Education Commons^™

Intersectionalities Of Systematic Barriers Set Upon Underrepresented Students In Stem: Capturing The Potential Benefits Of Online Modality, Raiyasha Aiyanna Paris

University Honors Theses

The prevalence of racism and microaggressions in STEM disciplines within colleges presents significant hurdles to the academic success and well-being of underrepresented students. Microaggressions, encompassing subtle biases and stereotyping, have a cumulative impact, inducing heightened stress, diminished motivation, and reduced self-efficacy among minority students, thereby impeding cognitive functioning and hindering academic progress (Ogunyemi et al., 2020). The existence of these negative emotional responses creates a less conducive learning environment for academic achievement. Additionally, structural inequalities within STEM institutions contribute to disparities in resource access, limited mentorship opportunities, and support networks crucial for success in STEM fields (Atkins et al., 2020). …

Teaching In A Kenyan Refugee Camp: A Critical Ethnography Of The Impact Of Teacher Preparation And Cultural Experience On Pedagogy, James Adiok Mayik

Dissertations and Theses

This research involved an investigation of the classroom experiences of formally unprepared refugee teachers in Kakuma Refugee camp. The purpose was to understand how refugee teachers with no preservice preparation in accordance with the standards of Kenya Teacher Service Commission (TSC) perceive and interact with pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and cultural relevancy in their daily classroom experiences with students in a refugee camp-based school in Kenya. What informed this study was the view that refugee teachers bring with them their respective and diverse cultural knowledge--ontology, epistemology, and axiology. To gain better understanding of the experiences and perspectives of these educators, …

Unlocking Potential: The Transformative Power Of Trauma-Informed Schools On Students' Well-Being And Academic Success, Tiffany Carolino

University Honors Theses

Trauma-informed approaches in public schools have emerged as a promising strategy to address students' social-emotional well-being and academic success impacted by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). This paper explores the necessity and effectiveness of trauma-informed practices within educational settings. Adverse childhood experiences encompass a range of traumatic events that profoundly affect children's development, behaviors, and academic performance. Despite the prevalence of ACEs, traditional disciplinary practices often fail to address the underlying issues, leading to further challenges for students. This literature review examines three trauma-informed programs: HEARTS, TIES, and STRIVE, each offering strategies to support students and educators. Results from these programs …

Latine Dual Language Bilingual Education Teachers' Work Experiences, Nelly Noemi Patiño Cabrera

Dissertations and Theses

Given the increasing concern about the scarcity of Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) teachers, it is crucial to understand the trends in teacher retention and attrition from the perspective of DLBE teachers themselves. DLBE teachers departing from their jobs imposes a significant burden on schools and students and affects the implementation of DLBE programs. To delve into this issue, this critical qualitative study focused on the work experiences of Latine K-5 Spanish/English DLBE teachers. Specifically, this study involved six participants divided into two groups of DLBE teachers in the teaching trajectory: three Latine K-5 Spanish/English DLBE teachers currently teaching in …

Improving Peer-To-Peer Learning For Students With Extensive Support Needs In Inclusive Classrooms, Zachary Michael Deets

Dissertations and Theses

Inclusive learning opportunities lead to better outcomes for students with extensive support needs (ESN). In the absence of targeted intervention, however, students with ESN are unlikely to interact meaningfully with their peers or the general education curriculum. The literature describes evidence-based strategies in support of the meaningful inclusion of students with ESN in inclusive classrooms, including the use of technology to mediate learning experiences and nondisabled peers as learning "interventionists." This dissertation introduces an intervention package, Technology-Assisted Peer-Mediated Academic Support (TAPMAS), incorporating Technology-Aided Instruction and Intervention (TAII) and Peer-Based Instruction and Intervention (PBII), as a model of how educators may …

In Favor Of Bringing Game Theory Into Urban Studies And Planning Curriculum: Reintroducing An Underused Method For The Next Generation Of Urban Scholars, Brian Mcdonald Gardner

