Education Commons^™

Hospital-Based Educational Services And The Well-Being Of Children With Chronic Illness: A Self-Study, Samantha Gold Oberstein

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Nature Versus Nurture: Campus Involvement’S Effect On Student Leadership Development, Stephanie Souvenir

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to find if leadership skills are developed from co-curricular involvement. Research would determine whether natural-born leaders were drawn to student involvement opportunities, or whether involvement develops the average students’ leadership skills. To arrive at a conclusion, research asked the question “Does involvement on a college campus develop leadership skills?” Research was answered by quantitative research. Fifty undergraduate students from a private Midwestern university were surveyed. Each participant was given two assessments. One was a leadership self-assessment and another was a campus involvement assessment. The campus involvement assessment was created for the purpose of this …

Understanding The Meaning African-American Men Give To Their Student Leadership Involvement And Engagement Activities In College, Karl A. Brooks

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore and gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences and perceptions of African-American (A-A) men who are persisting in college and who demonstrate participation in co-curricular activities defined as student leadership involvement and engagement activities (SLIEA). The study was designed to gain a better understanding of the meaning actively engaged A-A men make of their college experiences and how these experiences serve to guide their actions toward persistence in college. Ten A-A men from three different institutions participated in individual open-ended interviews. Results and findings indicate that regardless of students’ …

Barriers And Supports To Curricular Innovation, James P. Klock

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Teachers and administrators frequently agree that curriculum is not suitably tailored to their specific students. Using paired interviews with teachers and administrators, this study explores how teacher/administrator and teacher/societal interactions support and impede teachers' ability to express curricular freedom.

Learning To Live: Urban Black Male Youth, Curriculum Protest And Transformative Citizenship, Colette Thelemaque-Collier

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Social justice curriculum argues that preparing students for life should involve a process of dialogue and schooling as a place of power disruption versus an approach built on social and political neutrality. This study examined the experiences and perceptions of urban Black male youth who participate in social justice curriculum. Through narrative inquiry, I used the concepts of Black “curricular protest” (Watkins, 2005) and concenticization (Freire, 1993) to understand how urban Black male youth who engage in curriculum as critique come to understand their own “transformative citizenship development” (Banks, 2008). Across three interviews, participants shared their experiences to inform more …

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of A Character Education Program To Prevent Bullying In Fourth And Seventh Grade, Deborah J. Shapiro

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to assess whether bullying behaviors were impacted by the character education curriculum Character Counts! in fourth and seventh grade students. More specifically, over time are the perceptions that the students had of bullying behaviors impacted and is there a difference between the perceptions that boys and girls had of these behaviors. A survey was given to fourth and seventh grade students in a school district in a northern suburb of Chicago for three consecutive years, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The goal of the survey was to see if Character Counts! was having an impact. …

The Relationship Between Employability And Hope, Christa Hinton

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to quantitatively examine the relationships between employability and hope. Using a sample of 266 Master of Business Administration students at a large Midwestern private university, this study hypothesized that one, there was a relationship between hope and employability and two, of the predictor variables, agency was more likely than pathways to predict employability. Results indicated that there is a correlational relationship between hope and employability. Regression analysis revealed that agency predicts employability. Implications for career professionals include the ability to enhance employability through increasing hope, increasing the motivation to reach career goals through …

Closing The Gap: Use Of The Instructional At-Home Plan (Iahp)® By African American Parents And The Impact On Literacy Achievement Among Their Kindergarten Children, Tanya Foster Demers

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this ex post facto study was to investigate the use of the Instructional At- Home Plan (IAHP)® by African American parents and its impact on kindergarten literacy achievement among their children. The study used DIBELS data from students who attended a Chicago Public School with a population that averaged 98.6% black and 96.75% low-income status. Parents of students who attended classes for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years utilized the Instructional At-Home Plan. The achievement of their children was analyzed and compared to those students who attended kindergarten for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years: students whose …

The Changing Role Of The School Psychologist In Response To Intervention, Sharon Murphy-Price

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, school psychologists have used the I.Q. discrepancy model to measure academic achievement versus student academic ability in order to determine if the student may be eligible for special education services under the category of specific learning disability (SLD). With the reauthorization of IDEA 1997 in December 2004, new policies under Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) were signed into law and became effective July 1. 2005. While the use of the I.Q. discrepancy model is permitted, technically adequate assessments and researched based instructional practices must also be in place and student progress recorded before students can be diagnosed …

