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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in Education
Portraits Of Practice: A Case Study On Elementary Schools Successfully Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems Of Support, Catherine "Cat" Merkle
Portraits Of Practice: A Case Study On Elementary Schools Successfully Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems Of Support, Catherine "Cat" Merkle
Honors Theses
Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) is an educational framework that aims to make the general education classroom more inclusive to all students and types of learners. MTSS has been found to improve student growth and achievement and decrease special education referrals through the use of layered supports that allow students to stay in the classroom as much as possible. There is a direct focus on progress monitoring, universal screening, and data-based decision making in order to ensure that all students are getting the support they need, whether it be universal, group-based, or individualized. This study aimed to understand what factors …
Finding The Common Denominator: Understanding The Shared Experiences Of Female Math Majors, Abigail R. Rosenbaum
Finding The Common Denominator: Understanding The Shared Experiences Of Female Math Majors, Abigail R. Rosenbaum
Honors Theses
Despite efforts to increase gender diversity in STEM fields, women remain underrepresented in mathematics, especially in advanced academic and research positions. This study aimed to explore the experiences of female math majors as they attempt to navigate this male-dominated space. Through qualitative interviews with seven female math majors, two female math professors, and a focus group with education majors at Woodbridge College, small liberal arts college in the United States, several common themes were identified that define the experiences of female math majors. The findings suggest that math is held at an elevated status in society and that there is …
Analyzing Mental Health Curriculums: Recommendations For The Implementation Of A Mental Health Curriculum For Middle Grade Students, Lauren A. Bendheim
Analyzing Mental Health Curriculums: Recommendations For The Implementation Of A Mental Health Curriculum For Middle Grade Students, Lauren A. Bendheim
Honors Theses
Adolescent mental health has been an increasingly important topic of conversation in education policy as the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national state of emergency for child and adolescent mental health in 2021. In this two phase study I work to understand the landscape of what mental health education looks like in the United States through interviews with policymakers, curriculum developers, and classroom instructors as well as literature research. I investigated what mental health education looks like in practice and how it is experienced by middle school students through classroom observation, student surveys, and curriculum analysis. In my research …
Cultivating Family Empowerment In Schools: The Experiences Of Marginalized Families In Special Education, Rachel-Marie F. Sinco
Cultivating Family Empowerment In Schools: The Experiences Of Marginalized Families In Special Education, Rachel-Marie F. Sinco
Honors Theses
The provision of special education services to special needs students is largely upheld by federal and state policies and regulations, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) which ensures that children with disabilities have the opportunity to access a free appropriate public education (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2004). However, marginalized families of low-income and linguistically diverse backgrounds continue to face barriers and challenges to effectively participate in their child’s education and secure the necessary and appropriate services for their child. Family Empowerment Centers on Disability (FECs) in California provide a policy solution to assist families navigate …
Epistemic Classism In Elite College Mathematics Education, Silas Olsen
Epistemic Classism In Elite College Mathematics Education, Silas Olsen
Honors Theses
I observed a single introductory calculus class at an elite college, conducted three rounds of interviews throughout the semester with ten students, interviewed the professor, and took limited field notes during class time. In line with Bernstein’s (1964) work on social class and language, I found that there were codes of mathematical language that differed by social class, with more upper-class students fluent in elaborated mathematical code. More working-class students had to learn this language throughout the semester, as they were surprised at how abstract the class was. Working-class students saw math as not valuable, which can be viewed through …
The Impact Of Trauma-Responsive Voice-Centered Practice On Students With Learning Differences, Elizabeth S. Marsh
The Impact Of Trauma-Responsive Voice-Centered Practice On Students With Learning Differences, Elizabeth S. Marsh
Honors Theses
Current literature on trauma-responsive schooling and student voice pays little attention to students with learning differences, yet there are many similarities between the challenges that students exposed to trauma and those with learning differences face. Therefore, the goal of this project was to identify a universal approach that could address both the needs of students exposed to trauma and those with learning differences. To examine the impact of trauma-responsive voice-centered practice on students with learning differences, I conducted interviews with adults involved in implementing the Trauma-Responsive Equitable Education (TREE) Project. In doing so, I found that when given the opportunity …
"Nice, Quiet Hand": The Creation And Navigation Of Feeling Rules In A Second Grade Classroom, Avery Munns
"Nice, Quiet Hand": The Creation And Navigation Of Feeling Rules In A Second Grade Classroom, Avery Munns
Honors Theses
