Education Commons^™

The Co-Curriculum Of College Student Employment: Perspectives From Supervising Practitioners, Brittany Begley Wildman

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

College student employees are not only serving the overall mission of their institutions, but also developing career readiness skills through daily interactions while at work. In this study, I explore the perceptions of the supervisors of student employees as both managers and student affairs professionals. Through one-on-one interviews with supervisors, discussing their interactions with students, I explore the implicit and explicit curricula they provide to their students using a curriculum analysis framework. I then compare the resulting learning outcomes against those identified in industry standards. The supervisors described supporting student employees' personal development during the student employment experience as well …

Improving Nutrition Screening Practice In The Hospitalized Heart Failure Patient Population, Amanda J. Bourgeois

DNP Projects

Background: Heart Failure is a disease known to affect nearly 6.5 million adults in the United States. Characterized by recurrent hospitalizations, heart failure significantly contributes to morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs in the United States and worldwide. Because malnutrition is prevalent in the heart failure population, healthcare providers must perform nutritional assessments on admission to intervene in the case of malnutrition, prevent deterioration, and improve patient prognosis. Without intervention and early identification of malnutrition, heart failure hospitalizations will remain a significant problem.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of an evidence-based educational program for cardiac …

Evaluating A High School Mrsa Prevention Program: A Case Study, Jamie Henning

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

MRSA poses a significant health risk to athletes nationwide. This case study examines the application of an online training module to address knowledge gaps regarding Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) among key decision-makers for high school athletes. It reviews the development and initial evaluation of a web-based training program designed to empower decision-makers with the knowledge to prevent MRSA infection and respond to suspected cases. Program evaluation recommended expanding the training module to wrestling staff with improved evaluation methods while continuing implementation and effectiveness assessment for the football staff. Despite initial data quality limitations, the online training module evaluation offered valuable …

Development And Validity Inquiry Of A Rubric For Interdisciplinary Competencies In Occupational Safety And Health In Capstone Projects Of Carerc Program Graduates, Olumuyiwa Moses Desmennu

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Emerging demands in the field of interdisciplinary studies reveal a need for competent professionals who can apply their skills and experience to solving complex tasks of the workplace. This has placed inevitable demands on training institutions to adequately equip graduates to deliver on their mandate. Competency appraisal is an effective way to ensure proficiency in graduates. Meanwhile, transparent and valid rubrics provide opportunities for both students and trainers to continuously assess and evaluate the transfer of necessary skills.

This study focused on evaluating interdisciplinary competencies in Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in the capstone projects of the CARERC program, a …

Evaluating The Differential Effects Of Using A Technology-Based Antecedent Intervention In Comparison To A Technology-Based Treatment Package, Rachel Fosnaught

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

This study investigated the differential effects of using non-contingent reinforcement in the form of attention as an antecedent intervention in comparison to using non-contingent reinforcement in addition to self-monitoring as a treatment package. A multi treatment single case research design was utilized in this study. Levels of student’s on-task behavior were measured to evaluate the differential effects of an antecedent intervention in comparison to the combination of an antecedent and consequent intervention. This study also only used treatments that were technologically delivered to the participants.

A Multilevel Nonlinear Approach Of Piecewise Regression For Detecting Turning Points: Developing An Alternative Platform With An Application Of Timss, Jing Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Studies in recent years have explored the methods of identifying the turning points when dealing with the non-linear relationship. Four approaches applied by researchers, the eyeball approach, the establishment approach, the theory-driven approach, and the data-driven approach, are all under the traditional piecewise regression framework when seeking turning points. Thus, the purpose of this study is to introduce a multilevel piecewise regression model to identify the turning point beyond the traditional piecewise regression, as a completely non-linear approach.

Data used for this study is TIMSS 2019 United States sample. TIMSS is a project guided by the International Association for the …

Addressing A Cohort Discrepancy Among Ninth-Grade Students At A Rural/Suburban High School, Bryley Keaton Murphy

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Ninth grade is a critical period where some children experience academic and social growth, while others struggle to navigate their new context, leading to reduced outcomes at school and worsened physical/mental health (Benner & Graham, 2007; Rice, 2001). This mixed-methods action research (MMAR) study addressed how professional practice changes could better support students during this foundational period. Quantitative data was collected from school databases to compare the rate of student success and identify demographic discrepancies, while qualitative data was used to identify possible causes. These data were then integrated to create insightful meta-inferences into the problem of practice. From these …

Survey Development And Validation: Student Self Expectations Of The First-Year College Experience Survey (The Se-Fye Scale), Min Xiao

