Education Commons^™

The Almost Perfect Scale In Medical Students: Model Confirmation, Measurement Invariance, And Differential Item Functioning By Gender, Elizabeth Hollenback Ellinas

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the factor structure of two common perfectionism scales – the Almost Perfect Scale – Revised (APS-R) and the Short Almost Perfect Scale (SAPS) - in medical students. It was found that both two-factor models hold for them, albeit marginally for the APS-R. Measurement invariance by gender showed that while configural invariance and metric invariance hold, scalar invariance does not, indicating that the means for men and women may not be meaningfully compared by using these scales. Additionally, several items exhibited differential item functioning, most of which are in the Discrepancy scale of the APS-R. Overall, the SAPS …

Understanding How Manufacturing Employees Learn About Safety, Melissa I. Bloch-Meier

Theses and Dissertations

While millions of workers are injured on the job every year (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019), at least some of these injuries can be attributed to failure to use what was learned during safety training (Safety Partners LTD., 2014). By better understanding workers’ experiences, organizations may be better able to create more impactful safety training programs that will ultimately keep more workers safe. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how manufacturing employees learn about safety. A review of research has shown that empirical studies related to manufacturing employee safety training can be modeled through …

Understanding The Potential Of Anticipation, Teaching, And Response To Struggle In The Learning Of Mathematics, Erin Gae Edgington

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative semi-structured interview study investigated how the opportunity to learn with productive struggle emerges in a teacher’s beliefs, anticipation, planning, teaching, and response to struggle in learning mathematics. In this study, the experiences of student struggle in the teaching and learning of fractions was investigated through the experiences of three fifth grade and one sixth grade teacher. The purpose was to understand how the phenomenon of productive struggle in learning mathematics was impacted by teachers anticipation, planning, teaching, and response to struggle. The central research question asked: What role does productive struggle play in the design and implementation of …

Working Toward “Achievement”: Key Considerations For Providing Access To Equitable Opportunities To Students With Disability Labels, Kyle William Resch

Theses and Dissertations

School personnel are accountable for the academic “achievement” of students with and without disability labels (Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA], 2015). In Wisconsin, “achievement” is measured via performance on standardized academic assessments (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction [DPI], 2019). The use of these assessments privileges White middle-class students without disability labels (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Outcomes have been used to shame schools’ so-called poor performance while ignoring other indicators of success such as instilling real-world problem-solving skills, building positive learning communities, using a critical lens, and engaging in social activism (Connor et al., 2019).Many students with disability labels now receive instruction in …

Hybridized Internships And Service-Learning: An Inquiry Into Student, Community, And Higher Education Partner Experiences In A Community-Based Internship Program, Ben Trager

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores a community-based internship (CBI) program, a hybridization of internship and service-learning practices. CBIs are becoming more common in higher education, but literature on the practice of integrating internships and service-learning is scarce. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of a CBI through an investigation of student, community partner, and university staff experiences and perceived outcomes of the program. Using participatory action research approaches and a thematic analysis of interviews and student course work, this qualitative study occurred in two phases and included 31 participants. The analysis employs frames of private vs public in …

Anxiety And Social Withdrawal Among Children: Associations With Emotion Awareness And Emotion Regulation Strategy Use At The Intra- And Interpersonal Levels, Janae Ellen Teer

Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety and social withdrawal are two frequently experienced internalizing conditions among children. These early-onset challenges are associated with numerous maladaptive outcomes in the academic, social, and psychological domains (Levitt & Merrill, 2009; Long, 2018; Sanchez et al., 2018; Shernoff et al., 2017). While identifying anxious and socially withdrawn children in the classroom is difficult as symptoms generally occur internally, distinguishing between the conditions is perhaps more challenging as the two are closely associated, oftentimes overlapping constructs (Barzeva et al., 2019; Rubin et al., 2009). Particularly, it is unclear whether anxiety and social withdrawal are similarly or differently associated with key …

Non-Negotiable: A Case Study Of Implementing Antiracist Education In Two Milwaukee Suburban K-12 School Districts, Jennifer Luken

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

NON-NEGOTIABLE: A CASE STUDY OF IMPLEMENTING ANTIRACIST EDUCATION IN TWO MILWAUKEE SUBURBAN K-12 SCHOOL DISTRICTSby Jennifer Luken The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2021 Under the Supervision of Professor Marie Sandy, PhD

