The Evaluation Of "The Wrong Answer Project" As Validity Evidence For The Social Consequences Of Testing, Darius D. Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

The use of educational tests for making high stakes decisions has had societal consequences for decades. Parents, teachers, and administrators have been willing to pay off, lie, cheat, and steal so that their children, students, and they themselves would not fall prey to the negative consequences of subpar performance on educational assessments. Respected psychometric scholars have supported Samuel Messick’s claim over the years, but their advocacy has caught minimal traction. I founded an initiative in 2019 – The Wrong Answer Project – that shows promise as a vehicle for collecting validity evidence based on the social consequences of testing and …

How Well Does The New York State Higher Education Opportunity Program Work For Black Men? A Mixed Methods Study, Michael A. Dejesus Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

Previous research trended towards a deficit-oriented approach to understanding and explaining Black male underachievement. The past education research has focused on discussing the underachievement of Black males in Higher education. Finding solutions often were prescriptive in “fixing” behaviors in Black males to improve academic achievement. Additionally, there has been a trend towards race-neutrality in education policies, programs, and admissions criteria. And there is a lack of research on whether race-neutrality further exacerbates Black male underachievement by ignoring key race and gender targeted supports services that could improve Black male academic outcomes in higher education. While Black men have historically struggled …

The Acquisition Of Advanced Level Chinese Heritage Language (Chl) Learners：A Comparative Analysis Concerning The Aspect Marker “Le了”, Jingjing Ao

Masters Theses

Over the decades, research on heritage language learners has been quite popular, but most studies concern Russian, Spanish and other languages rather than Chinese. The Chinese heritage language learner’s studies focus mainly on K-12 students and their learning motivations, writing characteristics, and identification recognition and those concerned with language acquisition address their vocabulary and verbal Chinese development. There have been very few studies about learning grammar. This study emphasizes on the acquisition of the aspect marker LE among advanced learners.

To investigate the acquisition characteristics of advanced CHL learners, this study adopted the advanced CHL learners as the research group …

Black Organizations As A Way To Increase Black Students’ College Attendance Rates By Improving Their Academic Performance At Primary And Secondary Schools, Leydi Mercedes Vidal Perlaza

Doctoral Dissertations

The racial academic achievement gap between Black students and other students is one of the most pressing education-policy challenges faced by the United States. This gap refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between these groups of students. Decades ago, Fordham and Ogbu’s theory about the “burden of acting White” was one of the most cited studies indicating the causes of this achievement gap. This theory indicates that Black students who do not perform well academically, do not want to achieve success at school because it is considered as acting White. However, this is an old way of thinking …

Critical Language Awareness In The Multilingual Writing Classroom: A Self-Study Of Teacher Feedback Practices, Emma R. Britton

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite the increasing amount of ethnolinguistic diversity in US schools and universities, traditional approaches to university writing instruction continue to advance the teaching of standard written American English (SWAE) from uncritical ideological standpoints (Bommarito & Cooney, 2016). To disrupt the naturalization of monolingual and standard language ideologies, existing scholarship shows the potential of critical language awareness (CLA), as a pedagogical approach which aims to develop students’ awareness of the relationships between languages, language varieties, language ideologies, power, and social inequities, alongside the teaching of SWAE (Fairclough, 1992). Because the production of student texts is central to a CLA pedagogy (Gilyard, …

Physical To Virtual: A Model For Future Virtual Classroom Environments, Stephen J. Fink

Masters Theses

Virtual reality is a technology that has seen unprecedented growth since the turn of the century with increasing applications within business, entertainment, and educational applications. As virtual reality technologies continue to develops and markets expand, the world may see an increased demand for virtual classrooms: virtual environments (VEs) that students may access through immersive virtual reality technologies to receive guided instruction, conduct simulations, or perform tasks typical in a classroom setting. While many studies document how virtual reality is beneficial to educational processes, there is little discussion on how virtual environments should be architecturally designed. Thus one may hypothesize that …

Exploring Language, Culture And Identity: Perspectives From Non-Native Arabic University Teachers In The Us, Brahim Oulbeid

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how six non-native (NN) university Arabic teachers make sense of language, culture, and identity. Specifically, it aims to understand how their experiences as Arabic language learners, preservice teachers, and classroom practitioners shape their classroom work, especially as they relate to their conceptions of teaching culture and the negotiation of their personal and professional identities. Four questions guide this study: how NN Arabic teachers perceive culture, what their culture teaching practices are, what identities they enact, and what their contributions to the teaching of Arabic as foreign language (TAFL) field are. To address these issues, the study draws …

