Education Commons^™

Responsive Technical Education Curriculum: An Exploratory Case Study Approach Toward Understanding Human Skills Alignment, Kari Lamoreaux

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Globalization and rapid changes in technology have led to a shift in the skills employers need. These changes have resulted in a gap between the skills people have and those required by industry. This exploratory case study sought to better understand the uniquely human skills employers desire and technical educators should teach in order to address this gap in a local context. The study was conducted in four phases. 1) Current literature was analyzed to identify commonly recurring human skills discussed in studies and reports. 2) These skills were then used as search terms in an analysis of occupational advisory …

Integrated Concept Mapping As A Method For Democratically Evaluating A Teacher Preparation Program In The Area Of Classroom Assessment Proficiency, Carrie Elizabeth Ashcraft

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation reviews current policies regarding Teacher Preparation Program (TPP) evaluation and addresses “accountability era” influences which often minimize factors related to equity and promote a limited view of teacher and school “effectiveness.” Integrated concept mapping is proposed as an alternative method of evaluation because of its democratic framework for accountability. Using this method, a TPP in the Mountain West was evaluated in the area of classroom assessment.

A Comparison Of The Effects Of Varied Verbal Prompts Paired With Visual Prompts On Echoic Verbal Behavior With Minimally Verbal Students, Chelsea Nielsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Previous research conducted by Valentino, Shillingsburg, Conine and Powell (2012) has recommended that practitioners do not utilize the word “say” before or in an instruction to reduce the word “say” being echoed. The current study sought to extend previous research by including the word “say” and comparing it with the condition of not using the word “say”. Components compared included how frequently responses occurred and how long it took for a response to occur. Two participants were included in the study, but only one participant completed the study. Findings agreed with the recommendation made by Valentino, Shillingsburg, Conine and Powell …

Identifying Self-Regulation Strategies Students Use When Cognitive Load Occurs, Linyu Luo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

When the amount of information to process exceeds students’ capacity to do so, that indicates a problem in the learning environment that will hinder students’ successful learning. This study found that students use a variety of strategies to help them manage their own learning when they felt overwhelmed by the amount of information they needed to process. Further, these strategies differed from those typically expected of students when they are not overwhelmed.

Estimating The Effects Of Forms Of Computer-Based Scaffolding In Problem-Centered Stem Instruction, Mason Reed Lefler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Much like Post-Sputnik 1950s era there is a lot of interest in making sure that United States does not fall behind in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. STEM learners are often presented with complex problems to solve both as part of their education and their work. Engineering education suffers from student dropout often due to how difficult it is to support students through solving problems. This dissertation is a close look at computer-based scaffolding, a method of supporting learners during problem solving through computer software. The first paper in this dissertation examines and resolves some of the debate …

Intra-Operative Language Assessment For Adult Brain Tumor Survivors: A Systematic Review, Carissa Jolley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Awake craniotomy and language assessment procedures for brain tumor survivors can drastically affect patient outcomes and quality of life. The goal of intra-operative language mapping is to help preserve vital communicative functions. However, there is currently no standardized set of measures for intra-operative language assessment. This systematic review identified behavioral language measures used during intra-operative procedures and the resulting outcomes for adult brain tumor patients, with the aim of helping clinicians and researchers select intra-operative language assessments supported by the highest levels of evidence.

PRISMA guidelines were used to systematically identify articles. Patient demographic and medical information, neuroimaging data, intra-operative …

School Resource Officers' Reports Of Training And Perceptions Of High School Students With Disabilities, Kandace T. Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this explanatory sequential, mixed methods research study was to identify the perceptions of school resource officers (SROs) regarding high school students with disabilities and their preparedness to work with this population, as a result of their SRO training. This study involved a national quantitative survey of SROs working in public high schools, followed by one-on-one interviews from the same sample to allow for a deeper analysis of the survey results and develop a theory on how training impacts SRO preparedness and their perceptions of high school students with disabilities. The resulting theory ascertained that the presence of …

Teacher Home Visits: Changes In Perceptions Of Key Stakeholders, Kevin R. Thomas

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Teacher home visits have been shown to improve student attendance, academics and to reduce behavior issues. Three groups are involved: the student, the teacher, and the family (or parent). This research focused on determining if and how the teacher home visit changes the perspectives, expectations, and relationships of these three groups. A survey followed by interviews of some of the students, parents, and teachers was used. The surveys and the interviews were evaluated. Results indicated that perceptions and relationships between stakeholders were improved. Due to low participation rates, results must be interpreted with caution. With these considerations in mind, I …