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

First year at a university is often a transitional stage for students where they have opportunities to grow and develop in various areas and get familiar with a collegiate environment. Understanding what first-year students expect to navigate and succeed in their first year at the university is crucial. Their expectations reflect how well they prepared for university, affecting their behaviors and eventually influencing their intentions to continue higher education. One of the primary purposes of this study was to design a survey to measure student self-expectations of the first-year college experience (the SE-FYE scale) by applying a structured survey development …

Score Equating Between Aeps-2 And Aeps-3 For 0-3 Year Olds, Yuyan Xia

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Over the past two decades, the emphasis on educational equity in early childhood education (ECE) and early childhood special education (ECSE) has highlighted the importance of assessment through policies and regulations. Ensuring accurate assessment scores is a fundamental aspect of this trend. The release of the Assessment, Evaluation, and Programming System for Infants and Children, Third Edition (AEPS-3) in December 2021 led to a shift from the Second Edition (AEPS-2) in child development scoring. In order to harmonize the previous and updated assessment versions for children aged 0-3 across six developmental domains, a common item non-equivalent design, featuring fixed parameter …

Minimum High School Graduation Requirements And Teacher Compensation, Allison Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

In the last forty years of educational reform, significant changes have been made to the number and type of high school credits students are required to complete for graduation. As these requirements have changed, the demand for higher-level academic courses has increased while teacher shortages, particularly in high-demand areas such as math and science, have continued to increase. This study uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Student and Staffing Survey to examine the relationship between minimum graduation credit requirements in core subject areas (English, math, science and social sciences) and teacher salaries, both holistically and in …

Assessing 4-H And Its Circle Of Courage In A Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility: A Case Study, Elizabeth Steering

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

This 4-H case study takes place in a psychiatric residential treatment facility (PRTF) in Kentucky. The PRTF provides clinical services to youth that are not able to be safely maintained in their homes due to having demonstrated unsafe or harmful behaviors. Youth admitted to the PRTF stay for an average of three to six months while they receive intensive therapeutic and psychiatric care as well as medical treatment and public schooling. The current case study incorporates programming from 4-H, which is the youth development program of the Cooperative Extension System (CES) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), …

Methodolocical Concerns Of Using Global Positioning System Technology To Assess American Football Competition Demands, Tyler Lindon

Theses and Dissertations--Kinesiology and Health Promotion

Despite its popularity, there is a lack of research describing the physical demands of American Football. This is surprising when considering the popularity of the use of global positioning systems (GPS) within this specific sporting environment. The aim of the present study was to utilize a novel methodology to describe the physical demands of American football players by play type (run vs. pass) using a play-by-play analysis of global positioning system (GPS) outcomes. Fifty Division I collegiate American football players (Age: 19.8 ± 1.1 yr, Height: 189.3 ± 4.4 cm, Body mass: 86.1 ± 5.8 kg) wore portable GPS monitors …

Comparing Self-Delivered To Instructor-Delivered Reinforcement During Vocational Instruction For Students With Intellectual Disability Using Video Activity Schedules, Katherine Elise White

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

In this study, an adapted alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of teaching vocational task when using self-delivered reinforcement versus instructor-delivered reinforcement while using video prompting. Participants consisted of four high school students who had been diagnosed with intellectual disabilities. Results indicated that instructor delivered reinforcement was slightly more effective at teaching a vocational task for 2 of the 4 participants. The results of the other 2 participants indicated that both forms of reinforcement delivery were similarly effective.

Career Development And Employability Skill Integration Within The Equine Science And Management Undergraduate Program At The University Of Kentucky, Savannah Faye Robin

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

College graduates need to be equipped with career and employability skills that are necessary to be meaningfully and gainfully employed in their future. These skills consist of self-management, career-management, essential-employability, and discipline-specific skills. More responsibility is being placed on college and university academic programs to ensure that students are graduating with these skills when they enter the workforce. However, students are growing less likely to participate in out of course career development activities and resources. Integrating these skills into program curriculum can be an effective way to ensure that all students have the ability to develop these necessary skills.