The Passing Show, Kathryn Fanelli

Masters Theses

The Passing Show, examines the interface between contemplative practices and the destabilizing effect of the carnivalesque. A repurposed early 20th century merry-go- round is reconfigured as a conceptual vehicle for renewing our attention to removing hindrances. The site-specific installation, titled Vimoksha, is viewed through the lens of the radical imaginary, investigating notions of karmic inheritance through a heuristic approach to material processes, personal history, kinetics and sound.

The Role Of Translation Style In Fostering Cultural Connections Through World Literature, Bridget Baudinet

Masters Theses

While many high school English instructors in the United States teach world literature in translation, few of them explicitly present the literature as translated. High school English students would benefit from learning more about the linguistic origins of the world literature they read. This awareness would increase student understanding of the source culture and benefit their language skills. Various translation theorists have suggested methods to teach translational awareness, but few have offered advice on the type of translation to select. In my research, I examined the question of whether students would derive more cultural knowledge, and specifically language-related knowledge, by …

Preferences In Learning "Hiragana": A Comparative Study Between Mobile Apps And Paper Worksheets, Michiko Nakada

Masters Theses

In 2020, technology is generally accepted, and we can see many people using their digital devices such as smartphones everywhere. It is easy to see how dependent we are on technology, anytime and anywhere. Mobile apps are one of the time-effective tools for our daily lives. College students in the United States are always busy with their classes and assignments, and for them, apps are not only for having fun but are also convenient, reliable, and essential supporting tools for their academic and daily lives.

This paper examines the students’ preferences in learning the Japanese writing system “Hiragana” with mobile …

Kofifi/Covfefe: How The Costumes Of "Sophiatown" Bring 1950s South Africa To Western Massachusetts In 2020, Emma Hollows

Masters Theses

This thesis paper reflects upon the costume design process taken by Emma Hollows to produce a realist production of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company’s musical Sophiatown at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts in May 2020. Sophiatown follows a household forcibly removed from their homes by the Native Resettlement Act of 1954 amid apartheid in South Africa. The paper discusses her attempts as a costume designer to strike a balance between replicating history and making artistic changes for theatre, while always striving to create believable characters.

Inclusion And Exclusion Of Gender, Social Class, Race And Ability In Elementary German Textbooks, Emmalie Keenan

Masters Theses

Elementary German language textbooks today lack diverse representations of gender, social class, race, and ability. This thesis argues that the exclusion of those categories of diversity impedes the objectives of the communicative learning approach for students in first-year German courses. It examines research on diversity in textbooks with a focus on the concept of the “third space”, and shows how these findings apply to German students. An analysis of chapters from three German textbooks published between 2018 and 2020: Netzwerk neu A1, Impuls Deutsch 1, and Grenzenlos Deutsch provides specific examples of how images, texts, dialogs, grammar, and vocabulary exercises …

Shopping For Vibrators With My Abuela… #Space #Representation And #Latinidad In @Janethevirgin, Maria Guarino

Masters Theses

Jane the Virgin debuted on the CW in 2014 at a time when anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Mexican and anti-Latinx, sentiment in the U.S. felt very prevalent. This TV show was the latest to offer representations of Latin@s at the forefront and advanced a distinct political stance on immigration by calling for #immigrationreform. The series has not only been a ratings hit amongst the Latinx community, but has garnered wide acclaim from other races, ethnicities, and gender identities across the United States. This thesis explores the representation of the character of Alba (Ivonne Coll), through an investigation of the various physical and …

What's In A Label? Unpacking The Meaning Of Achievement Labels From Tests, Francis O'Donnell

Doctoral Dissertations

As a result of federal accountability policies, achievement level labels from statewide assessments are ascribed to public school students 17 times between grades 3 and 12. Depending on students’ performance and state of residence, they may be labeled inadequate or in need of support, below proficient or approaching expectations, level 3 or on track—to name a few examples. These labels are delivered through individual reports for students and parents as well as group reports for teachers. In spite of their widespread use, research on how achievement level labels are interpreted is minimal. The aim of this …

Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs

Doctoral Dissertations

This research brings together education research, queer theory, and performance theory to consider the worldmaking potential of the queer classroom. Using students’ stories about queerness in the classroom and my own stories about the classroom, I ask what we can learn from students’ voices about how queerness is/can be performed in the classroom and through relations. This study uses critical ethnography, personal narrative, and performative writing to examine the production of subject positions in the classroom, to connect this to a queer theoretical framework, and to explore the worldmaking potential of the classroom. I interviewed seven undergraduate students at a …

Fielding, Emily Tareila

Masters Theses

Fielding is an ongoing exploration of place-making, spaces of learning and relationship building in formal and informal learning environments. The project is comprised of a series of events and workshops that are embodied, multimodal, olfactory and engagement-focused and a mobile cart that helps to facilitate these happenings both in and out of the formal gallery space. I regard my art practice as pedagogical, a blurring of art and life into intentional ways of being in the world; an experience of sharing practices with others and a form of what is regarded in institutionalized art as social practice. I find art …

Developing Musicianship And 21st Century Learning Skills Using The Lisk “Creative Director” Series, Thomas Reynolds

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The Experience Of Chinese Students Enrolled In Graduate Music Education Degree Programs In The United States, Kailimi Li

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the experience of Chinese graduate students enrolled in music education master’s and doctoral degree programs in the United States. Specifically, it explored participants’ perceptions of (a) their educational experiences (past and present), (b) the challenges they faced, (c) their strategies for success, (d) the benefits they experienced as international graduate students in the United State, (e) the effect of this experience on their thinking, self-perception, and behavior, and (f) how they planned to move forward or move on following this experience. Participants were six native Chinese graduate students enrolled at the time …

How Students Of Japanese Perceive And Use Technology, David Rubino

Masters Theses

The role of technology in education has expanded to a near universal reality. In foreign languages the field of Technology-enhanced Language Learning, has long sought to effectively implement instruction with these tools, and often to great success, often through the guise of Computer-assisted Language Learning. However, most studies investigating the student perception of class structures incorporating technology are based on what instructors have implemented.

Students, the counterparts of instructors, often own more than one technological tool and will often employ these tools in their studies. For learners of foreign languages, certain aspects of technology are selected for various tasks based …

The History Of Massachusetts Transfer And Articulation Policies In Contexts Of Evolving Higher Education System Structure, Coordination, And Policy Actors, Daniel De La Torre, Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Community colleges carry out dual missions providing occupational and collegiate preparation in local communities across the United States. These institutions prepare students for advanced study via transfer policies that lead to enrollment in baccalaureate institutions. State higher education systems use transfer and articulation policies to strengthen academic pathways between two-year and four-year institutions. These policies rely on established governance to facilitate student transfer between sectors. The transfer and articulation literature stresses the importance of statewide policy guidelines, yet little has been written about the process of transfer policy development involving state higher education governance and policy groups and actors. The …

Role-Play In The Chinese Classroom, Matthew Werth

Masters Theses

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing push for foreign language teachers to use a communicative approach to language instruction. One area this can be seen is through role-plays, activities where students take on a persona other than themselves to complete a task in the target language. Despite the growing popularity of role-play, there has been little empirical research looking at the impact of role-play on students. In particular, the differences between large group and small group role-plays remain virtually unstudied.

This thesis looks at role-play in Chinese language classrooms from the perspectives of both teachers and students. …

Verbal -S Productions In The Structured Writing Samples Of Variable Aae-Speaking Fourth-Grade Students With And Without Language Impairment, Jacklyn High Felton

Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers in speech-language pathology and ethnolinguistics have worked to gain knowledge about typical and atypical language patterns of African American children who are identified as African American English (AAE) dialect speakers. Much progress had been made, but limitations in this field of knowledge have persisted, especially for AA children who demonstrate variable use of AAE, presumably through the process of assimilation in the school setting. Therefore, more information is needed to provide diagnostic markers for deviations in typical language development for variable AAE-MAE speakers. Prior empirical research has found that third- and fourth-grade AAE-speaking children with typical language development overtly …

Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past forty-years, neoliberal education reform policies in the U.S. have spurred significant resistance, often galvanized by claims that such policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy. Within this narrative, many activists call to “save our schools” and return them to a time when public schools served the common good. With these narratives in mind, I explore the foundational and persistent power structures that characterize the U.S. as a means to reveal the fundamental purpose of its public education system. The questions that guide my research include: (1) With an understanding that capitalism, white supremacy, …

