Education Commons^™

Investigating The Impact Of Student Opt Out On Value-Added Measures Of Teacher Quality, Joshua Marland

Doctoral Dissertations

Student assessment nonparticipation (or opt out) has increased substantially in K-12 schools in states across the country. This increase in opt out has the potential to impact achievement and growth measures used for educator and institutional accountability. This simulation study investigates the extent to which value-added measures of teacher quality are impacted as a result of varying degrees of opt out, as well as various types of nonrandom opt out. Results show that the magnitude of opt out has a greater impact on stability of value-added estimates than the type of nonrandom opt out patterns simulated in this study, with …

Using Exemplar Items To Define Performance Categories: A Comparison Of Item Mapping Methods, Ana Karantonis

Doctoral Dissertations

Score reporting is an extremely important and yet often neglected component of large-scale assessment programs. One element of score reporting that frequently leads to misunderstanding is the interpretation of performance levels. One way to help define performance levels is through the use of "exemplars." Exemplars are test items that are supposed to best characterize each performance level. In this study, a Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to examine the performance of two item-mapping methods and different criteria for identifying exemplars under several simulated conditions. The results of the study were neither clear nor systematic across all conditions and performance levels; …

Inclusion Of Students With Learning And Behavior Problems: Knowledge, Attitudes, And Inclusive Practices In Turkey, Hanife Ece Ugurlu

Doctoral Dissertations

Inclusive education has become one of the primary goals of education policy across the world in order to achieve education for all. However, there have been various interpretations with respect to what constitutes inclusive education. In addition, limited research exists on teachers’ perceptions, knowledge, and competencies related to inclusive education and students with special needs. The purpose of preliminary research in this study was to validate the Turkish version of the International Survey of Inclusion. The purpose of the second study was to examine Turkish teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and skills about inclusion of students with diverse learning and behavioral needs. …

Evaluating A Translingual Administration Of The Early Grades Math Assessment (Egma) In The Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Fernanda Gandara

Doctoral Dissertations

Translanguaging is a view around languages that normalizes diglossia without separation: the linguistic resources of the bilinguals are considered one integrated system. Translanguaging is also a language practice of bilinguals, who select features from their entire linguistic repertoire to make sense of the world around them. Translanguaging is widely used by students and teachers in the bilingual classroom, as it allows students to build upon their entire set of resources, enhance learning outcomes, perform identities, and develop their languages even further. However, translanguaging is rarely used in assessments of bilinguals. Assessments of bilinguals, especially large-scale tests, are typically monolingual in …

Critical Language Awareness In An Ell Urban Language Classroom: Transforming A Latina Teacher’S Language Ideology, Yvonne V. Fariño

Doctoral Dissertations

How can language be re-conceptualized as a tool and resource in contested pedagogies? Vygotsky theory of the mind (1978, 1986, 1998) and Engeström Activity Theory (1987, 1992) document how learning and development are situated within sociocultural contexts (Scribner & Cole, 1981; Tharp & Gillmore, 1988). Vygotsky theory of the mind (1978) central tenet is “understanding everyday activities and of cognitive processes” (Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004: 467), or the process of appropriation itself, as it happens in everyday practices without isolating it from social context or human agency. Even though the goal of activity theory claims to be multi- voiced …

Social-Emotional Development Assessment: Scale Development For Kindergarten Through Second Grade Youth Universal Screening, James F.M. Brenchley

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this project was to address a significant gap in the research literature with regard to available screening tools that allow young children to self-identify needs related to their social-emotional development. A review of current evidence-based social-emotional tools led to the identification of seven domains most frequently utilized: self-regulation, emotional regulation, social skills, self-concept, school connectedness, social responsibility, and optimism/positivity. To accomplish this endeavor, two studies were conducted to develop a screening measure that demonstrated adequate psychometric properties, but also minimized cost related to time for implementation. The first study was a review of 105 pilot scale items …

“Going The Extra Mile”: Perspectives And Experiences Of Coaches Supporting Primary School Teachers In Sierra Leone, Ashley Clayton Hertz

Doctoral Dissertations

Limited research exists that explores instructional coaching as a component of teacher professional development in low-income, developing countries. In response to this gap in the literature, I used an intrinsic case study design to explore the experiences and learning of a cohort of coaches supporting primary school teachers in a whole school development/ early grade reading initiative in Sierra Leone. Using an adaptation of Valsiner’s (1997) Zone Theory as a conceptual framework and analytical lens, I explored coaches’ perspectives of their knowledge and beliefs; coaching actions and experiences; constraints within their context; and professional learning and support needs. By examining …

The Cultural Construction Of Diverse Other(S): A Discourse Analysis Of Institutional Policy, Rachel E. Friedensen