While …

Meeting Transfer Students Where They Are: A New Organizational Approach To Transfer Student Communication, Support, And Recruitment, Daniel Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Transfer students have long played a significant role in the growth and diversity of colleges and universities. Recent research points to a continuous decline in enrollment over the coming decade (Kelderman, Gardner, & Conley, 2019), and as tuition costs continue to increase and enrollment numbers decrease, institutions of higher education have begun turning to transfer students to fill their lecture halls and football stadiums. A key variable in higher education’s transfer recruitment blind spot is a fundamental lack of understanding of the structural and organizational changes needed to both attract and retain these non-traditional students (Tobolowsky & Cox, 2012). For …

The Effect Of Education On The Nida Modified Assist (Nmassist) Tool On Knowledge And Screening For Substance Use Disorder Among Clinicians, Victoria Page Arnold

DNP Projects

Background: Substance use disorder (SUD) is a disparity affecting nearly 24 million individuals in the U.S., nearly 10% of the total population. Oftentimes, the emergency department (ED) is the only medical care this population receives. There is often a lack of screening for SUD in ED’s, therefore referred care may be limited for these individuals. The National Institute on Drug Abuse Modified Assist (NMASSIST) is an evidence-based tool developed to educate and screen for SUD. This tool can be completed in a timely manner and aid in the recommended referral of care for this select population.

Purpose: The purpose of …

An Investigation Into The Relationship Between Teacher Grit, Technology Self-Efficacy, And Technology Integration, Joshua Jeremiah Shiloh Marsh

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The use of educational technology applications has grown tremendously in the last decade. Instructors are now equipped with hardware and software applications previously unavailable, such as mobile and interactive technologies. These tools can have tremendous impact on students’ learning and teacher practices. Teachers can improve their assessment capabilities through technology integration, provide better learning opportunities for students with learning disabilities, and promote deeper learning practices. Due to these benefits, budgets at the federal, state, and local levels of the United States now have specific allocations regarding technology-related purchases. Nevertheless, barriers remain regarding the effective integration of technologies in public schools. …

Role Strain And Role Satisfaction Of Academic Program Coordinators At A Southern Research-Intensive Doctoral Granting University, Samer R. Jan

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The research dissertation examined, through a self-administered survey, the activities academic program coordinators perform at a US research-intensive university and whether they suffered from role strain during the 2020-2021 academic year. The dissertation also explored what academic program coordinators found satisfying in performing their roles. The research contributes to the field of higher education by providing a better understanding of the roles and activities academic program coordinators perform, along with factors that cause role strain among program coordinators. A total of 47 program coordinators responded to the survey representing a 20% response rate.

The research found that program coordinators perform …

Understanding The Impact Of A First-Year Engineering Program On Undergraduate Student Persistence In Engineering, Brad Hubbard

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The goal of this research study was to understand the impact first-year engineering programs have on undergraduate student persistence in engineering. First-year engineering programs feature a uniform first year curriculum for undergraduate engineering students and are designed to strengthen retention and increase graduation rates. This study sought to understand which factors present in first-year engineering programs influence student persistence in engineering. This study took place in the local context and examined the experience of engineering undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year engineering (FYEng) program at a state-level flagship land grant research institution in the southern region of the United States, …

Validation Of An Early Childhood Emotional And Social Competence Instrument Using A Rasch Partial Credit Model, Nan Li

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The release of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) started a new chapter of education in the United States. The ESSA emphasizes the importance of preschool education; the act states that more resources will be devoted to preschool education, which lays the foundation for children’s school learning process. The goal of the act is to make sure children enter kindergarten education with equal preparatory. School, family, and researchers are paying more attention to developing preschool children’s social and emotional competency before entering Kindergarten. For understanding preschool children’s social and emotional skill development situation, instrument is the mostly widely adopted method …

The Language Of Power: An Investigation Of How The Macropolitics Of Education Policy Affects The Micropolitics Of Schooling English Learners, Catherine E. Vannatter

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The population of English Learners (ELs) continues to increase across the United States, and these students persistently perform below their native English-speaking peers in measures of academic achievement. Federal government leaders passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, which modified how state and local educational agencies identify, instruct, assess, and reclassify ELs and revised what funding EL programming could receive. In this multiphase study, I investigated how the macropolitics of federal and state policy became enacted in the micropolitics of a mid-sized school district in Kentucky. Through an initial phase of document review followed by a mixed methods …

The “Case” For Assessments: An Evaluation Of Case End Of Course Assessments And Teacher Motivation, Andrew Lawrence Hauser

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education (CASE) End of Course (EoC) assessments are summative assessments used to evaluate the CASE curriculum. This quantitative study explored the effects teacher motivation has on student performance on CASE EoC assessments. CASE teachers (n= 55) who participated in the study responded to the 28-item CASE End of Course Assessment Teacher Motivation Questionnaire on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The researcher conducted a Pearson r Correlation test to determine a relationship between questionnaire mean values and secondary student assessment data. Results from the study outline frequency of responses, perceived value and expectancy mean values, and correlations …