Dissertations and Theses

By looking at some historical examples of Urban Studies literature and theory (and a detailed dive into Neil Smith's "Toward a theory of gentrification…") this thesis makes the case that Game Theory has valid insights to add to the foundation of Urban Studies and Planning and should be included in Masters and Doctorate level curriculums. As a discipline Game Theory has revolutionized multiple other fields, and can be used both mathematically and/or non-mathematically. It is postulated below that the inclusion of Game Theory would help scholars and practitioners arrive at better outcomes. This case is made by reviewing various areas …

Radical (Re)Positioning Of Students As Cocreators Of Curriculum: A Participatory Action Research Study Of Undergraduate Student-Instructor Partnerships In Online Learning Environments, Kari Eleana Goin

Dissertations and Theses

Undergraduate curriculum is not representative of all students. Course content, language, images, and textbooks often reinforce societal power relations and hierarchies that tend to center white, male, hetero, middle-class, able-bodied identities. When students' varied cultural and linguistic identities are not represented in the curriculum, inadequately represented students are less likely to actively participate, persist, and continue their education. Emerging scholarship indicates that student-instructor cocreation of course syllabi, materials, and/or classroom experiences is a promising practice for increasing representation and responsiveness to student voices, although researchers do not know how the process of cocreation unfolds in asynchronous spaces. Enrollment in undergraduate …

Addressing The Body Mass Index Using A Teaching Math For Social Justice Lens, Riley J. Wolfe

University Honors Theses

Teaching Math for Social Justice (TMSJ) lessons are designed to explain math in social justice contexts. TMSJ leads to better engagement with math content by providing relevant contexts. Because the field is so new, there are math topics not yet covered and areas of social justice that also have gone unaddressed by TMSJ. One of these topics is the problem of weight discrimination. This paper will explain how Body Mass Index (BMI) can be used as a jumping off point to introduce the issue of weight discrimination. Then, a detailed lesson plan is provided which connects the historical origin of …

The Practice Of Traditional Grading: A Site For Inquiring Into Teacher Identity Friction In A U.S. High School, Sarah Emily Dutton-Breen

Dissertations and Theses

High school teachers' identities and agency are often affected by systems that require their compliance if the teachers are to maintain employment. Sometimes when teachers perform an expected task, they experience identity friction, a term created to explain the residual effect of performing an institutional obligation that is misaligned with a teacher's identity and agency. Considering the potential impact of grades on students' academic opportunities and perceptions of themselves, one teacher obligation that creates identity friction is assigning student grades. And yet, scant research has been done on the impact identity friction -- resulting from working within the traditional grading …

Investigating Active Learning Through The Lens Of Student Engagement, Nicole Naibert

Dissertations and Theses

Incorporating active learning into a course has been generally found to lead to improved student learning outcomes; however, not all students benefit from these environments to the same extent. Although active learning environments provide the opportunity for students to interact and engage with the material, whether a student decides to do so is completely up to them. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation was to begin exploring active learning environments through the lens of student engagement and relevant associated variables (i.e., self-efficacy and student perceptions). This was completed through three separate but related projects.

Project I focused on investigating flipped …

Community College Geoscience Faculty Perspectives On Critical Thinking Instructional Tools, Mariela Salas Bao

Dissertations and Theses

Research has shown that modern courses and programs designed to foster critical thinking vary in both content and delivery, in turn leading to differences in their effectiveness. Few studies have investigated critical thinking among nontraditional students at community colleges taking STEM courses, especially within the geosciences. Furthermore, such research has focused primarily on the students with few if any studies involving faculty. This study examined the perceptions held by community college geoscience faculty regarding critical thinking and how such perceptions influenced their choice of instructional strategies. This study used a basic qualitative methodology and a maximum variation sampling to select …

Early Implementation Of A Standards-Based Mathematics Curriculum: Understanding Teacher Perspectives And Concerns, Karen Ann Prigodich