High School Biology Teachers' Integration Of Argumention In The Context Of Disciplinary Literacy Coaching, Ashley Strong

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Scientific argumentation is a core scientific practice. Although scientific argumentation has been linked to increased learning of scientific content, improved reading, writing, and critical thinking, traditional science classrooms have not included scientific argumentation. Teachers often have little experience learning or teaching science through argumentation and need support to integrate this complex practice of science into their classrooms. This study compared four high school biology teachers’ instruction of scientific argumentation as they worked with a literacy coach. Data were collected through interviews, audio recordings of classroom instruction and literacy coaching sessions, and artifacts. After analyzing the data, several key findings stood …

Changes In Healthy Eating And Physical Activity Behaviors Of Adult Participants In Create Better Health's Education (Snap-Ed) Program, Kami Bullock

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of delivery method on the nutrition, food resource management (FRM), and physical activity behavior of participants enrolled in either Create Better Health’s in-person or online courses. The pre-survey and post-survey included data on nutrition, FRM, and physical activity behaviors. The researcher analyzed preexisting data from 138 SNAP-eligible adults who participated in Create Better Health’s online and in-person courses.

Results showed similar improvements in most of the nutrition and physical activity behaviors among those who took the CBH courses online or in-person. The online course showed statistically higher scores for four …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of A Task Analysis Data Sheet Protocol In Training Educators To Use The You/Me Game During Direct Instruction Reading Groups, Mckenzie Niebergall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Teachers often struggle with classroom management during academic lessons. Self-adapted efforts to improve classroom management are often not founded on researched behavioral principles. These struggles and efforts impact student behavioral and academic outcomes. The You/Me game is a game included in many Direct Instruction curricula, specially sequenced curricula that encourage positive classroom management and the gaining of academic skills, as a means to reward students for correct academic performance. This study examined the effectiveness of providing a sheet of specific written instructions and allowing for clarifying questions in training four general educators to implement the You/Me Game for classroom management …

Relationships Between Middle School Students' Adaptive Reasoning When Creating Learner-Generated Drawings And Partner Talk During Inquiry-Based Mathematical Tasks, Angela M. Frabasilio

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Adaptive reasoning is one of five components students use to develop mathematical expertise and become mathematically proficient. When students adapt their reasoning they are logically thinking about the mathematical relationships between concepts and adapting their thinking to solve problems. Three Act Math Tasks are popular math problems used in schools in which students engage in adaptive reasoning. These types of problems are beneficial to students because they engage students in inquiry-based learning, a kind of learning where students work to pose questions, interpret data, design ways to solve the problem and present their solutions. Little is known about how students …

Collaborative Practices Of Rural Inclusive Postsecondary Education Program (Ipse) Directors, Elizabeth Susanne Goode Dimond

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Inclusive postsecondary education programs (IPSE) for students with intellectual disabilities (ID) are relatively new, having their formal beginning in the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA; P.L. 110-315) of 2008. These programs vary greatly and are found in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the United States. Those programs in rural areas face unique barriers and have unique strengths that affect how they collaborate and with whom they collaborate. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to describe the collaborative practices of rural IPSE program directors. This study gathered the lived experiences of rural IPSE program directors collaborating with agencies …

Using Generic Picture Cues To Promote Verbal Initiations During Play, Stephanie L. Mattson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often demonstrate difficulty communicating with others, and this may impact the extent to which they can engage in language during play. Previous researchers have used interventions to increase commenting during play with caregivers, siblings, and adult play partners. In these previous studies, researchers have taught participants to use text-based or audio recorded scripted phrases to facilitate communication. However, because these interventions include multiple components such as physical guidance and verbal reminders from another individual in addition to the textual or auditory scripted phrase, it is unclear the extent to which the specific words associated …

Predictors Of Special Education Inequity In Rural Rocky Mountain West Schools, Jac'lyn Bera

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Current research focusing on disproportionality and equity in schools focuses on the urban environment, resulting in a significant gap in our understanding of the challenges of rural schools. For rural, racially and ethnically minoritized (R/EM) students who have disabilities, this research is largely unavailable or minimal, and negatively affects our understanding of rural needs, barriers, and successes for this historically underserved population. There is even less research focused specifically on rural students in the Rocky Mountain West (RMW) region of the United States. Understanding these factors serves as a critical area of research, and is the focus of this study. …

