Education Commons^™

Gardening And Watering 21st Century Soil: Culturally Responsive And Technology Enhanced Instructional Design In K12 Schools, Elissa W. Frazier

Dissertations

Decades of research have documented the positive impact of culturally responsive teaching on academic outcomes for African American and LatinX students. However, as the field of education has become increasingly embedded with technology as a powerful tool of instruction, more attention is needed to understand how culturally responsive teachers use technology to close achievement gaps. Although national public policy over the last twenty-years has documented the negative impact of the digital divide on low SES, African American and LatinX students, large-scale efforts to close the divide have focused primarily on access to devices only. More recently, the second digital “use” …

School Leaders’ Assessment Of Teachers’ Preparedness For Culturally Responsive Teaching, Victoria Maria Siliunas

Dissertations

Societal and school inequities continue to be highlighted via widening achievement gaps that adversely impact historically marginalized groups of students and their communities. An acknowledgement of the importance of developing teachers who are prepared to work with students of culturally differing identities from their own in the day-to-day work of teaching has inspired a shift in language and practice from a more general multicultural approach to a culturally responsive teaching methodology in which a purposeful inclusion of the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of students is prioritized. Addressing challenges schools face related to cultural difference between teachers and the students they …

Engendering Empathy For Immigrants In Middle Grade Readers Through Culturally Relevant Young Adult Literature, Amy J. Cattapan

Dissertations

This dissertation uncovered the ways through which culturally relevant young adult literature (YAL) engenders empathy for immigrants in middle grade readers. Empathy was displayed through both affective and cognitive responses and resulted in mirror and window moments (Bishop, 1990) as well as crystallizing experiences. Their empathetic responses led students to apply critical literacy skills to issues related to stereotypes, racism, discrimination, and immigration policies.

I conducted a qualitative case study to examine the ways in which reading and discussing YAL about immigrants created empathy in eighth graders in a culturally and linguistically diverse middle school and in what ways it …

The Study Of Evaluative Inquiry Within A Business Context: Social Learning Processes, Team-Level Infrastructure, And Guidelines For Practical Application, Marie Elizabeth Paydon

Dissertations

This three-article dissertation presents complementary perspectives on applying an Evaluative Inquiry (EI) within a business setting. Evaluative Inquiry is an inquiry model of organizational learning which blends evaluation and social learning processes to promote individual, team, and organizational learning and occurs within a broader organizational infrastructure. The first article details findings from a case study of participants engaged in EI, exploring how they engaged in social learning processes and how these enabled individual, team, and organizational learning outcomes. The second article details findings from the same case study but examines how engaging in the EI process generated and promoted infrastructural …

Science Youth Action Research: Promoting Critical Science Literacy Through Relevance And Agency, Elizabeth Coleman

Dissertations

This three-article dissertation presents complementary perspectives on Science Youth Action Research (Sci-YAR), a K-12 curriculum designed to emphasize relevance and agency to promote youth's science learning. In Sci-YAR, youth conduct action research projects to better understand science-related issues in their lives, schools, or communities, while they simultaneously document, analyze, and reflect upon their own practices as researchers. The first article defines Sci-YAR and argues for its potential to enhance youth's participation as citizens in a democratic society. The second article details findings from a case study of youth engaged in Sci-YAR, describing how the curriculum enabled and constrained youth's identity …

Andragogy In One Community College: A Study Of Students' Attitudes And Perceptions Toward Reading And Writing Following The Completion Of A Concurrent Acquisition One-Semester Developmental English Course, Michele Murphy Froehlich

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore if student attitudes and perceptions changed toward reading and writing after participation in and completion of a one-semester dual-enrollment mandatory developmental non-credit reading and/or writing course combined with a concurrent acquisition general education three-credit-hour English 101 course.

The subjects were nine voluntary participants in the dual-enrollment Accelerated Learning Program 099 and English 101. The classes were offered in a suburban community college close to a large metropolitan city in the Midwest and taught by the same instructor. A mixed methods approach, that is, descriptive-qualitative/ethnographic was used in this study. Descriptive data were …

Open Enrollment In Advanced Placement Courses: Experiences Of Traditional And Non-Traditional Students, Scott Errol Mcalister

Dissertations

Beginning in the late 1990's, amongst concern that traditionally underrepresented groups of students such as minorities and low income students had been denied the opportunity to enroll in AP courses, The College Board (the non profit agency that runs the AP program) began to emphasize its belief that all students should have the right to take AP courses if they desire and that secondary schools should not limit AP enrollment based on prerequisites such as teacher recommendation, GPA, and class rank. As a result of these factors, the AP program began to see dramatic gains in the number of students …