Multimodal Assessment In Action: What We Really Value In New Media Texts, Kathleen M. Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

As the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing illustrates, writing teachers at all educational levels can no longer ignore multimodality and the challenges that come with incorporating multimodal writing—texts composed using a combination of sound, images, video, etc.—into the classroom (NCTE, Framework). A chief struggle most writing teachers face is how to evaluate the multimodal texts their students produce, texts that are inherently diverse. In answer to the calls of scholars such as Yancey, Herrington, and Moran for research exploring multimodal assessment in situated classroom practice, my dissertation examines what K-16 writing teachers are and should be valuing in …

Japanese Pronoun Adventure: A Japanese Language Learner's Exploration Of His Japanese Gender Pronoun, Takumi Nakano

Masters Theses

In Japanese, there are various kinds of first-person pronouns, and some of them express the referent’s gender identity. Gender-neutral pronouns are made in English- speaking world day by day, but there is not any common first-person pronoun which indicates the gender identity that positions the referent’s gender somewhere between masculine and feminine. The present paper conducted a life story research on the “Japanese life” of an advanced learner of Japanese at a university in the United States who has been exploring his gender identity by coining and using a new Japanese first- person pronoun 㛪 ore, which indicates “in the …

Reclaiming Voices And Identities: An Examination Of African American Educators’ Experiences Before And After Brown V. Board Of Education, Leta Hooper

Doctoral Dissertations

The Brown v. Board of Education rulings in 1954 and 1955 are often regarded as cases that set the precedent for dismantling schools operating on a racially “separate but equal” system. The outcome of the Brown v. Board of Education rulings led to the closing of Black schools as well as the dismissal and displacement of Black educators (Fultz, 2004). Black educators’ experiences of teaching in segregated and desegregated schools, as well as their role in challenging inequitable education conditions, are topics that continue to be ignored in mainstream society (Fultz, 1995; 2004; Siddle-Walker, 2013). The purpose of this life …

Transnationalizing Social Justice Education: Interamerican Frameworks For Teaching And Learning In The 21st Century, Mirangela G. Buggs

Doctoral Dissertations

Social Justice Education currently uses mostly U.S.-based theories and concepts, and it often relies upon nation-specific historical legacies and nation-centric contemporary understandings of patterns of inequality. This study offers interdisciplinary conceptual-historical frameworks garnered from historical studies, African Diaspora Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, along with studies of frameworks and pedagogies in critical and multicultural education to enlarge Social Justice Education. This conceptual study utilizes a world-historical analysis and focuses on the interconnectedness of the Americas—Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America— establishing a hemispheric and regional framework to inspire more transnational work in educational projects. Arguing that there are shared …

Slavery On Their Minds: Representing The Institution In Children's Picture Books, Raphael E. Rogers

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines how slavery is represented in contemporary children’s picture books. Given that many primary and secondary school teachers are committed to using picture book fiction to teach students about slavery, it is necessary to explore how slavery is depicted in these texts. One of the goals of this study is to contribute to the discussion about how the featured picture books engage with and respond to the early historiography of slavery, which asserted that Black slave were content and docile and that slave owners were kind and paternalistic. This study seeks to analyze how the picture books that …

Reading Queerly In The High School Classroom: Exploring A Gay And Lesbian Literature Course, Kirsten Helmer

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how teaching an English literature curriculum centered on the stories, experiences, cultures, histories, and politics of LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex) people constitutes a meaningful site for teaching and learning in a high school classroom. The dissertation offers insights on how the teaching of LGBTQI-themed texts in English language arts classes can be reframed by bridging the goals, practices and conceptual tools of queer theory to critical literacies teaching. The project follows principles of critical qualitative research and employs an ethnographic case study approach with the purpose of transforming educational …

Navigating The Interim, Joseph E. Saphire Jr

Masters Theses

Navigating the Interim attempts to build a framework for the ways in which visual art, media studies, and forms of social practice might intermingle within a career in the arts, as well as within a thorough art education curriculum. From broad theoretical analysis to the specificity of technical exercises and prompts, this paper serves as a roadmap for the ways in which production, teaching, and organizing might begin to merge into a single holistic practice. The author’s projects provide an anchor from which to analyze the various conceptual trajectories of art that have stemmed from modernism throughout the 20th century, …