As a racial reckoning and civil unrest permeated 2020 and 2021, many were left asking: How did we get here? By and large, the American public seemed underprepared to understand the context under which these events unfolded. The ability to engage in a critical analysis of race and society oftentimes requires post-secondary education – or the experience of it first-hand – and is mostly lacking in K-12 schools. There …

The Role Of Emotionally-Supportive Teacher Beliefs And Behavior In Student Aggression, Bridget Garrity Brinckman

Theses and Dissertations

Overt aggression is a pervasive problem in schools. In 2017 alone, the US Department of Education reported over 360,000 aggressive incidents. According to the General Aggression Model, emotion regulation plays a key role in aggression. Teachers play a role in student regulation through their supportive (e.g., expressive-encouragement) and unsupportive (e.g., punitive) responses to students. This study examined the role of the classroom teacher in student aggression. Teacher emotion-focused beliefs about both the reasons for aggression and the effectiveness of emotionally-supportive responses to aggression, were explored. Teacher likelihood of mental health referral for anger and fighting (i.e., an emotion and behavior …

Using Cost-Effectiveness Analysis To Select Mathematics Screening Measures In Middle School, Samuel Maurice

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the utility of using cost-effectiveness analysis to select universal mathematics screening measures in middle school. Participants (n=1586) were students in Grades 6, 7, and 8 at two suburban middle schools in Wisconsin. Screening data, including previous year criterion-measure (Wisconsin Forward Exam) scores, fall Measures of Academic Progress scores, and curriculum-based measurement scores were collected in the fall of 2016. Multiple imputation was used to account for missingness, and linear combinations of screening scores were created using receiver operator curve analyses. Costs were calculated based on published standards, the CostOut® Toolkit, and the experience of content experts. Results …

American Indian Culture And Secondary Science Curricula: Examining The Confluence Of Native Epistemologies And U.S. Public Education Science Standards, Molly Anne Wolk

Theses and Dissertations

Innate to the traditional science curricula taught under the auspices of United States public education are a Neoliberal axiology and Eurocentric epistemology (Howard & Kern, 2019) that do not meet the cultural needs of American Indian students (Cobern & Loving, 2001). It is inequitable that American Indian students do not see themselves and their cultures reflected in traditional public school science texts and curricula. At the confluence of often-undifferentiated science curricula and American Indian culture and language, there is a need for a responsiveness that benefits American Indian students. This present study illuminates the research question, “What is revealed about …

A Pulse On Language Equity In First-Grade Urban Classrooms, Deborah N. Kuether

Theses and Dissertations

Students of color are the majority in many U.S. urban public schools, yet U.S. education policy and practice continue to be centered largely on White, middle-class, monocultural, and monolingual norms of educational achievement (Alim & Paris, 2017). The purpose of this phenomenological study was to learn more about the teacher decision-making process and the extent to which first-grade mainstream teachers include culturally and linguistically sustaining practices during literacy instruction. Evidence using the foundations of the critically conscious teacher framework (Joseph & Evans, 2018) and of the role of language and culture as a medium in teaching and learning (de Jong …

Complexity Of Gamification, Kompalli V M Jwala Seethal Chandra

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces ideas for determining the Complexity of Gamifying the learning of a task/skill. We have taken three different tasks: Learning of L2 Languages (Non-mother-tongue languages), Learning about Food preparation and Learning of Physical exercises and applied our ideas to identify the complexity of gamifying them. To further supplement our idea, we have taken few existing popular gamified tasks by 3rd party companies and addressed the complexity of making them, using our ideas, and how adding new features to them, will increase the complexity. In summary, our work presented in this thesis is useful in practice for estimating a …

An Examination Of Whether Grit, Belonging And Institutional Compassion Contribute To Emerging Adult Goal Pursuits And Reduce Pandemic-Related Stress, Cynthia A. M. Schmahl

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACTAN EXAMINATION OF WHETHER GRIT, BELONGING AND INSTITUTIONAL COMPASSION CONTRIBUTE TO EMERGING ADULT GOAL PURSUITS AND REDUCE PANDEMIC-RELATED STRESS

by

Cynthia A. M. Schmahl

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, May 2021Under the Supervision of Professor Jacqueline Nguyen, Ph.D.