What Books Don't Tell You: Teacher-Eye-View Of Universal Design For Learning And The Implementation Process, Marylou Hatley

Dissertations

This study examines teacher perceptions of universal design for learning (UDL) and the systemic changes that might occur during implementation. The study compares differences in teacher perceptions based upon implementation year. Classroom observations, interviews, and survey of teachers and administrators from one Midwestern school district provide data for this study. Results of this study show that overall teachers feel positive about implementing UDL. Teachers experience both successes and obstacles during the implementation of UDL. Teachers have differing views of what UDL is supposed to look like in the classroom and many teachers are unsure of how to apply UDL into …

Student Organizational Skills And Motivation: What's The Connection?, Vesna Cejovic

Dissertations

Many studies have pointed out the academic advantages of teaching students to be more organized. While there is a great deal of information with regard to organizational skills of students, and an immense amount of inquiry into the phenomenon of motivation in nearly every field of study, there have been incredibly few studies that have combined the two issues in an effort to examine the potential relationship between organizational skills and self-motivation and how that relationship might help to increase the importance of making organizational skills an indispensable element of elementary school curricula. This mixed-methods, pretest/posttest case study examined a …

Post-Correctional Education Interventions: A Phenomenological Case Study Of Empowerment Education Curriculum For Formerly Incarcerated African American Males, Rolanda Jean West

Dissertations

This phenomenological case study describes how a Post-Correctional Education Intervention (PCEI) was developed for a local community-based organization that had recently constructed a transition house for formerly incarcerated adults who converted to Islam while incarcerated. The PCEI was an eight-week course curriculum with 60 hours of direct instruction that included social justice, health and wellness and critical thinking teaching modules and affective teaching and learning methodologies. This research contains experiential data used to assess how a PCEI affected the identity and self-concept of the participants of a reentry program designed to create an atmosphere of empowerment.

Response To Intervention: Staff Perception Of The Implementation And Development Of A Three-Tier Model Of Intervention, Erika L. Millhouse-Pettis

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze a school district's certified staffs' perception and training of its Response to Intervention model (RtI). RtI is a federally mandated initiative that requires school districts to provide high quality research based instruction, universal screenings, on-going progress monitoring, researched-based interventions, and reliable measures that are implemented with fidelity. Research suggests that successful RtI plans are impacted by professional development opportunities rendered to staff members, and the integrity in which the interventions are implemented (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006). This study examined the structure, roles, resources, and trainings that impacted and aided in the implementation …

Turmoil, Tirades And Transformation: The Wars For The National History Standards 1991-2004, Phyllis Margaret Henry

Dissertations

This document presents a research project in the format of an historical narrative that chronicles the issues, process of consensus, and the impact of the National History Standards Project (NHSP) on local policies and curricula in history education. The influence of the voluntary national history standards movement is chronicled with the local development of social science standards-based curricula with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

This dissertation is a case study that utilizes multiple sources of research such as archival primary sources, oral history interviews and participant observations to corroborate the evidence. The …

Pedagogy And Primary Sources: Outcomes Of The Library Of Congress' Professional Development Program, Teaching With Primary Sources At Loyola, Michelle Fry

Dissertations

Until recently, few K-12 teachers outside of social studies have integrated primary sources in classroom instruction. Integrating primary sources in educational practice does require an uncommon pedagogical understanding. Addressing this K-12 educator need is the Library of Congress. Recently, the Library implemented a national educator professional development program, Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS).

The TPS program operates at multiple universities and colleges, including Loyola University Chicago. This program aims to educate K-12 educators of all subject-areas to integrate online, digitized primary sources into classroom practices. This study addressed questions related to the outcomes of teacher participants' classroom practices after completing …

A Buberian Critique Of Four Curriculum Theorists, Paul R. Feinberg

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Learning Disabilities Students Of Limited English Speaking Background: A Descriptive Study, Raymond Rodriguez

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Repeated Reading Practice On Reading Strategies Of First Grade Readers, John Rowan

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Practice Of Educational Program Evaluation In Terms Of The Cipp Evaluation Model, Kay M. Smith

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Content Validation Study Of Performance Standards Application In Technical Skills Education, John J. Gammuto

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Inservice Reading Demonstrations Upon Student Reading Achievement Scores In Selected Title I Schools, Mary V. Mcnamara

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Students' Knowledge Of The Minimum Essentials In High-School Religion, Grades 7-12, Mary Loyola Baltzer

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Content Of The Curriculum In High-School Religion, John Ryan Gleason

Dissertations

No abstract provided.