Dissertations and Theses

Standards-based mathematics curricula are intended to shape teachers' classroom instruction in alignment with the content and practices of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Instructional leaders facilitating teachers' implementation of these curricula frequently offer a variety of resources and structures to support effective curriculum use, but teachers themselves do not always find these supports to be helpful. Because teachers' concerns vary, understanding teachers' own perspectives is an important starting place for aligning support with teachers' needs. This case study explored the concerns of teachers from three U.S. school districts during their first year of implementing Bridges in Mathematics, …

God-Talk In Catholic High Schools: Theology Teachers Doing Theological Education For And With Religiously Diverse Student Populations, David Michael Avram Gregory

Dissertations and Theses

High school students deserve educations that honor and respect their cultural positionalities, of which religious beliefs are frequently an integral part. Almost 25% of students in Catholic high schools identify as non-Catholic, but the U.S. Catholic bishops have mandated that Catholic secondary theological education (through their 2008 Doctrinal Elements of a Curriculum Framework for the Development of Catechetical Materials for Young People of High School Age) be catechetical. In writing and promulgating this document, the bishops presupposed that Catholic schools' students are Catholic, or (should) desire to become Catholic. For decades, scholars have critiqued catechesis as an inappropriate mode …

A Multiplicity Of Journeys: Stem Education Ecosystems As Sources Of Cultural Sustenance, Christopher Louis Beauprey Cardiel

Dissertations and Theses

In this document, I outline the context and significance of a research problem faced by both formal and informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) educators in the Portland metro area--specifically, the need for greater understanding of the individual and cultural motivations, needs, and agentic behavior of learners, as well as the ways in which these factors intersect with learners' experiences of cultural sustenance within their holistic STEM education ecosystems. I base the significance of this problem on the racial and gender inequities evident in the STEM fields and the social and cultural dynamics that discourage members of these groups …

A Student Led Assessment Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The Environmental Science And Management Department At Portland State University, Aneesha Gharpurey

University Honors Theses

In the summer of 2020, the world watched as Black communities and allies responded to the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. An intensification of social and racial justice awareness provoked many entities like higher education institutions (HEI) to evaluate how they support marginalized people and update their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans. In an attempt to maintain excellence, many HEIs implement DEI plans through top-down methods where high-level administrators target recruitment and retention, campus climate, community engagement, and curriculum. These plans rarely incorporate students as co-collaborators and administer DEI changes that have little effect on students' self-belonging, …

The Perspectives Of Head Start Employed Community College Students Who Earned An Associate Degree In Early Childhood Education Programs: A Phenomenological Study Exploring Challenges And Successes, Robyne E. Taylor

Dissertations and Theses

The U.S. federally funded Head Start programs serve more than one million low-income children and their families each year in education and health programs. Historically there have been few requirements for formal education for Head Start teachers. In response to research linking teacher education and outcomes for children, increased educational requirements were included in the program funding reauthorizations in recent decades. For a variety of reasons, community college early childhood education programs are a logical place for those already employed by Head Start to improve their qualifications. At the same time, these institutions tend to have low graduation rates, and …

Weekend Spanish Immersion Camp: A Non-Traditional Teaching World Language To Middle School American Students, Jorge Oscar Ramirez

Dissertations and Theses

The nature of today's global economy demands that students demonstrate high levels of proficiency in foreign languages. To meet global demand, most countries around the world are including comprehensive world language instruction in their educational systems beginning at an early age. The increasingly multi-lingual nature of culture within and beyond the Unites States. is escalating the importance of immersing students in world languages as early as possible to ensure a high level of written and oral foreign language skill proficiency by the time students graduate from high school. However, most American students do not have the opportunity to study a …

Settler Colonial Curriculum In Carlisle Boarding School: A Historical And Personal Qualitative Research Study, Patrick Gerard Eagle Staff

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation research study brings together a historical account and one scholar's personal and family stories of how Indigenous children were stolen and sent to the first Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding schools and tribal schools. In the case of the researcher's family, the educational experiences at Carlisle Indian Industrial School immediately started a traumatic assimilation process on Indigenous children that instilled generational trauma for them and their descendants. At these schools, Indigenous children were forced to conform to a foreign European school designed to abolish their Indigenous identity that demanded they give up their language and culture to …

