Education Commons^™

Mathematical Knowledge For Teaching And Visualizing Differential Geometry, Nathan Pinsky

HMC Senior Theses

In recent decades, education researchers have recognized the need for teachers to have a nuanced content knowledge in addition to pedagogical knowledge, but very little research was conducted into what this knowledge would entail. Beginning in 2008, math education researchers began to develop a theoretical framework for the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching, but their work focused primarily on elementary schools. I will present an analysis of the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching about the regular curves and surfaces, two important concepts in differential geometry which generalize to the advanced notion of a manifold, both in a college classroom and …

Cooking Up A Course: Food Education At Pomona College, Christina A. Cyr

Pomona Senior Theses

Cooking skills are important but declining, with significant health, social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental implications. Food and cooking education can begin to address some of the negative effects of the cooking skills decline. This thesis makes the case for cooking classes in the education system, especially in higher education. The paper begins with a history of cooking education and skills, outlines the implications of the decline in skills, and discusses the potential for cooking education in higher education. The second part consists of a course syllabus, designed for Pomona College. The third section includes a discussion of the implementation …

A Changing In Rural Education In China - Guizhou Forerunner College, Xiameng Xiao

Scripps Senior Theses

The subject of the project will be a short video on my summer volunteer experience at the first non-profit charity college called Guizhou Forerunner College (GFC) in a rural village in China. GFC is located in the rural village called Huishui in Guizhou Province in southern part of China. It is the first non-profit funded college in China, Guizhou Forerunner College aims to support the underserved low income, blind, and minority communities in the Guizhou Province of China by providing education through innovative teaching. The school started its launching process in 2007 and had its first class of 360 students …

School Gardens: Reconnecting Children With Nature And Food, Alyssa M. Boyle

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis discusses the importance of school gardens. First, two current environmental and societal problems are highlighted: the industrialized food system and what Richard Louv has termed, "Nature Deficit Disorder," in children. School gardens are then presented as an effective tool that can address and remedy such issues. Lastly, a how-to manual for implementing such projects in schools is provided as well as a few sample lesson plans to be used in conjunction with the garden in each subject across the curriculum.

Landscapes To Learnscapes: Exploring Schoolyard-Based Education, Emily I. Palena, Caroline T. Spurgin

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis explores schoolyard-based education as a viable and necessary method for rectifying the shortcomings within the American public school system and the Nature-deficit Disorder epidemic. We argue that schoolyard-based education should be fully integrated into the school system, not in the sole form of popularized school gardens, but as a standard teaching method. We show this using extensive research and a case study of three elementary schools in Claremont, California.

Academic Support Experiences And Perceptions Of Postsecondary Students With Disabilities: A Public And Private University Comparision, Heather T. Wizikowski

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Legislation, social awareness, and advancements in medicine and assistive technology have created meaningful postsecondary opportunities for students with disabilities over the past 30 years. Mainstreaming, inclusion, and transition planning in elementary and secondary schools also greatly contributed to the increased achievement of students with disabilities. Today, 15% of students with disabilities attend four-year colleges. Current federal data show 88% of private and 99% of public universities report students with disabilities enrolled at their institutions. Much of the current research focuses on institutional practice and need. There is a gap in the research when looking at student needs and experiences.

This …

The Charter School Movement: The Impact Of School Form On Performance, Jeremy B. Wolff

CMC Senior Theses

Using data from the DataQuest and Ed-Data databases provided by the California Department of Education (2006-2012), this study assesses if charter schools provide a net benefit to students compared to non-charter schools. Further, it examines if charter management organizations improve the performance of charter schools. I find that charter schools have no net benefit across all grades. However, charter schools get significantly better performance on high school language arts tests. Minority and low-income students perform better at charter schools than traditional public schools, especially at the middle school level. Minorities in middle schools perform even better at CMOs than independent …

Creative Writing Thesis: Poetry, Desmond Bonhomme

CMC Senior Theses

The title of this compilation of my own creative writings is Trees, Breathe, Paper. This unique collection of poetry, short stories and prose contains a range of work, composed from 2002-2012. The thematic goal of this undertaking is to ballast as many implicit and explicit meanings as are comprehensible, and to extrapolate a distinct spectrum of latent and straightforward explanations with discernible psycho-analytical accuracy. We all know poetry is truly formless and based on springs of natural inspiration. Thus, we derive our purest inspiration from the natural world and we prune it in its unfiltered, raw state. Poetry is an …

How Many Barack Obamas Does It Take: An Analysis Of The Effect Of Charter Schools On Real Estate And Crime, Aananditaa Kakkar

CMC Senior Theses

This study looks at the relationship between charter school presence and neighborhood quality in Los Angeles. Using data from the Los Angeles Department of Education, Zillow Real Estate, and the Los Angeles Sheriff, this paper attempts to find whether changes in charter presence influence the price of surrounding real estate or the occurrence of serious and petty crimes. The results find that charter schools tend to be associated with a decrease in home sale prices. The results on crime imply that crime increases upon the opening of charter schools, however they are statistically insignificant.

A Conceptual Model On The Impact Of Mattering, Sense Of Belonging, Engagement/Involvement, And Socio-Academic Integrative Experiences On Community College Students’ Intent To Persist, Esau Tovar

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Community colleges continue to experience high levels of student attrition and low degree/certificate completion rates. Given extant literature, there appears to be a need to reexamine how interactions between students and the institution, and students and institutional agents are taking place, with the aim of identifying institutional practices that deleteriously or positively impact degree completion and thus guide colleges to develop action plans to improve conditions for student success.

This study examined how factors such as institutional commitment to students, mattering, sense of belonging, interactions with diverse peers, perceptions of the campus climate, engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, and goal commitment …

The Path To Innovation And Efficiency In Higher Education, Jordan Stein

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I discuss the emergence of the “non-traditional” post -secondary student and what is necessary to both narrow the socioeconomic education gap and make higher education more efficient for the vast majority of Americans. l explain how the current conglomeration of laws, regulations and proposed regulations stifle innovation and inhibit the achievement of a high Education Return On Investment. I discuss changes that are on the horizon and borrow from the success of certain innovations. In the final section, I suggest and review potential frameworks for education innovation and funding that can make a difference. I propose a …

Have Federal Sanctions Helped Failing Schools? The Impact Of No Child Left Behind In Texas, Ernest W. Hayhurst

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will assess the effectiveness of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in the state of Texas. In order to do this, we examine how students’ performance levels from failing schools respond to sanctions imposed by the NCLB accountability system. Additionally, we explore achievement gap trends between white and minority students that attend these failing schools. By taking advantage of campus and year fixed effects, as well as controlling for student demographic characteristics, we find that sanctions employed by NCLB have had a statistically significant positive impact on academic achievement gains for all students. However, our results also …