Education Commons^™

Understanding The Virginia Literacy Act, Candace Bechtold, Kimberly Bridges, David Naff, Joan A. Rhodes, Valerie Robnolt, Tara Davison, Suzanne Alexandre, Michael Crusco, Karli Johansen, Amber Butler, Allison Yandle, Jennifer Askue-Collins, Jean Samuel, Sharrie Merritte, Regina Frazier

MERC Publications

This research and policy brief from the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) offers an overview of the Virginia Literacy Act. It is structured to explore the following questions: 1) What are the recent trends in reading achievement in Virginia? 2) What are the policy implications of the VLA for Virginia school divisions? 3) What does the research say about Science of Reading (SoR)? 4) What core instructional programs are approved to meet the VLA? It concludes with a series of key takeaways and recommendations.

Deep Change Theory: Implications For Educational Development Leaders, Caitlin Martin, Elizabeth Wardle

Publications

While chapters 1 and 2 explore the promise of theoretical frameworks for making conceptual change that leads to innovative action around teaching and learning in higher education, they also point out the challenges to this kind of work as teams of faculty strive to lead change in their programs and departments after completing the program. To summarize our claims thus far: one of the goals for the HCWE Faculty Writing Fellows Program is to empower faculty who participate to return to their departments to make programmatic changes—changes they identify as central to their work and values and program culture. The …

Examining Curriculum Requirements Of Undergraduate Teacher Preparation Programs To Gauge Educator Knowledge Of Trauma-Informed Education Frameworks, Laura Grace King

College of Education Publications and Scholarship

Statistics show that many pre-K–12 students in the United States are exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) or potentially traumatic events (PTEs), and a growing body of literature points to these childhood experiences harming children’s academic functioning and future educational attainment. A review of the literature on trauma-informed education (i.e., curriculum and programs designed to mitigate the negative effects of trauma) highlights many teachers’ lack of confidence in combatting issues within student populations affected by adversity and trauma; the research also indicated that teachers with knowledge of trauma/adversity and its implications are crucial to effectively educating at-risk children and adolescents. …

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 …

Striving Towards Efficient Curriculum Implementation, Melissa J. Hernandez

IPS/BAS 495 Undergraduate Capstone Projects

As an Early Learning Mentor Coach for a non-profit organization, my job is to ensure proper implementation of our curriculum within the classroom in order to be in compliance with our grant agreements. Through this process, I had to think of a way to support teaching staff and help them be successful without adding extra stress or hours to their workdays. Whether this was to be done through a binder, a reflection checklist, or a website, I needed to come up with something that was efficient, effective, and convenient for the teachers.

Identifying Schools As Caring Communities: Teacher Perceptions About Character Education, Jasmine Johnson

Faculty Works

This study quantified teacher perceptions and their observations of school community interactive attachments. Observed attachments through teacher perceptions classified school communities as caring. Elementary school teachers in the southern United States districts volunteered, in order to determine the significance of school-based taught or learned character education principles in comparison with caring attachments. Data were collected using the Caring Community Profile – II questionnaire, which measures the participants’ attitudes by the extent to which they agree or disagree with a statement. The results clarified the significance of character education programs that identify school communities as caring.

Additionally, the findings answered the …

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 …

The Capability Approach: A Proposed Framework For Experiential Learning In The Faculty Of Arts, Humanities And Social Sciences, Timothy A. Brunet, Hassan Shaban, Stephanie Gonçalves

Centre for Teaching and Learning Publications

This qualitative case study uses the Capability Approach (CA) as a framework for experiential learning courses in the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, this is a case study of two courses titled Ways of Knowing and Ways of Doing that are offered as undergraduate general credit electives. In this paper, we describe the case study context and provide a brief introduction to the CA. The lead author presents the case study courses' pedagogical framework and describes the materials and methods of the case. Next, we provide a summary of …

Introduction To "The State Of The Syllabus" Special Edition Of Syllabus Journal, Katherine Harris, Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew Gold

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Positioning the syllabus as a key artifact in the modern academy, one that encapsulates many elements of intellectual, scholarly, social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts in which it is enmeshed, we offer in this special issue of Syllabus a set of provocations on the syllabus and its many roles. Including perspectives from full-time and part-time faculty, graduate students, and librarians, the issue offers a multifaceted take on how the syllabus is presently used and might be reimagined.

Enhancing Student Engagement In Wayne State University School Of Medicine (Wsusom) Curriculum Design, Development, Evaluation, And Implementation, Connor Buechler, Heidi T. Kromrei, Leo M. Hall

Medical Student Research Symposium

Purpose: There are a variety of ways in which the 1200 medical students at Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSUSOM) can formally participate in curricular efforts. To date, a formal inventory and evaluation of these programs has not been reported.

