Education Commons^™

Perspectives Of High School Orchestra Teachers In Urban And Suburban Settings In Using Social-Emotional Learning Techniques, Dale A. Kokot

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A need exists for more literature concerning high school orchestras in an urban setting versus a suburban neighborhood and the different styles of social-emotional learning strategies implemented in each. Universities and other professional development specialists now teach teachers social-emotional learning procedures and processes. However, these specialists often must provide orchestra directors with more specific skills. There also should be more differentiated instruction for high school orchestras in an urban setting versus what school corporations require of teachers in a suburban-specific area. Teachers must identify the demographics of where and to whom they teach and tailor lesson plans and social-emotional techniques …

Representation And The Achievement Gap: A Case For Prioritizing Cultural Sameness In The Classroom, Taryn J. Fears

M.S. in Leadership

Abstract

This study examined the impact of cultural representation on achievement for minority students academically and socially across diverse contexts. Recognizing the importance of cultural diversity in educational and youth mentoring settings, this research explores how the representation of various cultural identities, including race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, influences student achievement outcomes. Coming from a background in community based nonprofit organizations, I have seen how black and brown students respond in classroom and out-of-school time settings when having come in contact with teachers and mentors of similar culture. Having a teacher and/or mentor of a similar culture creates pathways …

A Phenomenological Study: The Academic Experiences Of Low-Socioeconomic-Status Esl Learners Enrolled In A Mid-Sized Urban Community College, Anna Buck

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe the academic experiences of low socioeconomic status ESL learners enrolled in a mid-sized urban community college located in Pennsylvania. The theory that guided this study is Walberg’s theory on educational productivity, as it looks at how learners’ psychological characteristics and the psychological environments in which they live influence academic outcomes and their ability to succeed academically. Walberg’s theory of educational productivity provided a framework to answer the central research question and three sub-questions: (A) What are the academic experiences of low socioeconomic status ESL learners? (B) What are the socioeconomic …

High Musical Achievement In Underserved High School Band Programs: A Qualitative Study, Delton Marcus Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Although information is available detailing methods and strategies for high achievement in school band programs, very little is synthesized specifically addressing high schools in urban, inner-city, and other underserved student populations. This study explores the effects of cultural responsiveness, director-student relationships, and establishing and maintaining high standards on student motivation and overall program achievement. The data collected in this study originate from five Texas band directors in minority-majority programs where the school comprises a student population with over 60 percent eligibility for free and/or reduced lunch. These directors have all made significant achievements at the high school level in the …

Spatial And Temporal Patterns Of Red Foxes And Coyotes Through Camera Traps And Citizen Science, Nadia Wojcik

Honors Theses

Wildlife may change their temporal activity patterns or spatial distribution in response to human activity in developed landscapes. Citizen science and camera trap approaches have both been used to study wildlife in urban areas, though both methods have their strengths and weaknesses. I studied the temporal activity and spatial occurrence of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and coyotes (Canis latrans) in Lincoln, Nebraska to test ecological and methodological hypotheses. Specifically, I compared camera trap detections of red foxes and coyotes to observations of red foxes made by residents of Lincoln. Using these two data streams, I evaluated temporal activity patterns and …

Improving Digital Literacy Through A 1:1 Digital Device Implementation: An Applied Study, Sherry Watts

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this applied study was to solve the problem of the need to improve digital literacy for students on an urban middle school campus in South Texas and to design a solution to address this problem. I collected data using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Teachers and instructional coaches were interviewed via the Zoom video conferencing online platform to explore how teachers and instructional coaches described the relationship between the deployment of a 1:1 digital device program and the improvement of students' digital literacy on their middle school campus. I collected quantitative and qualitative survey data from teachers …

Urban Programs That Promote High School Graduation And College Entry: A Phenomenological Study, Marlene Yvette Gooding

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions and lived experiences of urban students when they participated in college transition programs in Virginia and how such programs, in addition to the family, school, and community supports and partnerships, prepared them for college. This study explored student perspectives regarding their journeys through high school graduation, the college application process, and college attendance. The participants shed light on their successes despite challenges they may have faced, especially when support from stakeholders such as their families, schools, and communities has been afforded them. The methods for this study were …

Engaging Urban Music Students Through Elements Of Rap And Culture, Jasmine Christian Jackson

Masters Theses

Teaching in the urban community requires an undertaking of counseling, constant understanding, and helping advance students’ prior knowledge to provide future comprehension. The goal as an educator is to guide the student along their journey in learning and practicing information that they receive throughout. Giving students the opportunity to see that they are capable of comprehending a subject they never thought they could is the main goal. Teaching the urban community can be a big challenge. The educator must take on learning the specific history of the demographic they instruct, and focus educate themselves on the challenges that the students …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Student Engagement Experiences Of African Americans Formerly Attending Urban Public High Schools, Sohn A. Butts

