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A Program Evaluation Of The Comprehensive School Reform Model Making Middle Grades Work, Wycondia West

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A Program Evaluation of the Comprehensive School Reform Model Making Middle Grades Work

by

Wycondia S. West

MA, Spring Hill College, 2002

BS, Spring Hill College, 1998

Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Education

Walden University

August 2016

There is increasing concern in the United States about the academic challenges that middle grade students face. Middle schools are not meeting accountability standards, and as a result students are not being adequately prepared for high school. In response to these concerns, a state in the southeastern United States adopted a comprehensive school …

Struggling Adolescent Writers Describe Their Experiences, Teri A. Spargur

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Writing continues to be difficult for adolescents throughout the United States. There is little known about writing from the adolescent's perspective. This case study describes six 8th graders' thoughts and motivations on writing. The purpose of the current study was to examine the perceptions and experiences of struggling adolescent writers by taped participant interviews of six students, three male and three female, which scored below proficient on their state writing assessment. The conceptual theoretical framework for the current study is Bandura's social cognitive theory. The central research question of this study focused on the experiences of adolescents who struggle …

High School Teachers' Perceptions Of Mental Health And Adolescent Depression, Christine Ann Breuer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Adolescents have a high rate of untreated mental health issues, specifically related to depression. Current literature does not indicate the impact of teachers' attitudes toward mental health on their decisions to refer students for services. This study provides understanding specifically, how teachers' beliefs about mental health, as well as their age, gender, ethnicity, years of education, and years of teaching, were analyzed to determine the impact each these characteristics had on the decision to refer a student for services. 92 high school teachers participated in this quantitative study by completing a survey measuring their attitudes of mental health, and then …

Middle School Teachers' Experiences With Teaching Self-Regulation Skills To Adolescents With Disabilities, Jessica Traylor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research shows that adolescents with disabilities often lack self-regulated learning skills. Current research further indicates that explicit teaching of self-regulation skills is beneficial to adolescents with disabilities. The site of this study was a local middle school in rural Georgia that did not assess whether or not teachers were explicitly teaching self-regulation skills to adolescents with disabilities. It was unknown, therefore, whether adolescents with disabilities were learning self-regulation skills in school and whether teachers faced problems in teaching these skills. The study sought to explore this gap in knowledge and practice. Zimmerman's self-regulated learning theory and Bandura's self-efficacy theory served …

Standardized Assessment Results As A Predictor Of Student Reading Success In New Brunswick, Canada, Gregory David Paterson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many Canadian school districts use standardized reading achievement data to support reading instruction. Over 30% of 9th-grade students in the Anglophone School District-South (ASD-S) have not met targets for the English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA), a graduation requirement in New Brunswick, Canada. This study compared archival reading scores of 6th-grade students from 2009-2012 with the same students' scores in 9th-grade from 2012-2015, to determine if 6th-grade scores were a predictor of 9th-grade results. Rendering the impact illiteracy plays on society, this study applied the theoretical framework of social theory from Bourdieu's (1977, 1984, 1986) view of social mobility and Turner's …