Animal Magic, Secret Spells, And Green Power: More-Than-Human Assemblages Of Children's Storytelling, Angela Molloy Murphy

Dissertations and Theses

Early childhood settings have become contested spaces, or sites of struggle, between economic and sociocultural interests disputing their purpose. Recent years have shown increased pressure on children in early education settings to demonstrate predetermined learning outcomes, which (a) limits the scope of what is possible in the classroom, (b) narrows the range of what learning is considered valid, and (c) privileges the experience and values of the dominant culture, thereby determining who and what matters in early childhood settings. Thus, in the current education climate where conventional knowledges are routinely privileged, unconventional knowledges and small stories from children's lives are …

Perceptions Of Students Of Color About Their Experience In An Alternative High School: A Phenomenological Inquiry, Massene Mboup

Dissertations and Theses

Public schools in Oregon have been struggling to include students of color and teachers of color for so long. Students of color represent more than one third of the school population, yet remain underserved, underrepresented, and over disciplined. Most of their teachers and support staff are White; the teachers of color represent less than 8% of the teaching staff. The students of color attend comprehensive high schools that generally ignore them--or push them out. Some students of color end up in alternative schools.

My problem of practice was the oppression of students of color in urban schools. Specifically, my research …

Amplifying Latinx Voice Through Interview Study: Highlighting Mathematics Identity As A Pathway To Student Self-Empowerment And Academic Agency, Brea Justine Cohen

Dissertations and Theses

Nationally, the percentage of high school students taking higher-level mathematics courses (beyond Algebra 2) has increased from the late 20th century to the present. However, as compared to White high school students enrolled in advanced math classes, the rate is lower among students of color, specifically students who identify as Latinx, African American, or Native American. My school district (a suburban district in the Northwestern United States) is working to address this problem by implementing several district-wide initiatives that focus on increasing students' engagement in mathematics, which focuses teacher pedagogy on leveraging mathematics communities to support collaborative mathematics dialogue. The …

Medical Faculty Engagement In Curricular Revisions: An Inquiry Into Individual And Organizational Factors That Support Participation, Tomoko Tanikawa

Dissertations and Theses

In efforts to facilitate the education of highly qualified and best-prepared medical professionals, many medical schools are either planning for or engaging in curriculum revisions including a complete overhaul of the curricular structure, academic and medical content, and pedagogical delivery modalities. To be effective, such changes require faculty buy-in, participation, engagement, and innovation. Unfortunately, despite medical schools' efforts to support faculty involvement in curricular revision, a range of reactions exist, including resistance. Thus, understanding the interactions between individual faculty attitudes and behaviors toward organizational initiatives and structural support is critical in advancing the educational mission of medical schools. Based on …

Paradigm Shifts In Large-Scale Educational Change: Uncovering The Oregon Education Investment Board's Theory Of Change-In-Action, Johanna Kathryn Blackford

Dissertations and Theses

Education system leaders and policymakers around the globe expend vast amounts of resources on educational reform efforts and despite positive intentions, most attempts to affect educational change fail to realize large-scale, sustainable, positive outcomes--yet some have. While it is widely acknowledged that no two systems' educational change journeys are the same, what is becoming clear is that there is significant similarity among the thinking or paradigms underpinning theories of change-in-action guiding positive large-scale system-wide reform. This research highlights four change paradigms and suggests that a collective learning paradigm guided by systems thinking represents the paradigm shift associated with successful large-scale …

Student Voice In A Participatory Design Process Focused On Developing Equity-Based Stem Teaching Practices, Frank Heimerdinger

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study with second grade students in a mid-sized city in the Northwest was to examine an equity-based STEM teaching practice and design process that builds on student's voice in the context of an elementary school. Teaching practice innovations were designed using a participatory process drawing on student voice and experience, culturally responsive pedagogy, STEM content, and teaching practices. The students collaborated with the teacher to design and enact equity-based STEM teaching practice innovations and gave necessary and appropriate feedback regarding its efficacy in creating equitable and empowering learning experiences from their own perspective. A specific goal …