Is What Works Working? Thinking Evaluatively About The What Works Clearinghouse, Andrew A. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Since the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. Department of Education has drafted and enacted policies to bridge the research-practice gap—that is, the gap between “what works” according to educational research and what is actually practiced by teachers and their administrators (e.g., Dirkx, 2006; Joyce & Cartwright, 2019; Tseng, 2012). One of the latest manifestations of this “what works” political legacy is the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), which took shape as part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in 2002. The WWC’s mission is to be a “central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education” (WWC, 2020d, …

Rate To Measure Mathematics Teaching: Using The Many-Facet Rasch Modeling To Reevaluate The Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol For Practices (Mcop2), Chunling Niu

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Rater-mediated classroom observation protocols are increasingly being used for teaching performance assessments, which makes identifying and controlling for various rater effects a central issue to ensure the rating quality. A series of validation studies under the classical test theory framework, including content validity, interrater reliability, and structure analysis, have been completed for the 16-item Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol for Practices (MCOP²).

However, the MCOP² data have never been investigated under the Rasch framework. Due to the methodological limitations of the CTT approach for rater-mediated assessments, it is imperative to examine the MCOP² validity and reliability using …

Teacher Perceptions Of School Climate: A New Instrument And Validity Study, Rui Jin

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The United States government has growingly emphasized school climate, as it has been involved as an accountability indicator in the Every Student Succeeds Act. However, there remains considerable debate on both conceptualizing and measuring school climate. Moreover, teachers, a critical informant of school climate, have been ignored because most previous studies have paid attention to the students.

To better inform the research and practice related to the teacher perceptions of school climate and its measurement, this dissertation first identified the related instruments in the literature. The results showed only one survey measured three domains of school climate (academic climate, community, …

Important Attributes Of A Behaviorally-Based Coaching Culture, Sarah M. Eustice

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Professional coaching is still considered an emerging field. Over the past 30 years, professional coaches and researchers have worked to further this profession by developing coaching competencies, exploring the nuances between various coaching modalities, and developing models to explain the role of coaching in organizations. There remains, however, a dearth of literature on coaching culture, including limited agreement on what it is and how it should look in an organization.

This study aims to establish agreement by investigating the confluence of coaching culture definitions and models present in industry and scholarly literature, and garnering input from a sample of professionals …

Exploring The Impact Of Pre-College Stem Exposure On First-Year Engineering Student Self-Efficacy, Micaha Dean Hughes

Theses and Dissertations--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) outreach programs for high school students have become more widely available during the last decade in an effort to drive more graduates into the ever-growing STEM field in the United States. This study utilizes the Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-Efficacy (LAESE) survey to investigate a possible relationship between specific pre-college STEM outreach programs and noncognitive predictors of success in first-year undergraduate engineering students. Students in their first semester of a first-year engineering program at a large, public research university completed the LAESE survey and were asked to identify their participation in one of three …

A Bifactor Approach To Dimensionality Assessment, David Michael Dueber

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Bifactor confirmatory factor analysis models and statistical indices computed from them have previously been used to provide evidence for the appropriateness of utilizing a unidimensional interpretation of multidimensional data. However, the ability of bifactor indices to aid in the assessment of subscore strength has not been investigated.

A simulation study was conducted to relate bifactor indices to the strength of subscores corresponding to specific factors. The bifactor indices OmegaHS and ECV_SS were found to be strongly predictive of subscore strength conditional upon OmegaS. The number of factors was also found to play a minor role in this relationship. Cutoffs …

Alternative Thesis Project For Spring 2020 Semester, Elaine Murner

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

During the Spring 2020 semester, students within the special education program were conducting applied thesis projects within typical contexts as part of their fulfillment of the requirements of a master’s degree program. Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), public schools and related facilities closed with no plans to reopen within the time frame to allow for graduation for students in the last semester of their graduate program. Students were allowed to complete an alternative thesis assignment in the form of responding to writing prompts followed by an oral defense of the written products, along with questions related to their …

A Comparison Of Multiple Baseline Family Of Designs, An Analysis Of A Multiple Probe Study, And Coaching For Practitioners, Katherine Jordan

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

Overview of Alternative Thesis Project

During the Spring 2020 semester, students within the applied behavior analysis program were conducting applied thesis projects within typical contexts as part of their fulfillment of the requirements of a master’s degree program. Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), public schools and related facilities closed with no plans to reopen within the time frame to allow for graduation for students in the last semester of their graduate program. Students were allowed to complete an alternative thesis assignment in the form of responding to writing prompts followed by an oral defense of the written products, …