This dissertation examines the merits of grit and belonging for emerging adults’ collegiate goal pursuits and the influence of institutional compassion amid COVID-19 challenges and stress. Participants were traditional full-time, undergraduate students ages 18-24, recruited from a national sample using Qualtrics, an online survey tool (N = 258; 60% women; 47.31% White, 18.46% Black/African American, 17.31% Asian, 10.77% Hispanic/Latino/a/x). Participants completed a survey …

Learners’ Experiences Of Written Complexities Development Through Discussion Board Activities In Chinese As A Foreign Language Class, Xiaorong Wang

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examines learners’ experiences in the development of written complexities during Discussion Board (DB) assignments in an Advanced university level Chinese class. Discussion Board was chosen as the avenue for written complexity development because it provides learners a supplementary space with additional time and opportunities for low anxiety writing. The data collection for this study came from two sources, DB posts and interviews. This study seeks to fill gap in the literature in two ways: one, this study proposes a measurement of written complexities that consists of propositional complexity, lexical sophistication and accuracy. Second, this study highlights …

Exploring The Division Algorithm In Euclidean Domains With Exploding Dots, Nicholas Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

We will give an overview of the representation of place value and arithmetic known as Exploding Dots and use this idea to explore the division algorithm. It is well-known that the ring of integers, the ring of polynomials, and the ring of Gaussian integers are all examples of Euclidean domains and therefore possess a division algorithm. Exploding Dots beautifully illustrates how one can perform division in any base and how this naturally leads us to division of polynomials. We will show how this same idea of having a “base machine” can be used to perform division in the Gaussian integers. …

Evidence-Based Practice Or Practice-Based Evidence? A Qualitative Examination Of School Psychologists’ Implementation Of Trauma-Informed Interventions, Abigail Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

Children who experience traumatizing life events are reported to be at greater risk for behavioral and emotional impairments that can diminish school performance. To address this, school psychologists can implement trauma-informed evidence-based interventions (TI EBIs), or treatments with an empirical basis that support the unique psychosocial needs of traumatized children in schools. However, a research-to-practice gap is described as negatively impacting school psychologists’ implementation of empirically-based direct intervention services. The present study aimed to examine the TI EBI implementation experiences of 16 novice school psychologists with regard to the distinct barriers and facilitators experienced within the in vivo school context, …

Latinos Raising Academically Gifted Middle School Students: Parental Academic Socialization And Consejos, Martha Aracely Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research study sought to understand how Latino parents use parental academic socialization (Hill & Tyson, 2009) and consejos (Delgado-Gaitán, 1994; Alfaro et al., 2014) as forms of home-based parental involvement to converse about education. A phenomenology approach was used to research and analyze data to describe the lived experiences of Latino parents raising academically gifted children middle schoolers while engaging in academic discourse. This study used semi-structured interviews with sixteen Latino participants who were US-born (n=7) and Mexico-born (n=9) from a large urban school district in a Midwestern city. The following major themes emerged: 1) parental academic socialization, …

Examining Virtual Mathematics Instruction: A Comparative Case Study Of In-Service Elementary Teachers With Mathematics Anxiety And Mathematics Teaching Self-Efficacy, Telashay Swope-Farr

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematics Anxiety (MA) and Mathematics Teaching Self-Efficacy (MTSE) have been reported as factors related to teachers’ mathematics instruction. This study investigated MA and MTSE in in-service elementary teachers’ virtual mathematics instruction. A comparative case study design was used to understand the relationship between MA, MTSE, and their virtual mathematics instructional practices. Two in-service elementary teachers from an urban public charter school district in a large metropolitan city in the Midwest participated. I employed qualitative methods to examine the results from the Abbreviated Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (AMAS), an adapted version of a researcher-developed instrument called the Mathematics Teaching and Mathematics …

Twining : Critical And Creative Approaches To Hypertext Narratives, Anastasia Salter, Stuart Moulthrop

English Faculty Books

Twining is both a critical consideration of Twine and works made with it during the first decade of the software; and an exploration of concepts and techniques for making things with Twine.