Experiences Of Early Childhood Educators Working With Teaching Strategies Gold®: A Narrative Inquiry, Sarah Kathryn Guyon

Dissertations and Theses

Research regarding the effects of positive early childhood experiences on long term learning and success is drawing more attention to early childhood education programs than ever before. Promises on the federal and state level of better pay for early childhood educators and "high quality" publicly funded early childhood education programs is an exciting and long-awaited vision by both families and early childhood educators. However, with federal and state funding comes the need for justification of those funds through different measurement structures. One of the widely used measurement structures is the Teaching Strategies GOLD® preformatted, portfolio style assessment system. Teaching Strategies …

Engaging In A Rural Deaf Community Of Practice, Kara Gournaris

Dissertations and Theses

The number of students taking American Sign Language (ASL) at the post-secondary level continues to increase as more Deaf-related graduate programs and employment settings require fluent ASL skills. Western Oregon University (WOU) is one of the few existing programs in the United States that offers four years of ASL instruction; however, as a rural university it has limited access to a Deaf community. The problem of practice is that students often have little exposure to rich language models who are fluent in ASL, which impacts their legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) in the local Deaf communities of practice (CoPs) and reduces …

Architectural And Philosophical 'Makerspace' Redesign Impact On Teacher Beliefs And Practices: A Case Study, Rurik-Rory James Nackerud

Dissertations and Theses

Current jobs in a global economy require more complex cognitive skills, such as critical thinking, cooperation, creativity, and collaboration, in addition to content knowledge. To address these areas, researchers have suggested the use of a 'makerspace' in schools. As with many other establishments, my school remodeled the primary school to create a makerspace for developing these skills. What impact might a makerspace -- a physical as well as a curricular change -- have on teachers' individual and collaborative learning? The purpose of this case study was to describe how the makerspace concept and changes to classroom or instructional space influence …

Making Race Matter: Interrupting Racial Color-Blindness In Education Through The Implementation Of Anti-Racist Curriculum, Kelly Deits Cutler

Dissertations and Theses

The United States continues to be a highly racialized society. As a result, race remains a predictor of educational achievement for students in the PK-12 public education system. Concurrently, racial color-blindness continues to dominate educational institutions, as teachers--particularly White teachers--often feel uncomfortable and ill prepared to talk with students about race. One approach that educators have developed to combat color-blindness in schools is anti-racist curriculum. Such curriculum directly teaches students about race and intentionally interrupts the color-blind ideology.

This research study sought to understanding how teachers attending a series of collaborative professional development sessions experienced the process of designing and …

Identifying With Remida: Early Childhood Educators’ Experiences With Reuse Materials In Reggio Emilia Inspired Identity Studies, Michelle Angela Domingues

Dissertations and Theses

Mainstream approaches to identity studies in early childhood education (ECE) are problematic from both social constructivist and early childhood education for sustainability perspectives. Mainstream approaches are influenced by behaviorist theories of developmental psychology literature which privilege individual identity, whereas emerging discourses in identity theory trend toward discussing the multiplicity of social identities. Alternatively, and in contrast to traditional behaviorist and cognitive learning theories, cultural centers like Reggio Emilia, Italy’s Remida Creative Recycling Center promote reuse material projects that socially construct identities in Reggio’s Municipal Infant/Toddler Centers and Preprimary Schools by giving value to waste materials through offering such materials in …

Teacher Learning In The Context Of Students’ Mathematical Thinking, Mary Sherrett Duden

Dissertations and Theses

Currently mathematics education is undergoing substantial changes so that students may experience mathematics in intellectually engaging, equitable, and relevant ways. More specifically, I am referring to a teacher stance of centering student thinking and allowing students to make sense of mathematical ideas. Proponents of reform efforts in mathematics argue that this is the path to helping elementary students develop a deep and conceptually sound understanding of mathematics. This is critical because a strong mathematical foundation has increasingly become a gateway for access to many career opportunities and citizenship in the United States.

Unfortunately, these ambitious changes present a challenge for …