaptation of immigrant and minority students in their school context. We begin with the presentation of a ‘big fight’ between two students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and consider multiple perspectives of how the disagreement was addressed by teachers and administrators, to offer insight into how issues of race and policy might have been understood by members of the school community. We use a narrative …

Teaching With Poetic Insight: A Practitioner Reflection And Dream Of Possibility, Dorothy Marie Bossman

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

This reflection focuses on the case of a student who failed my English class when I was concurrently a PhD student and a middle school teacher. The pedagogical insight imbedded in the story of our time together adds to the literature on teacher content knowledge Shulman (1986) called the missing paradigm. The piece takes an unorthodox approach to a case study based on the twofold identity of the author as a researcher intrigued by the complexity of teacher thinking and an educator driven by concern for a particular student. This case reflects back on my experiences teaching this young man, …

The Curriculum Of Health And Nutrition Education In Czech Republic (Article), Jana Koptíková

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

ABSTRACT

The average one-year health expenditure per capita in the European member states has doubled in the last 15 years. Prevention is less expensive than treatment, and changes in diet and lifestyle remain the most effective way to reduce the financial health care costs. However, European health systems are primarily treatment systems, not preventive systems. Improper diet and lack of physical activity are the most critical factors contributing to the overweight and obesity pandemic. Along with heavy alcohol consumption and smoking, these four factors contribute the most to the development of chronic non-communicable diseases. These diseases kill more than 36 …

November 8, 2013 - Alec Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

September 13, 2013 - Alec Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

Where Is Earth Science? Mining For Opportunities In Chemistry, Physics, And Biology, Julie Thomas, Toni Ivey, Jim Puckette

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The Earth sciences are newly marginalized in K–12 classrooms. With few high schools offering Earth science courses, students’ exposure to the Earth sciences relies on the teacher’s ability to incorporate Earth science material into a biology, chemistry, or physics course. “G.E.T. (Geoscience Experiences for Teachers) in the Field” is an exploratory program funded by the National Science Foundation aimed to increase teachers’ geoscience interest and content knowledge. Participant teachers (n = 7) included non–Earth science teachers from underrepresented groups and/or high schools with a high percentage of students from underrepresented groups. A variety of quantitative and qualitative measures assessed …

Changing Perceptions Of Science In Undergraduate Students: A Mixed Methods Case Study, Cindy S. Larson-Miller

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this bounded single-case study was to explore the understanding of the nature and process of science for undergraduate students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). The study investigated one professor’s methodology to explicitly teach undergraduate students about the nature and process of science, and documented their understanding and perception of science, both pre- and post-course.

Using a mixed method approach, data were collected to provide a better understanding of teaching the nature and process of science. Three main types of data were analyzed: the process of science (TPOS) assessment; survey questions, and the module curriculum.

Participating students …

Living In The Space Between Participant And Researcher As A Narrative Inquirer: Examining Ethnic Identity Of Chinese Canadian Students As Conflicting Stories To Live By, Elaine Chan

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Schooling experiences of 1st-generation Canadians interact with cultural experiences in their immigrant households to shape a sense of ethnic identity both as Canadians and as members of an ethnic community. This long-term, school-based narrative inquiry is an examination of ways in which expectations for academic performance and behavior by teachers and peers at school and immigrant parents at home contributed to shaping the ethnic identity of an immigrant Chinese student as conflicting stories to live by. A narrative approach revealed challenges of supporting immigrant students in North American schools and contributed to understanding of the nuances of multicultural education.

Multicultural Education: Raj’S Story Using A Curricular Conceptual Lens Of The Particular, Vicki Ross, Elaine Chan

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this study, we employ a curricular conceptual lens of the particular to explore the experience of multicultural education from the perspective of an immigrant student, Raj. Using a school-based narrative inquiry approach, we learn about Raj’s experiences at the intersections of immigration and settlement, adaptation and assimilation, English-language acquisition, unemployment, poverty, family violence, and family relocation. We employ Dewey’s [(1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster] theory of experience, Connelly and Clandinin’s [(1988). Teachers as curriculum planners: Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia] understanding of curriculum as experience, and Schwab’s [(1969). The …

Student Experiences Of A Culturally Sensitive Curriculum: Ethnic Identity Development Amid Conflicting Stories To Live By, Elaine Chan

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study examines ways in which students’ experiences of a culturally sensitive curriculum may contribute to their developing sense of ethnic identity. It uses a narrative inquiry approach to explore students’ experiences of the interaction of culture and curriculum in a Canadian inner-city, middle-school context. It considers ways in which the curriculum may be interpreted as the intersection of the students’ home and school cultures. Teachers, administrators, and other members of the school community made efforts to be accepting of the diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds that students brought to the school. However, examination of students’ experiences of school …

Teacher Experiences Of Culture In The Curriculum, Elaine Chan

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this study, I examined the experiences of two middle-school-level teachers as they attempted to acknowledge the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of their students in their curriculum and through their teaching practices, to identify the kinds of complications and challenges they encountered in the process. I presented one particular curriculum event to explore ways in which diverse beliefs and values intersected as the teachers implemented the event.

I employed a narrative inquiry approach with an emphasis on stories to learn about the experiences of my participants. I took part in all aspects of school life, including staff meetings and …