Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Missouri, St. Louis

Dissertations

Theses/Dissertations

2016

Assessment

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Education

Taking The “Squeeze” Off Of Social Studies: A Phenomenological Study Of Teacher “Curricular” Autonomy And Its Effects On Social Studies Instructional Time, Jerri Antoinette Johnson Aug 2016

Taking The “Squeeze” Off Of Social Studies: A Phenomenological Study Of Teacher “Curricular” Autonomy And Its Effects On Social Studies Instructional Time, Jerri Antoinette Johnson

Dissertations

The state of social studies instruction in US schools has become dismal. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain an understanding of the impact of high stakes testing on social studies teaching when it is not tested by the state. I examined the elementary teacher’s “curricular” autonomy (curricular/instructional decision making) within the context of social studies teaching in a suburban low performing, urban demographic, school. Participants were asked to describe the experience of making instructional decisions regarding social studies education. The specific aims of this study were to: 1. reveal the meaning of teacher autonomy for teachers in …


Conceptualizing And Validating The Character Virtues Index (Cvi), Mark Allen Liston Aug 2016

Conceptualizing And Validating The Character Virtues Index (Cvi), Mark Allen Liston

Dissertations

Can a valid, reliable measure of multi-dimensional adolescent character be developed? Goals were: 1) To construct a grid of trait lists by experts in Positive Psychology (PP), Character Education (CE), and Positive Youth Development (PYD) to create the Character Taxonomy as a conceptual basis; 2) to construct the Character Virtues Index (CVI) as a brief measure of the taxonomy’s traits; and 3) to validate CVI. The Character Taxonomy produced 18 traits that were hypothesized to cover the various dimensions of character. Two CVI field tests produced a reliable measure with 11 factors for a validation study. The validation study of …