Education Commons^™

Creating Spaces Of Imaginative Engagement For Gifted High School Honors And Advanced Placement English Students, Patty T. Bradshaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Gifted students may have safety needs beyond the universal needs for security that all students have in order to learn. I investigated the needs of gifted students first hand through interviews with nine gifted students with diverse backgrounds. Interview questions and findings were organized around five major themes: characterization of self, characterization of classmates, characterization of teachers, characterization of classroom, and characterization of strategies and activities. Conclusions show that gifted students share commonalities in personality, needs, and characteristics as well as commonalities among the challenges they face, conditions in which they learn, and the environment in which they feel safe …

"We're In The Business Of A Good Education": Schooled To Profit Or Educated To Create?, Nicole Nolasco

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this inquiry, I ask the questions: What could my career, my life, and the world be like in the future? How could public education be impacted by the frenzy over accountability, standards, and the belief that competition and unrestricted capitalism will reform American schools, especially for students of color and from the working and lower classes? How can I, a high school English teacher, address pressing social and educational issues to affect change? I explore these questions through a work of fiction I have created. Theoretically drawing from critical pedagogy, I use arts based research and fiction as methodology …

Characteristics Of Effective Alternative Schools In Georgia: Leaders’ Perceptions, Janet L. Poole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Educational leaders and district decision makers are faced with the challenge of providing support for at-risk students who are failing in traditional schools and are in danger of not graduating. Alternative schools are considered options for learning for at-risk students. However, limited research is available describing the views and experiences of the administrators who lead them. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was to understand leaders’ perceptions of characteristics of effective alternative schools in Georgia, as well as challenges associated with leading them. Ten face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate what eight male and two female alternative …

Student Motivation And Intent To Take Online Courses, Ashley W. Cullum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Motivation Orientation Scale – Student Version (MO-SV) and Unified Theory of User Acceptance of Technology (UTAUT) were used to predict to what extent motivation orientation impacts student intent to take online courses, to examine the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of students that drive them to take online courses, to examine the relationship between motivation to take online courses and motivation to take face-to-face courses, and to determine if demographic variables influence behavioral intent to take online courses. A sample of 394 full-time and part-time students at a large, public, research university with an integrated health center in the Southeast …

An Exploration Of The Impostor Phenomenon And Its Impact On Black Women Administrators In Higher Education In The South, Marian Muldrow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies document Black student and faculty underrepresentation in higher education and the obstacles blocking their access to the classroom either as students or as instructors. As Black women students work toward graduate degrees, Black women administrators are needed so these students can see their identity reflected in their academic leaders.

As a result, this study focused on the particular challenges that limit upward mobility to senior-level administrative positions and highlighted some of the obstacles and conflicts that arise when Black women pursue leadership positions at institutions of higher education. The highlighted historical events related to education, as well as …

The Posthuman Curriculum And The Teacher, John P. Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this document is to explore education through a posthumanist lens. More specifically, elements of posthumanism will be used to better understand today’s teachers, to provide several overarching educational goals and curricular imperatives, and to inform pedagogical practice. Several posthumanist themes in particular will serve to unify this rather broad consideration of education at varying levels. One such theme is that of blurring boundaries, calling into question distinctions that have been the source of declines in the health of our bodies, our species, and the life systems of which we are constitutive parts. Distinctions too often lead to …

Teacher Empowerment Through Instructional Coaching: A Qualitative Study On The Theory And Application Of Partnership Principles, Aviva Goelman Rice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to understand how instructional coaching in schools affects teachers and, specifically, whether increased teacher empowerment was associated with instructional coaching based on the framework of the Partnership Principles (Knight, 2007). A goal of the research was to find out whether, and to what extent, teachers identified themselves as empowered. Using Critical Theory (Freire, 2012) as the theoretical framework for this analysis, the study also sought to develop an understanding of how teacher empowerment may develop as a result of working with instructional coaches who utilize the Partnership Principles. Six teachers in a rural district …

The Muzzled Hope: Utilizing Black Protest Thought To Examine African American Males' Identity Development And Academic Success In The Rural U.S. South, Latoya D. Jenkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The problems faced by African American males in the United States is often the result of misconstrued images and stereotypes that present this segment of the population in a distasteful manner. If one chimes in to various circuits of popular culture, glances over the latest headlines of newspapers, and/or listens to the confluent lyrics of hip hop that, eloquently, bridges life struggles with melodic hooks to expose the oppression faced by people of color, one thing becomes apparent: Social progression is dependent upon society’s ability to magnify, listen to, and incorporate the voices of marginalized groups.

With the majority of …

A Study Of Black Teachers’ Perceptions Of The Academic Achievement Of Black Male Students In Elementary Schools In Rural Georgia, Marshall F. Aker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Presently, numerous research studies, articles and reports have shown troubling outcomes regarding the education of Black male students in the United States (Darensbourg, Perez, & Blake, 2010; Lewis, Simon, Uzzell, Horwitz, & Casserly, 2010; Prager, 2011). The performance of Black males on national achievement assessments is lower in comparison to the performance of most other subgroups. The high school graduation rate for Black males in the United States is below most other ethnic subgroups (Schotts Foundation, 2015). Although various strategies are often implemented at the national, state, and local level in attempts to address achievement disparities, these efforts have not …