Education Commons^™

Examining The Relationships Between Prenatal Tobacco Exposure, Temperament, And Cognitive Ability In Early Childhood, Sam Pérez-González

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) has been extensively researched and consistently associated with outcomes indicative of self-regulation deficits (e.g., ADHD, behavioral problems, and impaired cognitive function). Self-regulation is a multifaceted construct critical to children’s successful behavioral, emotional, and academic adjustment and involves the integration of a cognitive component (executive function) and a temperamental component (effortful control). Previous research suggests temperament may be a pathway through which PTE affects children’s future behavior and cognitive outcomes, but such studies have been limited to infancy and have not included measures of executive function. Thus, the current study had three aims: a) to examine clusters …

Multilevel Metric Invariance: A Monte Carlo Simulation, Elizabeth Svoboda

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Multilevel measurement invariance determines the extent to which a construct is measured in the same way across multiple hierarchical nested levels in the context of the current study. Lower-level parameter estimates may differ from parameter estimates based on higher-level aggregates in applied research settings. Multilevel metric invariance is a method to detect the presence of a noninvariant factor loading.

The purpose of the current study was to determine the utility of multiple-group multilevel – confirmatory factor analysis (MGM-CFA) for detecting metric noninvariance in nested data. The example context is noninvariance occurring between treatment and control classrooms with students (i.e., level-one) …

Effects Of Implicit Bias On Teachers’ Expectations Of Student Relationships, Colin Michael Mcginnis

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Numerous studies have considered the implications of child characteristics such as race and gender on the relationships with and expectations of students held by teachers. Yet, few studies among this body of research have focused on using direct measures of implicit associations held by teachers, and considered how these implicit beliefs may impact their interactions with students. The present study examined differences in teachers’ expectations of relationships and likelihood to intervene in typical and disruptive behaviors as a result of differing race and gender of students. Results indicated that teachers report being less tolerant of Black student’s disruptive behavior than …

You're Getting It!: How Preschool Teachers And Students Experience Literacy Tabletop Games In The Classroom, Katherine Sydik

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to examine affordances of literacy tabletop games in a preschool classroom environment as well as the experiences of young children between the ages of 3 and 6 and teachers playing the games. The following themes emerged from the research: “That’s How Games Are” relating to views about games and play, “How The Teacher Does It”, relating to developmentally appropriate educational practice for playing games with preschool children, “A Way to Keep Them More Engaged”, relating to preschool children’s motivation while playing literacy games, “Things Kids Need to Know for Kindergarten”, relating …

Multiple Imputation Of The Guessing Parameter In The Case Of Missing Data, Grant J. Orley

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Missing data are a significant problem in testing. Research into strategies for dealing with it have yielded no clear consensus about the best approach to take. Accuracy of ability estimates, fairness and scoring transparency are affected by the choice of missing data handling technique. In this simulation study, we propose a technique of multiple imputation of the guessing parameter using both item difficulty and individual ability estimates. This approach was compared to several other popular strategies for imputing values, such as: treating the item as incorrect, imputing a guessing parameter of 0.5, proportion correct imputation, multiple imputation of responses, and …