Doctoral Dissertations

Institutions of higher education are tasked with grappling with their long histories of exclusion and inequality. As more members of historically marginalized groups gain access to higher education, colleges and universities strive to create more equitable environments within their walls and to produce equity-minded democratic citizens. These institutions turn to policy to help them achieve these ends. These policies often emphasize diversity—a multivalent concept that often simply means difference, but also serves as a stand-in for the policy performances produced by institutions as they attempt create equitable and just campuses. Diversity’s multivocality inspires the main question that this study answers: …

Why Class Matters: Understanding The Relationship Between Class, Family Involvement, And Asian American College Students’ Success, Blair Harrington

Masters Theses

Drawing on intensive interviews with 61 Asian American undergraduates from diverse class and ethnic backgrounds, this paper investigates the relationship between class, family involvement, and student success. I assess three hypotheses derived from the literature. First, social reproduction theorists suggest that parents from advantaged class backgrounds provide more support—economic and cultural capital—to their children than parents from disadvantaged class backgrounds, which leads to greater success for these advantaged offspring. Second, some research challenges this view, arguing instead that class does not impact students’ receipt of support or their resulting success. Third, some now suggest that larger amounts of support may …

Z-Cube: Mobile Living For Feminist Nomads, Zi Ye

Masters Theses

Homes proclaim our social standing and reflect the trend of the times. This project seeks to explore and redefine the relationship between modern homes and modern women who strive for mobile life styles.

Modernism and globalization have brought us a new way of living that could have never been imagined before— our workspace and homes are no longer limited to a specific unit but have extended to the entire globe. The physical changes compelled by modernity have also complemented the changing role of women. Since the beginning of the 20th century, modern women have expanded their lives outside of their …

Factors That Shape Arab American College Student Identity, Abdul Rahman F. Jaradat

Doctoral Dissertations

Arab American identity has not yet received the research attention and scholarship that it deserves. In this dissertation, I have qualitatively studied the narratives of young Arab American college students and recent graduates. The research questions that I explored include what makes them Arab Americans, and what are the factors that help them identify as such. By focusing on Arab Americans and their identity factors, I have presented the narratives of those women and men who self-identify as Arab American and quoted their accounts of how they navigate this undervalued, misunderstood, and stereotyped identity. I have used ethnic and racial …

Cross Case Study Of An Elementary Engineering Task, John Heffernan

Doctoral Dissertations

Designerly play has been identified as a fundamental component of childhood learning (Baynes, 1994; Petroski, 2003). However, as students enter grade one and beyond, the increasing academic focus has resulted in the loss of opportunities for designerly play (Zhao, 2012). At the same time, there are increasing calls to increase the number, skill, and diversity of STEM workers (Brophy, Portsmore, Klein, & Rogers, 2008). The robotics based Elementary Engineering Curriculum (Heffernan, 2013) - used by students in this study - and other similar projects have the potential to increase the STEM pipeline but elementary engineering is not well-understood. Research is …

Let’S Take An Adventure: Exploring Beginner Writing In Chinese By Non-Heritage Learner, Ping Geng

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract Due to the globalization and economic growth, both the U.S. and Chinese governments increased their investment in Chinese language education across the US, especially in K-12 schools (Shi, 2010). This rapid development demands tremendous support, especially from the research on Chinese language learning and teaching. Unfortunately the research in this area is very limited, particularly on writing in Chinese. For those whose first language is alphabetical, writing in Chinese is tremendously difficult. Learners of Chinese usually do not compose writing until intermediate high level, before which learners usually learn to decode and write Chinese characters (Ke, 1998; Shen, 2005). …

Supporting Black And Brown Females’ Stem Identity Construction Through Mathematics Teacher Noticing: A Mixed Methods Study, Carolyn Gardner

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study explores the nature of the relationship between a teacher’s experiences and her pedagogical practices that are oriented to support female students of color identity construction in relation to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies and careers. The narratives and class observations of the female mathematics teacher of color who is a STEM career changer were used to identify ways in which the teacher’s lived experiences supported her mathematics teacher noticing and influenced her adaptive teaching practices. Student surveys and individual student focal interviews were analyzed to assess the students’ perceptions of the teacher’s support and their …

Examining The Effectiveness Of A Sentence Construction Intervention Combined With Self-Regulation Instruction Using A Regression Discontinuity Design, William Furey

Doctoral Dissertations

The Language and Writing strands of the Common Core State Standards place a heavy emphasis on sentence-level conventions including syntax/grammar and mechanics. Interventions targeting these foundational skills are necessary to support struggling writers as poorly developed sentence construction skills inhibit more complex writing tasks. This study examined the effects of a supplemental intervention on the writing skills of fourth grade students identified as struggling writers. The intervention used explicit instruction and the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) framework to teach students a sentence construction strategy along with self-regulation procedures. A regression discontinuity design was used to test whether students included in …