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to interpret the student engagement experiences of African Americans formerly attending urban public high schools in a major city in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Self-determination theory, established by Ryan and Deci (1985), is the theoretical framework for this study, and was used to understand motivation in terms of basic psychological needs satisfaction and fulfillment, and how those motivations influence human behavior. The central research question was: What were the student engagement experiences of African Americans formerly attending urban public high schools? The three research sub-questions were: (1) what instructional …

The Effects Of Sports Participation On Academic Achievement For Seventh-Graders In Urban Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Steven White

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This quantitative, causal-comparative study was designed to investigate the effect of students’ participation in middle school interscholastic sports on their academic success among urban middle school students. The body of knowledge about the effect of participating in sports on academic achievement is comprehensive at the high school and college levels, but limited research has been done regarding sports participation among middle school students. The participants for this study were drawn from a convenience sample of 366 seventh-grade middle school students in eastern Pennsylvania during the 2018-2019 school year; stratified random sampling was also used to create groups with equal male …

Identifying Protective Factors In The Association Between Peer Victimization And Internalizing Symptoms Of African American Adolescents In Four Chicago’S Southside Neighborhoods, Jun Sung Hong, Mi-Jin Choi, Isak Kim, Sheretta Butler-Barnes, Sarah Kruman Mountain, Dexter R. Voisin

Counseling Faculty Publications

Guided by the Risk and Resilience Model, the present study aims to generate hypotheses by investigating a wide range of variables that might buffer the association between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms from a convenience sample of African American adolescents in four neighborhoods in Chicago’s Southside. Measures for the study included internalizing symptoms, peer victimization, four protective factors (parental closeness, teacher’s care, religiosity, and positive future orientation) and covariates (age, sex, and government assistance). Controlling for the covariates, a series of multivariate regression analyses were conducted to explore the direct effects of peer victimization and internalizing symptoms and the interaction …

A Causal-Comparative Study Of Strategies Designed To Decrease Discipline Incidents In Urban Elementary Schools, John Christopher Jung

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Urban schools have struggled to overcome the achievement gap, including the most recent issue of inequity of discipline within the schools. A causal-comparative design was used to find whether the varying strategies alleged to successfully decrease discipline issues are as effective within urban elementary schools as in suburban schools. The sample included 790 public, elementary, urban or suburban schools within the state of Ohio that drew on ex post facto data of discipline incidents and enrollment from the school years of 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 acquired from the Ohio Department of Education. The large sample of schools in both urban and …

The Relationship Between Sense Of Community And Job Satisfaction Among Urban Middle School Teachers, Paula Anita Murphy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this correlational study was to investigate the relationship between sense of community and job satisfaction among middle school teachers in an urban school district. This study is important because it helps to develop an understanding of how the cultivation of sense of community is related to job satisfaction and provides insight in middle school urban learning environments. This study examined the relationship between sense of community and job satisfaction where social interaction occurs in an educational setting. The theories guiding this research were McMillan and Chavis’ sense of community theory as it relates to sense of community …

Digital Equity In The Time Of Covid-19: The Access Issue, Jonathan D. Becker, Joy Washington, David Naff, Andrea Woodard, Joan A. Rhodes

MERC Publications

This report is a part of a series of reports on digital equity in the time of COVID-19 written by members of the MERC SY20 study team. MERC launched the SY20 project to provide rapid response, iterative research to help address immediate and enduring needs by school divisions in metropolitan Richmond. The project has the following goals: (1) To convene conversations between scholars and practitioners on critical topics in public education relevant to the moment, (2) To share examples of local efforts that illustrate innovation and best practice, (3) To encourage community engagement and dialogue on our work through broad …

A Qualitative Study On Urban Middle School Teachers' Perspective Of Social And Emotional Learning As Formed Through Personal And Occupational Experience, Joseph George Gerics

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study is to describe the lived experience of social-emotional learning both personal and professional for twelve urban middle school teachers in northeast Ohio. Urban middle school teachers have typically been under-represented in the research around social-emotional learning and this study looks to give voice to this under-represented group. Through the research, this study gained information regarding urban middle school teachers’ personal and professional experiences with social and emotional learning and how this experience promotes or inhibits successful implementation of social-emotional learning within the classroom. The theories guiding this study are Emotional Intelligence which root …

Tracing The Landscape: Re-Enchantment, Play, And Spirituality In Parkour, Brett D. Potter