Methods: We compiled a list of students involved in courses, committees, and formal activities related to the medical school curriculum. We then developed and delivered a survey to measure student perceptions utilizing the following constructs: 1) Guidance/Support for Student Role, 2) Project Successes and Challenges, 3) Curricular Project Measurement and Monitoring, 4) Curriculum Management Committee Engagement and Accessibility, 5) …

Cocreate: Collaborative Curriculum Reimagining And Enhancement Aiming To Transform Education, Barry J. Ryan, Adrienne Fleming, Catherine M. Deegan, Claire Mcavinia, Colm O'Kane, David Williams, Edmund Nevin, Eric Bates, Fionnuala Darby, Jen Harvey, Lesley Murphy, Maebh Coleman, Miriam O'Donoghue, Nicola Duffy

Teaching Fellowship Reports

The establishment of TU Dublin in January 2019 provided a unique opportunity to create a bespoke curriculum framework for students, staff and stakeholders of TU Dublin, produced by the students, staff and stakeholders of TU Dublin. A curriculum framework is a set of guiding values that inform the design of teaching and learning activities within TU Dublin. A Teaching Fellowship Team, comprising eighteen teaching academics from across the three TU Dublin campuses and supported extensively by the Learning Teaching and Technology Centre (LTTC), was formed to collaboratively craft, in partnership with all stakeholders, a curriculum framework for TU Dublin. Working …

Wartime Teachers: Stories From The Front, Rachel K. Turner, Eliel Hinojosa Jr.

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

In the early 1990s, Dr. O.L. Davis of the University of Texas at Austin sought evacuee teacher and student recollections in England during World War II. The overarching purpose for Davis was to gain an understanding of the effect on schooling and education, specifically as it relates to the curriculum for students. This article continues where he left off and places focus on teacher evacuees. Of the several hundred responses from student evacuees, we utilized ten of the thirty teacher evacuees who responded to Dr. Davis. The purpose in this research endeavor seeks to discover the impact evacuations in England …

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 …

Teacher Development Multi-Year Study Series: Timor-Leste: Interim Report 1, Elizabeth Cassity, Jennie Chainey, Sheldon Rothman

Teacher education

The purpose of this Interim Report is to present the findings from the first year of a multi-year study of Timor-Leste’s Professional Learning and Mentoring Program (PLMP). The study focuses on understanding the extent to which education stakeholders, including school leaders and teachers, develop teaching knowledge and change teaching practice over time. It also explores the extent to which participation in the PLMP leads to improvements in learning outcomes for students. This study of the PLMP is framed within the context Timor-Leste’s introduction of a new National Basic Education Curriculum.

District-University Collaborations To Support Reform-Based Mathematics Curriculum Implementation, Kelly Gomez Johnson, Amy L. Nebesniak, Theodore J. Rupnow

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Curriculum change is inevitable in schooling. For content areas such as mathematics that are already under the national spotlight, transitioning to new curriculum materials while concurrently enacting instructional reform creates both a challenge and an opportunity. This paper discusses how partnerships between two state universities and respective neighboring school districts resulted in the creation and implementation of graduate courses for teachers targeted at curricular and instructional reform specific to each district. Common course components between both university-district partnerships were identified in the areas of mathematics research, practice, and leadership advocacy and found to be instrumental in supporting instructional reform 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 …

Asynchronous Gifted Students & Human Rights Education: A Residential Life Curriculum Guide Aimed At Supporting Subcultures And Underrepresented Populations, Derek M. Lough

Staff Publications & Research

This Masters Field Project for the International & Multicultural Education Department at the University of San Francisco serves to provide an incomplete, but fairly comprehensive guide to studies that describe the general educational situations of subcultures and underrepresented populations within the context of gifted education and the framework of human rights education. The programs within it adhere to the standards set for Residential Life at the Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy, follow Dr. Monisha Bajaj's six steps for a complete human rights education in the field while also incorporating Dabrowski's Theory of Disintegration.

An Examination Of Concepts Of School Readiness Among Parents And Educators In Ireland, Maire Mhic Mhathuna, Emer Ring, Noirin Hayes, Patsy Stafford, Siobhan Keegan, Cathy Kelleher, Martina Ozonyia, Mary Moloney, Deirdre Breathnach, Des Carswell, Des Mccafferty, Anne O'Keefe, Aisling Leavy, Ruth Madden

Reports

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs commissioned research through the Irish Research Council (IRC) to examine concepts of school readiness as they are understood by early years educators and managers, primary school principals, junior infant teachers and parents of children participating in the first Free Preschool Year in Ireland. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, involving interviews, an online survey and “draw and tell” sessions with children. Representative samples of FPSY settings and primary schools were selected and an online survey based on the findings of the qualitative phase was sent to 500 pre-primary settings and 500 primary schools. In …