Modeling A Pandemic: Investigating Student Learning About Disease Spread In The Context Of Agent-Based Modeling, Siyu Wu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a need for students to learn about public health issues, including the transmission of disease and methods for the prevention of epidemics. This study presents data from a project focused on developing computational microworlds to help middle school students learn about these topics. The microworld is designed to help students model and test their ideas about how a disease spreads through a population and how an epidemic can be prevented. I employed a lab-based case study approach to conduct one-on-one 1.5-hour interviews through Zoom with four middle-school students (ages 12-14). During the interview, the student …

Myside Bias Shifting In The Written Arguments Of First Year Composition Students, Lezlie Christensen-Branum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation reports on research conducted to better understand how college student writers learned to work against their own biases as they researched and wrote arguments. I conducted a review of former studies to design a curriculum that would help students avoid bias and increase their ability to write arguments tailored to specific readers in ways that accomplish their goals. This review also informed the kinds of data to be collected and analyzed in order to accomplish the research goal, which was to understand whether and how each of seven students enrolled in a composition course reduced their biases. I …

An Examination Of The Golden Ratio In General Education Classrooms, Carrie Mclaughlin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A large body of research indicates use of praise as a response to appropriate behavior is an effective classroom management strategy to increase appropriate behavior and decrease problem behavior. Since prior research also suggested that teachers tend to have more negative interactions with students than positive ones, use of a specific praise to reprimand ratio is commonly recommended in teacher preparation programs and professional development. However, recommendations regarding the optimal ratio vary and there is limited evidence to support use of any specific ratio. There have also been relatively few studies examining naturally occurring rates of teacher praise, reprimands, and …

Syntactic Complexity In Reading Comprehension: An Eye-Tracking Study Of Text Processing Among Bilinguals And Monolinguals, Guoqin Ding

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For Chinese students, studying in a country with different cultural components and language structures is challenging. Compared to English, the Chinese prefers shorter and simple sentence structure and allows for two sentences to be stated side by side. Different sentence structures in Chinese may influence native-Chinese readers’ understanding of English sentences and even a whole text. This exploratory study examined whether there were any differences between English monolingual and Chinese-English children while reading varied English texts with simple or complex structures at different reading difficulty levels. This study explored the differences across texts and readers, as well as the possible …

Delivering On A Promise: A Longitudinal Cohort Study Of Emergent Bilinguals' Academic Achievement In A Utah Dual Language Program, J. Eric Campbell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Emergent bilingual (EB) students are a growing population in the U.S. school system currently comprising over 10% of the total population. U.S. school districts have educated EB students using a myriad of practices, including dual language immersion (DLI). Many studies have looked at the academic achievement of native-Spanish speaking EB students, yet there is a dearth of research on DLI in medium-sized school districts in rural settings. This study focused on native-Spanish speaking EB students in a DLI program in a rural Utah district. Specifically, the study compared student academic achievement in English acquisition, English language arts, mathematics, and grade …

A Study Of Leadership Behaviors In Esports Contexts, Joseph C. Tucker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Soft skills, leadership in particular, are highly sought-after traits for businesses when searching for new employees. Using games as a tool to teach soft skills is fairly well documented. One way that games can do this is by creating a space where learners can practice these skills. Esports in particular seem to be an already existing space where modern, dynamic types of leadership are already practiced. In order to determine if this was indeed the case, I interviewed people who were involved in different levels of esports about the ways they behaved while playing esports. I found that in order …

Dynamic Contextualization Of Learners Within Educational Systems Through A Vygotskian Lens: A Telling Case Of Jesus Christ As An Educator, Nathan B. Meidell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study looked at Jesus Christ as a telling example of how transformative patterns of influence are exerted on learners by educators in educational systems. Based on concepts found in L.S. Vygotsky’s work, this study found these patterns acting as a current or stream of consistent aims and meanings introduced and reinforced by educators in the form of practices and methods that generated momentum toward/around desired learner responses. This study’s insights into these patterns of influence as employed by Christ during his ministry and as experienced by his learners provided new means of both interpreting their success and potentially replicating …

Children's Mathematical Engagement Based On Their Awareness Of Different Coding Toys' Design Features, Joseph S. Kozlowski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Tangible coding toys have been promulgated as useful learning tools for young children to learn computer science and mathematics concepts and skills. Although research shows coding toys can support mathematics for early childhood aged children, little is known about the specific design features of coding toys that afford mathematical thinking concepts and skills to young children. The purpose of this study was to examine kindergarten-aged children’s awareness of the design features in coding toys and to understand how those design features afford children’s engagement with mathematics. The dataset used for this study was collected as part of design-based research NSF …