Publications and Scholarship

Parkour, along with “free-running”, is a relatively new but increasingly ubiquitous sport with possibilities for new configurations of ecology and spirituality in global urban contexts. Parkour differs significantly from traditional sports in its use of existing urban topography including walls, fences, and rooftops as an obstacle course/playground to be creatively navigated. Both parkour and “free-running”, in their haptic, intuitive exploration of the environment retrieve an enchanted notion of place with analogues in the religious language of pilgrimage. The parkour practitioner or traceur/traceuse exemplifies what Michael Atkinson terms “human reclamation”—a reclaiming of the body in space, and of the urban environment …

Traffic Noise And Sexual Selection: Studies Of Anthropogenic Impact On Bird Songs And Undergraduate Student Reasoning Of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Sarah Spier

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Humans have transformed much of the natural landscape and are continuing to do so at an accelerated rate, compromising natural areas that serve as important habitat for many species. Roads impact much of the environment as they fragment habitat and introduce traffic noise into the acoustic environment, deferentially affecting wildlife in roadside habitat. I explored how traffic noise affects the detection of birds based on whether their vocalizations were masked by traffic noise. Masked species detection was not affected by an increase in traffic noise amplitude, while there was a negative effect of traffic noise amplitude on unmasked species detection, …

Traffic Noise And Sexual Selection: Studies Of Anthropogenic Impact On Bird Songs And Undergraduate Student Reasoning Of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Sarah Spier

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Humans have transformed much of the natural landscape and are continuing to do so at an accelerated rate, compromising natural areas that serve as important habitat for many species. Roads impact much of the environment as they fragment habitat and introduce traffic noise into the acoustic environment, deferentially affecting wildlife in roadside habitat. I explored how traffic noise affects the detection of birds based on whether their vocalizations were masked by traffic noise. Masked species detection was not affected by an increase in traffic noise amplitude, while there was a negative effect of traffic noise amplitude on unmasked species detection, …

Green And Blue Infrastructure In Darwin; Carbon Economies And The Social And Cultural Dimensions Of Valuing Urban Mangroves In Australia, Jennifer M. Atchison

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Darwin's mangrove ecosystems, some of the most extensive and biodiverse in the world, are part of the urban fabric in the tropical north of Australia but they are also clearly at risk from the current scale and pace of development. Climate motivated market-based responses, the so-called 'new-carbon economies', are one prominent approach to thinking differently about the value of living infrastructure and how it might provide for and improve liveability. In the Australian context, there are recent efforts to promote mangrove ecosystems as blue infrastructure, specifically as blue carbon, but also little recognition or valuation of them as green or …

Improving The Physical Activity And Outdoor Play Environment Of Family Child Care Homes In Nebraska Through Go Nutrition And Physical Activity Self-Assessment For Child Care, Danae Dinkel, Dipti Dev, Yage Guo, Emily Hulse, Zainab Rida, Ami Sedani, Brian Coyle

Health and Kinesiology Faculty Publications

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine if the Go Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment in Child Care (Go NAP SACC) intervention was effective in improving best practices in the areas of infant and child physical activity and outdoor play and learning in family child care homes (FCCHs) in Nebraska. Methods: FCCHs (n = 201) participated in a pre–post evaluation using the Infant and Child Physical Activity and Outdoor Play and Learning assessments from the Go NAP SACC validated measure to assess compliance with best practices. Results: At post, FCCHs demonstrated significant differences in 85% …

Are Urban Development And Densification Patterns Aligned With Infrastructure Funding Allocation? Examining Data From Melbourne 1999-2015, Nicole T. Cook, Ilan Wiesel, Fanqi Liu

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Densification of cities and suburbs is a contentious issue for many communities in lower-density settings. Local opposition to densification is often premised on concerns about the inadequacy of existing infrastructure to support growing populations and is strongest and most successful in wealthier neighbourhoods. While the urban consolidation agenda in cities such as Melbourne and Sydney is justified in policy contexts as a strategy to improve utilisation of existing infrastructure in built up areas, densification over time also produces new demand for services. Whether or not densification drives new infrastructure spending is therefore an important question in the governance of social …

Massachusetts Urban Bicycle Preparedness, Rick L. Sheiber

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

Since 2007, Boston has made tremendous strides in shedding its designation by Bicycling Magazine as one of the “Worst Biking Cities” (Zezima, 2009, p. A12) by designating over 92 miles of bike lanes throughout the city and introducing bicycle initiatives like Boston Bikes, the Hubway bicycle sharing program. These efforts have resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of cyclists in Greater Boston and a decrease in accidents involving bicycles ((Pedroso, Angriman, Bellows & Taylor, 2016). While the quantitative research has been primarily positive, a 2017 survey initiated LivableStreets and the Longwood Area Cyclists of commuters in the Longwood …