Residence Directors As Residential Crisis Workers: Exploring The Role Of Campus-Based Critical Incident Stress Management In The Mitigation Of Compassion Fatigue, Noga Flory

Doctoral Dissertations

Residence Directors, as a result of repeated exposure to their students' trauma, are prone to developing compassion fatigue. Research on the use of college-based Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) has been shown to foster collaboration, consultation, and increased stress debriefing among staff who respond to critical incidents on campus. CISM can teach Residence Directors means of recognizing work-related triggers, contribute to the normalization of stress reactions, and improve healthy coping and self-care strategies. CISM can also potentially help reduce or diminish the incidence of compassion fatigue and burnout, thereby improving Residence Directors' overall professional and personal quality of life and …

Examining The Influence Of Graduate Student Experiences On Graduate Alumni Giving, Kevin Fleming

Doctoral Dissertations

As private philanthropy has become established as a critical source of financing for higher education institutions, a growing body of research has begun to explore those factors that enhance the likelihood that alumni will donate to their alma mater. One of the potential influences upon alumni giving that researchers have begun to investigate is how positive or negative student experiences increase or decrease the likelihood that alumni will “give.” However, much of this research focuses on the undergraduate alumni experience, and little consideration has been given to studying graduate alumni as a population with distinct giving tendencies, influences, and student …

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 …

The Leadership Experiences Of Female Special Education Administrators, Kerry E. Weir

Doctoral Dissertations

When Ella Young Flagg, the first female superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, proposed that educational leadership was a woman’s “natural field” she could not have predicted that one hundred years later women would have neither a majority of school leadership positions, nor would they be proportionally represented when compared with female teachers (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). Unlike the school leadership positions of the principal and superintendent that have been traditionally dominated by men, female leaders have achieved greater parity in special education administration (Keefe & Parmley, 2003). Although female special education administrators represent an exception to this phenomenon of …

Using Social Network Analysis To Investigate The Diffusion Of Special Education Knowledge Within A School District, Martha H. Von Mering

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to analyze the relationships that existed between the district-level special education leadership team and two elementary schools. The study used social network analysis (SNA) as the primary methodological and analytic approach to reveal the structural dimensions of the advice giving/receiving networks within the schools to delve more deeply into network relationships, collaboration, and knowledge impact. By mapping the existing network relationships through the lens of network centralization, reciprocity, and density, the study sought to analyze what, if any, link existed between the network properties and the extent to which leadership was distributed. The …

The Role Of Resistance And Social Capital In Facilitating Latino/A College Success, Patricia Sánchez-Connally

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between race and educational achievement among inner city, low income, first generation, and high achieving Latino/a students. Research on students of color has focused on cultural deficit models, which portray students as culturally deprived and proposes cultural assimilation as the solution (Nieto 2010; Delpit 2006; Solórzano & Yosso 2002). As a way to contest these models, I describe the role of Academic Support & College Readiness Program (ASP) as a place where community cultural wealth (Yosso 2005) is being created and transferred. Community cultural wealth is an alternative concept that uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) …

Getting It Right: African American Male College/University Presidents And Their Early Cultivation Of Self-Efficacy, James Randall

Doctoral Dissertations

GETTING IT RIGHT: AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS AND THEIR EARLY CULTIVATION OF SELF-EFFICACY MAY 2017 JAMES ANTHONY RANDALL, B.A., MOREHOUSE COLLEGE M.S.W., UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, COLLEGE OF SOCIAL POLICY AND PRACTICE Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by Joseph B. Berger Education remains the single most important means by which individuals in the United States can empower themselves economically, socially, and personally. In spite of this, a significant percentage of young African American males do not even appear to be competing or reaching for the educational opportunities before them as they rank the poorest amongst their peers in a …

Participatory Planning In The Brazilian Cerrado: Mainstreaming Land Use, Climate Adaptation, And Vulnerability In The State-Led Program City For Us, Euripedes De Oliveira

Doctoral Dissertations

The research highlights the urgency of communicating information about climate change, and to seeks to advance generalized knowledge about alternatives to mainstreaming land-use, climate adaptation, and vulnerability in participatory planning processes. It examines the state-led community-based planning process under the program City for Us (2005-2007), that took place in the state of Goiás, Brazil. My leading argument contemplates that vulnerability assessments developed through community-based planning processes might pave the way to further mainstreaming climate change adaptation in planning processes. The research investigates whether the planning process integrates vulnerability in the land-use discussion by the participants of the program. This research …

