Education Commons^™

Agony Or Ecstasy: A Mixed Methods Study Of The Accelerated Reader Program And Students' Attitudes Toward Reading, Ladonna Stout Boone

Doctoral Dissertations

The impetus for this study was to determine how Accelerated Reader influences the reading attitudes of fourth grade students of varied reading proficiencies who had been exposed to Accelerated Reader since kindergarten. Interested in students’ attitudes and motivation toward reading, I examined fourth grade students’ reading motivation among two award winning Blue Ribbon Schools in East Tennessee, one of which used Accelerated Reader as the pathway to literacy success while the other did not. Comparisons between the two schools were made in order to determine if there were differences in students’ attitudes and motivation toward reading. This explanatory mixed methods …

Examining The Relationships Between Gender Role Congruity, Identity, And The Choice To Persist For Women In Undergraduate Physics Majors, Bronwen Bares Pelaez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Persistent gender disparity limits the available contributors to advancing some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. While higher education can be an influential time-point for ensuring adequate participation, many physics programs across the U.S. have few women in classroom or lab settings. Prior research indicates that these women face considerable barriers. For university students, faculty, and administration to appropriately address these issues, it is important to understand the experiences of women as they navigate male-dominated STEM fields.

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study explored undergraduate female physics majors’ experiences with their male-dominated academic and research spaces in the U.S. …

Education For Democracy: Mixed Methods Case Studies Of Teachers' Critical Thinking Dispositions And Their Teaching Styles, Maram Behairy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Democracy does not automatically maintain itself by prescribed constitutions and procedural codes (Dewey, 1939), but rather its citizens must have certain dispositions to protect and strengthen it (Biesta, 2006). According to John Stuart Mill (1859/1991), people can tyrannize one another within the structures of a democracy, a concept he phrased “tyranny of the majority” (p. 7). To safeguard against such tyranny and to maintain a democratic way of life conducive to progress, I contend that our schools must be tasked with developing critical thinking dispositions in our future adults. The literature on education for democracy was reviewed and aligned with …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Collaborating Teacher Leadership In Professional Development Schools (Pdss), Nedd James Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Professional Development Schools (PDSs) provide teachers with multiple new opportunities for leadership. As teachers are encouraged to assume new roles outside of the classroom and beyond the school, it is important to examine the concept of teacher leadership in practice--specifically, how it is perceived by those most closely associated with it. This study identifies a shared understanding of teacher leadership from collaborating teachers, using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design in PDSs within a large, diverse southern New Jersey school district-university partnership. The two-phase study examines perceptions about teacher leaders through data collected from the Teacher Leadership Inventory (TLI) (Angelle …