Emotions are largely viewed as individual and internal, but in reality, emotions are socially situated. This project aims to use a sociology of emotions framework in order to explore how emotional expectations are created, maintained, and navigated within a classroom environment. Through a series of observations over the course of a month, I set out to answer questions surrounding which emotions were encouraged, which emotions were discouraged, and how both teachers and students created and navigated these feeling rules. Overall, I found that emotions were largely discouraged, especially through the overarching feeling rules of “be quiet” and “control your body.” …
Covid And The Classroom: The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Special Education And Policy Implementation, Danielle Lange
Covid And The Classroom: The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Special Education And Policy Implementation, Danielle Lange
Honors Theses
This research examines how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the learning of special education students and the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the United States. The importance of this research is reflected in the unprecedented and novel context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Never at any point in IDEA history have all special education students been simultaneously denied the services that are considered essential for their development and advancement. While some previous research has looked into how constraints such as natural disasters have impacted students, never has anything this drastic been studied. In this study, I found …
Ethnicity And Education: College Attendance Patterns Among Early 20th-Century Maine's Immigrant Community, Jacob M. Nash
Ethnicity And Education: College Attendance Patterns Among Early 20th-Century Maine's Immigrant Community, Jacob M. Nash
Honors Theses
I examine the college attendance patterns of second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants in Maine in the early 20th century relative to other ethnic groups using individual-level Census records. I employ the Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (ABE) algorithm to track second-generation Jewish, Italian, French Canadian, English Canadian and European immigrants from the 1910 Census to the 1940 Census. My logistic regression analysis indicates that second-generation Jewish immigrants in Maine attended college at significantly higher rates than their peers of similar background in every other ethnic group. While I cannot evaluate them, I also discuss potential explanations for the disparity in college attendance …
Creating Dynamic Spaces: Exploring Student-Empowered Self-Expression Through Art, Meghan E. Charest
Creating Dynamic Spaces: Exploring Student-Empowered Self-Expression Through Art, Meghan E. Charest
Honors Theses
Research suggests that students living in rural areas may be more likely to face adversity and stress due to intersecting challenges present in their communities including poverty, substance abuse, addiction, poor health, reduced economic opportunity, and geographic isolation. I conducted an engaged scholarship project in partnership with students and staff at JES to explore ways that open-ended art activities that provide students with self-directed creative spaces can cultivate a student-centered environment built around strong relationships. This type of environment can mitigate the negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences potentially affecting rural Maine students and improve a culture of emotional wellness …
Effects Of Exposure To Chinese Imports On School Spending And Revenue From Property Tax, Yilei Bao
Effects Of Exposure To Chinese Imports On School Spending And Revenue From Property Tax, Yilei Bao
Honors Theses
I analyze the effect of exposure to Chinese import competition on school revenues per student from property tax, from local sources, and school expenditures per student in 676 Commuting Zones (CZ) from 1990 to 2007. I discover a negative relationship on the CZ level between exposure per worker to Chinese import competition and school expenditure per student, as well as school revenue per student from local sources. In contrast, impact on school revenue per student from property tax is not statistically significant. On average, in a given period, an increase of 1000 dollars in import exposure is related to a …
Massachusetts Chapter 70 Education Equity Funding In Policy And Practice, Julia E. Kostro
Massachusetts Chapter 70 Education Equity Funding In Policy And Practice, Julia E. Kostro
Honors Theses
School funding policies aim to equalize school quality between districts of varying income levels, however, vast inequalities persist in our education system. This thesis examines how and why education funding policy, despite its high potential to create meaningful reform, continues to be a weak lever to promote equitable change in the education system in Massachusetts. After considering the rationales from previous scholars used to explain this phenomenon, interviews were conducted with three key stakeholder groups (policymakers, state advocates, and local leaders such as principals and superintendents), in order to produce a cross-sectional analysis of why education funding policy tends to …
Beyond The Gates: Admissions In An Elite Schooling Context, Jamie Pine
Beyond The Gates: Admissions In An Elite Schooling Context, Jamie Pine
Honors Theses
This project explores the ways in which the admissions process functions at an elite school in Santiago, Chile, The Croft School. The project focuses on the ways in which admissions procedures contribute to the reproduction of social classes, by only allowing the wealthy elite to have access to a prestigious education. In order to understand these structures of power, interviews were conducted with administrators and parents at the Croft School. These methods were used to analyze the administrators’ view of the school community, their role within the larger Santiago community, and how an exclusive admissions process contributes to socioeconomic divides …
The Impacts Of Discrimination On Mental And Physical Health, Mahal Alvarez-Backus
The Impacts Of Discrimination On Mental And Physical Health, Mahal Alvarez-Backus
Honors Theses