Implicit Bias In Pre-Service Teachers: A Mixed Methods Approach, Tara Pepis

Doctoral Dissertations

Research Goals/Questions Colleges of Education, through educator preparation programs, have applied a scattershot approach to addressing diversity through multicultural teacher education programs. These programs have not been shown to reduce bias levels in pre-service teachers and are not systematic or uniform. (King & Butler, 2015). This study focuses on an alternative approach to preparing pre-service teachers to work with diverse populations. It measured the levels of implicit bias in a sample population of pre-service teachers and attempt to reduce their implicit bias levels. The aim of the dissertation was to answer the following questions:

1. Can a brief, computer-based intervention decrease …

Perceptions And Perspectives Of Core Subject High School Teachers On The Phenomenon Of Creative Learning, Ralph Caouette

Doctoral Dissertations

Many schools, particularly high schools, struggle with creativity within their schools. Whether it is coming to terms in a contemporary manner with what creativity means in learning, or resourcing for implementation or inclusion of creativity, a lack of understanding and a wide array of perceptions persist amongst staff. Previous research on perceptions and perspectives of high school teachers toward creativity, particularly in mainstream subjects beyond the arts in high schools also remains lacking. The bulk of existing research has been primarily targeted at elementary and middle school levels, where strong sentiments for creativity’s place in schools and amongst youngsters is …

Moving From Trauma To Healing: Black Queer Cultural Workers’ Experiences And Discourses Of Love, Durryle N. Brooks

Doctoral Dissertations

Within the US context, there is a considerable misunderstanding of what love is. Normative discourse on love within our society is almost exclusively relegated to romance, familial relations, and or sexual connections. However, many scholars (Fromm, 1956, 1976; hooks, 2000, 2001; Tillich, 1952, 1954) have explored love within a critical theoretical construction, which has linked contemporary discourse on love to power, privilege, and oppression. In that sense, normative discourses on love are not innocuous but instead are hegemonic and serve as an ideology to perpetuate individualism and oppression. This qualitative study explores the impact of normative discourses of love at …

Promoting Self-Determination Skills Of Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities Participating In The Inclusive Concurrent Enrollment Initiative Programs Throughout Massachusetts, Lyndsey Nunes

Doctoral Dissertations

There are currently 15 Inclusive Concurrent Enrollment Initiative (ICEI) Programs throughout Massachusetts. Each program is different in its day-to-day planning but all adhere to the mission, full inclusion of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The purpose of this evaluative research study was to examine and understand the functional components of postsecondary education programs that promote self-determination for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and to differentiate programs that include or do not include these components. To answer the five research questions data were collected from Students, Educational Coaches, ICEI Program Coordinators, Transition Liaisons, Statewide Coordinator, observations, and record reviews. …

Demystifying Distributed Leadership: How Understanding Principles Of Practice And Perceptions Regarding Ambiguity Can Enhance The Leadership Capacity Of Department Chairs, Diana Bonneville

Doctoral Dissertations

Due to increased accountability, demands, and responsibilities, principals struggle to effectively lead schools. Therefore, they look to strengthen the structure and operations of schools by utilizing distributed leadership and the role of department chairs to build leadership capacity and improve school culture (Elmore, 2000; Harris, 2005; Spillane, 2008). A critical aspect of distributed leadership is a school’s organizational culture or “the way we do things around here” (Bryk & Schneider, 2003), which can positively or negatively influence any school initiative. Since organizational culture can foster collaboration and a shared commitment to school goals, which in turn can build leadership capacity, …

Urban Heritage Speakers As Multilingual Language Learners: Contexts In The 21st Century, Bridgette Moriarity

Doctoral Dissertations

Multilingual student populations in United States secondary schools are growing. These students enter a classroom with language learning experiences that span more than one language, and with cultural and community-based funds of knowledge- resources possessed by the multilinguals such as familiarity with multiple codes, ability to visualize as a speaker of a subsequent language, and active purposes for language learning - that may facilitate their learning of additional languages. These funds of knowledge may form the base for interaction between school and home cultures that may create points of learning negotiation known as Third Spaces. This study describes how the …

Special Education And Massachusetts Charter Schools: Examining Issues And Practices Associated With Enrollment, Placement And Compliance, Jennifer C. Baribeau

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the last ten years, charter schools have become a viable choice for parent’s seeking an alternative to traditional public schools. However, research shows this is not the case for students with disabilities. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine special education in charter schools and traditional public schools located in Massachusetts. I examined three key areas specific to special education; enrollment, placement and compliance, to determine if differences exist between charter schools and traditional public schools located in the state. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine differences between Massachusetts charter schools and public schools with respect to …