Education Commons^™

Loose Coupling Within Special Education, Christina Sedrel

Master's Theses

Since the Salamanca Framework was established in 1994, countries have made a concerted effort to work to promote special education, namely inclusive education or inclusion. The recognition of students with special educational needs (SEN) has lead to national policies in which students with SEN are brought into the classroom along side their peers. Despite these efforts, there is an interruption between policy and practice which ultimately prevent students with SEN to enter the classroom or to receive an education. This thesis looks at the loose coupling of policy and practice with in special education by analyzing the practices of nine …

High-Stakes Testing: The Student Voice, Julianna Marie Cechowski

Master's Theses

There has been an intense debate about standardized testing since they were first introduced into public schools in the nineteenth century. In this research, it is important to know why standardized tests were created and how they have been debated. Roy C. Owens said. "We cannot know where we're going if we don't know where we've come from." Past information is important in this research because it will show how far we have progressed since the start of the standardized testing movement.

What started out as standardized testing later changed into high-stakes testing. The high-stakes were created by tying student …

Collective Social Capital Within A Performance-Based Management System, Melissa E. Sandoval

Master's Theses

Local education agencies utilizing performance-based management systems as a means to improve educator effectiveness and student performance is becoming more prevalent within the United States. High-need schools are implementing these systems and endeavor to create an environment that promotes a professional learning community that improves educator quality and student achievement. This study seeks to measure the level of collective social capital generated by the implementation of one such management system, Rewarding Excellence in Instruction and Leadership, through the use of a sociological case study. Through the use of document analysis and interviews, the degree of collective social capital fostered will …

The Coupling Of The Visual Arts With The Core Curriculum, Victoria Anne Beagle

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of the relationship between the visual arts and the core subjects in American public education, and how this relationship has changed over time. Additional aims of the study included how visual arts educators have positioned the visual arts in relationship to the core subjects since the visual arts entered public education. An initial examination of the current state of art education reveals the tenuous position it holds in 8America's schools. After identifying the four dominant paradigm shifts in art education during the twentieth century, each paradigm was examined through the …

Women In Leadership And The Politics Of Power, Caitlin Maeve Kendall

Master's Theses

With the use of intimate interviews, this qualitative research study employed an experiential, story-telling approach to gather a more thorough understanding of individual female experiences in leadership positions in the field of education in relation to the literature on female leadership in a gendered workforce. Although this study only included the experiences of several women leaders in the field of education in the Chicago area, the preexisting research on the topic guided the interview questions and divulged the nexus between a culture of systematic gendered hierarchy in the workplace and the strategies and characteristics of success employed by female leaders …

Rethinking Teacher Quality: Narrow Versus Broad Conceptions Of Capability, Anthony Costa

Master's Theses

This paper examines the prevailing notion of teacher quality today. While there is wide agreement that teachers are the primary factor in schools determining student achievement, there is disagreement about which attributes constitute a high-quality teacher. Different approaches to improving teaching spring from different conceptualizations of capability. Since teacher quality consists of particular abilities that allow teachers to excel in their work, we need to understand how the abilities of high quality teachers are acquired, maintained and expanded, or, conversely, how these abilities are unrealized, arrested and diminished. The Strategic Management of Human Capital (SMHC) project represents the dominant approach …