The present studies investigated the role of campus climate and discrimination on college students’ mental and physical health. Young adults completed measures that assessed their perceptions of campus climate, sense of belonging, depressive symptoms, anxiety levels, sleep quality, physical health symptoms, and experiences with discrimination. Despite the fact that there were not any differences in physical health or sleep quality, there were significant differences in phycological health, specifically with depressive symptoms. Across both studies, there were significant group differences in mental health, particularly that students of color reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than white students. Having empathetic faculty was …
Microadventures: Student-Empowered, Trauma Informed Outdoor Learning Projects, Jennifer Lyn Flaumenhaft
Microadventures: Student-Empowered, Trauma Informed Outdoor Learning Projects, Jennifer Lyn Flaumenhaft
Honors Theses
This project began with colored Post-It notes and a classroom of Colby College students with a mission to promote student voice in an under-resourced rural elementary school. Lyn Mikel Brown’s Youth-Fueled Activism class paired with Transforming Rural Experience in Education (TREE), an organization that transforms rural communities into hubs for opportunity and civic empowerment.1 TREE uses trauma-informed principles to improve the school experience for students at Seabrook and Portside Elementary Schools. Our class worked with TREE to engage in curricular reform that reimagines learning in a way that promotes student voice. Our class took Maine Common Core State Standards and …
The Impact And Radical Queer Possibility Of Youth Participatory Action Research, Adrienne R. Carmack
The Impact And Radical Queer Possibility Of Youth Participatory Action Research, Adrienne R. Carmack
Senior Scholar Papers
In this paper, I review and analyze the year long implementation of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project at a small-town alternative education program. PAR is a feminist research method, as well as a form of feminist education, in the way that it facilitates a critical-consciousness raising. PAR is queer in its emphasis on analyzing social and relational structures, as well as in the way that it subverts power dynamics within traditional, heteronormative research; it also is distinctly queer in its ability to imagine other ways of being while orienting itself toward social change. Finally, this paper offers a critical …
Arts Education: A Philanthropic Priority?, Clare Murray
Arts Education: A Philanthropic Priority?, Clare Murray
Honors Theses
Through restricted donations, donors to private, independent not-for-profit US art museums are able to affect the prioritization of museum activities. Using annual data from museums’ Form 990s and AAMD survey responses, I test whether restricted giving affects a museum’s educational programming by analyzing the effect of restricted assets on education department performance indicators. I find that a percentage point increase in permanently restricted assets as a proportion of total assets is associated with a 0.1876 percentage point increase in education expenses as a share of total expenses. Through qualitative informational interviews, I recognize this impact as evidence that arts education …
Social Class Identity Development And Elite Schools, Sarah Peck
Social Class Identity Development And Elite Schools, Sarah Peck
Honors Theses
This project explores the ways in which students’ identities are shaped and created at an elite school in a large metropolitan city in Chile, called Croft School. The project focuses on the ways in which privilege is reproduced at this elite institution and how the school inadvertently and purposefully teaches its students lessons about social class. In order to examine these lessons, interviews with students, alumni, teachers, and administrators as well as a site visit to Croft’s campus were conducted. These methods were used to analyze the students’ understandings of themselves and the ways that the school attempted to shape …
Small Town, Big Future: Preparing Rural Maine Students For College, Elizabeth C. Huber
Small Town, Big Future: Preparing Rural Maine Students For College, Elizabeth C. Huber
Honors Theses
While the need for a college degree has increased in the knowledge economy era, acquisition of this degree has remained difficult for low-income and first-generation students. At the same time, college preparatory programs designed for this demographic of student tend to be clustered in urban centers while very little focus is given to disadvantaged students in rural communities. The academic prospects of rural students in regards to higher education are the focus of this project. More specifically, this project explores the ways in which college-cultured programs may address the educational needs of students living in rural communities. By doing in-depth …
Arts And Elite Schooling: The Accumulation Of Advantaging Forms Of Cultural Capital, Hannah R. Macquarrie
Arts And Elite Schooling: The Accumulation Of Advantaging Forms Of Cultural Capital, Hannah R. Macquarrie
Honors Theses
Very little attention has been given to how schools provide students with opportunities to accumulate advantaging forms of cultural capital through the arts. This project explores the arts as valuable forms of cultural capital and the role the arts play in the production of elites. Because it is widely acknowledged that when researching elites access may be limited, the research for this project was conducted online through publically accessible documents, like curricula, mission statements, facilities, extra-curricular offerings, and additional arts programming on school websites. The eight schools in this study reside in four different, elite towns, and there are both …
Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash
Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash
Honors Theses
The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all …
Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow
Honors Theses
How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.
