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The Use Of The South Carolina School Improvement Model - Quick Cycles In Sixth-Grade Science Classrooms, Jennifer Gnann

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Using data to make informed decisions about instruction strengthens a teacher’s delivery of content within the classroom. However, many teachers have not been taught how to properly use a model of rapid improvement cycles to analyze data and apply it to their classroom instruction. I modified the South Carolina School Improvement Model so that it could be used in short cycles to see how teachers used it to plan for, monitor, and adjust instruction in their classrooms.

I conducted a single case study over a six-week period in which I instructed two sixth-grade science teachers on how to use the …

Making The Move Toward Meaningfulness In Learning Activities: Enhancing Teacher Self-Efficacy In Student Engagement Through An Instructional Coaching Approach In Improvement Science, Maureen Tiller

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Student engagement is a common problem in schools today and a challenging one to solve. Choosing to dive deeper into this complex problem at one high school, ten teachers participated in a coaching cycle designed to impact self-efficacy in student engagement with the support of the school’s instructional coach in collaboration with the principal. One overarching research question guided this improvement science study: What impact does an instructional coaching cycle focused on meaningfulness in learning activities have on teachers’ self-efficacy in student engagement? To answer the research question, I conducted a quantitative and qualitative data analysis of pre- and …

Implementation Of An Early College Design In A Rural High School: Empowering Place-Conscious Leadership To Affect Change And Overcome Barriers To Innovation, Michael Timko

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This qualitative, improvement science, autoethnograpic case study aims to examine a unique perspective on rural research through the lens of place-conscious leadership. With an identified problem of inequity in advanced-level course offerings, which resulted in lost student opportunities and student attrition to neighboring schools, the leadership at Forest Lakes High School (FLHS) in rural South Carolina began the ambitious journey of reframing their narrative. As a scholarly researcher and administrator at FLHS, I had the unique opportunity to immerse myself fully in all aspects of this study. My dual positionality allowed me to study this process while sharing the lived …

Annotations Of Awareness: A Framework For Externalizing Thinking To Promote Metacognitive Discourse In High School English And Social Studies Classrooms, Todd Howard

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Teachers find it challenging to integrate metacognition into the classroom to promote critical thinking, but such rigorous instruction is one way to improve access to quality education for all students, no matter their access to outside-of-school resources. To help teachers find more comfort and confidence in designing for increased critical thinking and metacognitive discourse and to help close the theory-practice gap in metacognition research, I conducted a mixed-methods case study focusing on assessment-design interventions. Using the Metacognitive Framework for Assessment Design and Annotations of Awareness, both designed in response to my literature review, my 90-day action research included three Plan-Do-Study-Act …