What Keeps Technology And Engineering Teachers In The Classroom? A National Mixed Methods Study, Cory J. Ortiz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Teacher retention is a significant issue impacting educational agencies around the country. Factors that have been found to be predictors of teacher retention include sense of belonging, sense of efficacy, and job satisfaction. Many personal and professional characteristics of a teacher also have been found to predict teacher retention. The purpose of this research was to explore how these factors predicted Technology and Engineering Educators' (TEE) teachers’ persistence to remain in the teaching profession. Furthermore, this research sought to identify programs that existed to help support TEE teachers in their persistence intentions.

This research found teacher job satisfaction was a …

The Role Of Music Context In High School Students' Translations Among Representations In Algebra, Danielle Divis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Previous research suggests that integrating music into mathematics can benefit students’ mathematics learning but leaves questions as to exactly how students interact with music context and mathematics simultaneously. This study used a descriptive multiple-case study design to understand the way high school students utilize music while engaging in music-contextualized algebra tasks. Eight pairs of high school students participated in this study. The procedures included training four volunteer high school teacher-researchers to carry out three music-contextualized mathematics lessons in their own classes. Data sources for each pair included three student work samples, three audio-video recordings of class sessions, and one audio …

Maternal Education And Changes In Parenting Beliefs, Values, And Practices, Becca E. Richards

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mothers’ education level has been an important predictor of life outcomes across many different areas. Higher education in mothers has been associated with outcomes such as higher reading levels and decreased chances grade repetition for their child. Due to gaps in the research, this study emphasizes the importance of mothers’ beliefs about parenting, the practices they use, the amount of closeness they have with their child, and how they change when mothers return to school. This study used new mothers and their newborn children across time to understand whether mothers’ beliefs, practices, and values change when mothers return to school. …

Increasing Independence In Students With Disabilities Through The Use Of Visual Activity Schedules Within The General Education Classroom, Natalie Stevens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Individuals with disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often require more prompts and specialized instruction than their peers in the school setting. These individuals often benefit from using Visual Activity Schedules (VAS) to learn to complete routines and increase independence while decreasing the needs for adult help and prompts. This study uses VAS plus prompting to increase independence in three children with ASD within the general education elementary classroom. During the study, VAS were introduced and paired with specific prompts aimed to help students become more independent at completing a given routine throughout their school day. Results from the …

The Influence Of A Values Affirmation Intervention On Students' Mathematical, Social, And Epistemological Empowerment, Carrie Olson Bala

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to better understand the influence of educators’ attention to identity construction as tenth grade Emergent Bilinguals and native English-speaking students develop mathematical, social, and epistemological empowerment in a mathematics classroom. I incorporated a framework detailing critical consciousness as a mediator between students’ identity construction and their empowerment development. I employed a mixed methods transformative design, utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the influence of a values affirmation intervention on students’ critical consciousness and empowerment. To follow, I incorporate integrated analysis to highlight emerging and differing patterns in the empowerment data, the specific characteristics …

A Content Analysis Of Graphical Literacy Skills Instruction In Fifth Grade Core Reading Programs, Georgia A. Bunnell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this content analysis study was to identify the affordances embedded in core reading program (CRP) teacher’s manuals that facilitate graphical literacy skills as a component of literacy instruction. In the informational text selections of selected CRPs, graphic category, type, function, and connection to text were assessed to determine the kinds of graphics used to convey information. The instructional guidance associated with these graphics was then evaluated for type of instruction (no instruction, reference, and teach) and explicit instruction elements. The results from this study indicate that representation photographs and general images are the most prevalent type of …

Early Sibling Play Interactions As A Source Of Developmental Support For Toddlers: Observation Of Young Children's Developmental Support During Play With Toddler Siblings, Tasha L. Olson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The sibling relationship is a unique and important context for infant and early child development. Despite the important role of siblings and the unique aspects of the sibling relationship, sibling interactions are largely overlooked by scholars as a resource of potential developmental support. Identifying and fostering developmentally supportive interaction (DSI) behaviors in sibling relationships may expand available supports for children’s early development and may also support family well-being.

This study used a sample of 15 child-toddler sibling pairs to identify DSI behaviors in interactions between young children and their toddler-aged siblings, determine if and how well DSI behaviors could be …