School Gardens: Cultivating A Child’S Nutritional Habits, Environmental Knowledge, And Sustainability Practices, Jeffrey Meltzer
School Gardens: Cultivating A Child’S Nutritional Habits, Environmental Knowledge, And Sustainability Practices, Jeffrey Meltzer
Honors Theses
School gardens have existed since the late nineteenth century and today are becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the world, including where I studied in Maine and Australia (AUS). Multiple organizations support school gardens in Maine, including the Maine School Garden Network, which has over 125 registered school gardens. In AUS, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation primarily supports the school garden movement and has over 800 registered school gardens. While many researchers have studied school gardens, few have compared two countries, focused on environmental sustainability, or investigated Maine in particular. This thesis combines information from literature reviews, and …
Through The Eyes Of Urban Students: Educational Inequality And Socioeconomic Disparities In Santiago, Chile, Hillary Sapanski
Through The Eyes Of Urban Students: Educational Inequality And Socioeconomic Disparities In Santiago, Chile, Hillary Sapanski
Honors Theses
This project explores student perceptions of educational inequality in Santiago, Chile. Educational inequality in Santiago is statistically well documented; this study is novel in that it gives voice to the students. Despite a major emerging middle class, across all classes there is an overwhelming awareness of inequality. The results in this study are two-fold: not only do the diverse student experiences illustrate the stark divisions in the Chilean education system and society, but their experiences also demonstrate the development of a critical consciousness empowering students to act. Although there are limitations, student contributions to the ongoing conversation about inequality and …
More Than Just Nonsense Verse?: The Language Of Dr. Seuss And Children's Literacy, Nicole Hewes
More Than Just Nonsense Verse?: The Language Of Dr. Seuss And Children's Literacy, Nicole Hewes
Senior Scholar Papers
In this Senior Scholars project I wanted to demonstrate that Dr. Seuss books are much more than just nonsense verse. For the first part of my project, I familiarized myself with all of his texts and scrutinized his use of language in a textual analysis. By scrutinizing Geisel’s use of language and wordplay, I hoped to isolate some characteristics that make a Seuss book different from other types of stories and texts. The second part of my project was an empirical study that tested what influence reading a real Seuss text versus a fake Seuss text has on students’ performance …
Revitalizing The Signaling Power Of Class Rank At Colby College, Nicholas Van Niel
Revitalizing The Signaling Power Of Class Rank At Colby College, Nicholas Van Niel
Honors Theses
Consistent with trends at American colleges and universities nationwide, grades have been monotonically increasing at Colby College over the past decade while controlling for student aptitude. A rich data set that describes every Colby student over three cohorts is used to predict student performance. By comparing the mean predicted grade to the mean actual grade in a department, it is seen that some departments award mean grades that are significantly higher than predicted grades warranted by explainable factors. With some departments giving significantly higher grades than other departments, the current grading system is susceptible to awarding unwarranted higher grades to …
A Catalyst For Culture: Early Child Development And Education In Japan, Kate Swenson
A Catalyst For Culture: Early Child Development And Education In Japan, Kate Swenson
Senior Scholar Papers
A popular Western perception of Japan is that it is an eminently homogeneous and conformist society. However, both conformity and homogeneity, recognized even by the Japanese themselves, coexist with the concept of individuality, which is valued in a manner unique to its culture. In order to come to a deeper understanding of that dynamic, it is important to comprehend the specifics of child rearing and education within Japanese society. Based in part on the author's observational fieldwork conducted while in Japan in 1994, the thesis explicates the manner in which various core relationships exhibit the socialization of an individual that …