Increasing Stem Competence In Urban, High Poverty Elementary School Populations, Sueanne Mckinney, Cynthia Tomovic, Melva Grant, Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Enhancing STEM competence (e.g., interests, knowledge, skills, and dispositions) among urban, high poverty, elementary school populations in the United States (U.S.) is and remains a growing national concern, especially since Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) competence is and will continue to be a necessary requisite for gainful employment in the future, according to workforce development experts. In an attempt to address this gap, many urban elementary schools have begun to offer STEM-related programs to increase STEM learning at an early age. STEM competence (interest, knowledge, skills, and dispositions), however, remains low. This paper results in a matrix used to …

The Aftermath Of Detroit's Economic Decline And The Exodus Of Urban Teachers: A Phenomenology, Melissa Holtzhouse

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the decision-making process of teachers, Kindergarten through twelfth grade, who left the urban setting in metropolitan Detroit. The theories that guided this study were Rotter’s locus of control and Condorcet’s decision theory as they investigated the experiences leading to teachers’ decisions to leave the urban setting within metropolitan Detroit. Four research questions were included (a) How do select teachers, Kindergarten through twelfth grade, describe the decision-making process they underwent before leaving urban education in metropolitan Detroit? (b) How do participants describe their experiences prior to their decision to leave urban education …

Stimulating Learning About Textiles With Fast Fashion In Urban And Rural Settings, Diana Saiki, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis

Publications and Research

It is important for students who plan to work in the fashion industry to understand fast-fashion and its implications. A constructivist approach to teaching where an instructor starts with students’ experiences has been useful to teach fashion subjects. The purposes of this paper were to: 1) present and assess a teaching activity guided by constructivist theory where students were required to analyze quality of a garment made pre and another made post fast fashion, and 2) compare and contrast knowledge of fast fashion and quality among students given their rural versus urban experiences. Two textiles classes in rural (n = …

The Effect Of The Flipped Classroom On Urban High School Students' Motivation And Academic Achievement In A High School Science Course, Keshia Dixon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study investigated the effect of the flipped classroom on urban high school students’ motivation and academic achievement in a high school science course. In this quantitative study, the sample population was comprised of North Star High School 12th grade students enrolled in human anatomy and physiology. A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest non-equivalent group design was conducted. After receipt of Liberty University Institutional Review Board approval and the school district’s Department of Research and Evaluation for School Improvement, students completed a pretest comprised of the Science Motivation Questionnaire II (SMQ-II) and the Human Anatomy and Physiology Unit Test. Participants in the experimental …

What Factors Contribute To The Continued Low Rates Of Indigenous Status Identification In Urban General Practice? - A Mixed-Methods Multiple Site Case Study, Heike Schutze, Lisa Jackson Pulver, Mark Fort Harris

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background Indigenous peoples experience worse health and die at younger ages than their non-indigenous counterparts. Ethnicity data enables health services to identify inequalities experienced by minority populations and to implement and monitor services specifically targeting them. Despite significant Government intervention, Australia's Indigenous peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, continue to be under identified in data sets. We explored the barriers to Indigenous status identification in urban general practice in two areas in Sydney. Methods A mixed-methods multiple-site case study was used, set in urban general practice. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and self-complete questionnaires with 31 general practice …

Bridged: An Autoethnography Exploring How An Alternative School For "At Risk" Middle And High School Youth Overcame The Achievement Gap, Michael Koeniger

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this autoethnographic study was to discover how an alternative school for at-risk students, bridged the achievement gap. It used autoethnographic approaches to examine the factors that have led to the successes of an urban school. In this study, 19 graduates of Eastend School (all participant and institutional names are replaced with pseudonyms), three parents and six current and former staff members participated in unstructured, individual interviews and shared their experiences. Autoethnographic field notes were composed. Documents and artifacts relating to Eastend School were collected and studied. The collected data were generally coded and specifically coded until themes …

Community Partnerships In Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools: A Mixed-Methods Study, Jae L. Strickland

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to identify and describe community partnerships in Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools.

Fifty-one principals from the Southern and Midwestern regions of the United States completed a 19-question on-line survey designed to explore community partnerships in Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools. Of the 51 principals who completed the survey, 26 agreed to participate in a semi-structured interview.

The findings of the study suggest that community partnerships play an essential role in supporting Urban, Title 1 Elementary Schools. Finding community partners can be challenging. Principals who wish to engage community partners should identify the needs …

Newsroom: A 'Rising Tide' Of Educational Opportunity 9/8/2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.