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 …

Taking A Community Approach To Curriculum Change, Sarah E. Dalrymple, Anna Jo Auerbach, Elisabeth E. Schussler

CTL Teaching Gallery

Many undergraduate institutions are reforming their courses to increase student engagement. A critical challenge in these efforts is to engage the academic community beyond the instructors in the process of change. At our university, we embraced this challenge by creating a volunteer community of faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates to design the discussion curricula for a new introductory biology sequence. We report on this process of curriculum development using a case study approach and describe how the community created the new curriculum and how they perceived the outcomes of the process. Our findings indicate that this curriculum design approach …

Literacy And Citizenship: Helping Students Learn The Importance Of Being An Informed And Educated Citizen, Luke H. Schlegel

English Summer Fellows

My project utilizes the concept of Understanding by Design, as outlined by education experts Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, to craft a 12-week curriculum for high school junior and senior English students. McTighe and Wiggins use backwards planning to create long-term learning goals for students. Rather than superficially trying to cover a wide range of material in class, which results in short-term acquisition of knowledge mostly forgotten in the long run, McTighe and Wiggins focus on “big ideas,” that generate conceptual understanding. Ultimately, students will be able to transfer this knowledge to settings outside of the classroom. To help them …

A Three-Year Study Of A Professional Development Program's Impact On Teacher Knowledge And Classroom Implementation Of Strategic And Interactive Writing Instruction, Kimberly A. Wolbers, Hannah M. Dostal, Paulson Skerrit, Brenda Stephenson

Theory and Practice in Teacher Education Publications and Other Works

A professional development (PD) program for Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) integrating effective PD features was implemented with teachers over three years. Using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was examined whether length of participation in PD impacted knowledge and ability to faithfully implement. Findings indicate significant improvements with each year of PD; those who participated for three consecutive years received the highest possible ratings on knowledge as measured by the Levels of Use (LOU) and instruction as measured by the SIWI observation and fidelity instrument. Additionally, because of modifications to the PD program, it was examined …

Digital Literacy: Why It Matters, Allison Kavanagh, K.C. O'Rourke

Articles

In the past two decades the internet, email, apps, mobile devices and all associated hardware and software have become firmly embedded in everyday life, to the extent that it often feels that we have had no control over this phenomenon. What are the implications for education?

Primary and secondary students today have grown up with the always-connected life which the internet has enabled. However, the credence given to the idea that this makes them fully comfortable and aware as "digital natives" is misguided. The social implications of the internet society – surveillance and the decline of privacy, cyberbullying and so …

Questions Of Truth: Ethical And Moral Wanderings In Middle Grades Mathematics Classrooms And Research, Susan Ophelia Cannon, Stephanie Behm Cross

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

This paper describes two researchers engagement with two teachers as they taught a middle grades mathematics course, Current Events Math, in a large urban school district. The researchers share bits of data and their ethical entanglements as they entered into the site to find the truth about what works in middle grades mathematics classrooms only to realize that truth cannot be found through research. They then grappled with the question of the purpose of research and their roles as researchers in the school and the academy.

The Power Of Improvisational Teaching, Elizabeth Graue, Kristin Whyte, Anne E. Karabon

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

In this study we examine how improvisation can facilitate understanding how teachers respond to children's multiple resources, interests, experiences, and skills in early childhood programs. Improvisation is conceptualized as a responsive, partnered activity through which teachers and children generate meaning and knowledge together. In our analysis we show improvisation is taken up differently in two classrooms and how it variably provides opportunities for learning. Two cases from a professional development program designed to support culturally and developmentally appropriate early mathematics are used to demonstrate the possibilities improvisation creates in era of increasing standardization of curriculum.

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 …

A Content Analysis Of Aiaa/Itea/Iteea Conference Special Interest Sessions: 1978-2014, Philip A. Reed, James E. Laporte

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Associations routinely hold annual conferences to aid with professional development and actively promote the ideals of their membership and the profession they represent. The American Industrial Arts Association (AIAA) was created in 1939 and has held an annual conference the past 76 years to further these goals (Starkweather, 1995). Throughout this period, the profession has gone through significant changes that include a paradigm shift from a focus on the products and processes of industry to a broader focus on technological literacy. The AIAA reflected this shift by changing the association name to the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) in 1985. …

Assessment And Curriculum Modification For Grade 1 Students With Disabilities In Tanzania: A Pilot Study, Angi Stone-Macdonald

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The purpose of this study was: 1) to analyze aggregated student assessment data from grade 1 students at a public government primary school in Northern Tanzania to determine the efficacy of a curriculum based screen tool, and 2)to examine current practices of inclusion for Tanzanian children in the early grades.

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 …