The Meaning Of Running In American Society, Kristin Owen Westfall

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Most media resources, medical associations, articles of popular culture, and sports-related companies promote running as an activity that builds self-esteem and supports general physical and mental health. This paper delves into the connection between running and the characteristics of our society. The analysis examines the meaning of running, as a symbol of our society that perpetuates ideals of corporatization, consumerism, capitalism, and gender stereotypes. Additionally, this paper examines the ways running is perceived and participated in; and how they have changed overtime, alongside political, economic, and historical events.

The Post-Black Aesthetic And Meanings Of Blackness Through The Collage Narratives Of Kara Walker And Fred Wilson, William Hill

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The 1990s spawned a new generation of African-American artists who worked to understand and deconstruct meanings of blackness within the context of the post-black aesthetic. Their conceptualized installations resulted in various discourses on the nature of race, culture and identity within the framework of exhibition and collection. Considered 'post-black' by critics, these artists sought to reexamine black aesthetics through the dialects of disenfranchisement, desire and hegemonic forms of representation in American culture. From this perspective, I will investigate the installation art of Kara Walker and Fred Wilson, illustrating how these practices inform and challenge racial stereotypes prevalent in visual culture. …

Trauma And Identity: Action As A Response To State Violence In Colombia, Alison J. Paul

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict has produced a myriad of types of violence as well as individual and social trauma. In the early 2000s, the proliferation of extrajudicial killings of non-combatant citizens by the Colombian armed forces left behind thousands of families to deal with the aftermath of their loss of a loved at the hands of the state. This phenomological research specifically looks in depth at the narratives of seven Colombian victims of state crimes that have been transformed through their experience of political violence and the actions they have taken in response to state crimes. Both individual and collective …

It Takes Leadership To Build A Village: A Portrait Of A Public School Community That Is Closing The Achievement Gap, Julie Maccarthy

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This case study explored a high-achieving elementary school on Chicago’s far South Side that fosters academic success for its African American students who come from predominately low-income homes. Tyler School serves a demographic group that historically underperforms. Yet multiple measures of evaluating student achievement indicate that Tyler is an exceptional school.

The research question driving this study is this: How does the school’s administrative team at Tyler School create conditions that support student achievement? Secondary questions explore the school's climate, teachers' qualifications, curriculum, and the other factors that contribute to student success. Interviews with administrators, teachers, and parents, as well …

The Impact Of Year-Round Education On Fifth Grade African American Reading Achievement Scores In An Urban Illinois School, Carolyn A. Merrill

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to determine the impact of the year-round education school calendar on the standardized test performance of fifth grade African American students, as measured by the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) in reading. The ISAT reading scores from two year-round education (YRE) schools (School A and School B) were compared with two traditional calendar education (TCE) schools (School C and School D). The selection of schools was based on numerous factors in order to ensure that the year-round education schools and traditional calendar education schools were similar in socioeconomic status and in the …

Becoming: One Teacher’S Journey Into Social Justice Education, Elizabeth C. Fyffe

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This autoethnographic study examines how a first year teacher, self-identifying as a social justice educator, comes to understand the lived experience of becoming a professional. The purpose of the study was to explore the unique challenges, perspectives, and philosophical contradictions that present themselves in the daily life of a social justice educator in a public elementary school setting. Through self-reflective journaling five becomings were revealed to be intertwined in the process of developing as a social justice educator: becoming a classroom manager, becoming a content specialist, becoming an implementation virtuoso, becoming an assessment architect, and becoming a balanced educator. It …

With Distinction: Examining The Relevance Of Bourdieu’S Cultural Capital In Relation To Community Music Programs And Social Transformation, Caolfionn Yenney-Henderson

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the ways in which leaders of community music programs entangle these organizations, either consciously or subconsciously, in various forms of democracy, citizenship and social reproduction/transformation. I begin by exploring Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital and habitus as well as Michael Apple’s hidden curriculum in order to illustrate the ways in which community education programs contribute to the process of social reproduction. I then examine two community music programs in Chicago, Illinois, the Citizen Musician Initiative and the Old Town School of Folk Music, exploring the ability of these programs (and others like them) to function as forces …