Education Commons^™

High Expectations And Teacher Implicit Biases In A Culture Of Care, Jacqueline K. Haynes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This graduate project was part of a group project completed by five school and district administrators in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for teachers who are able to establish a culture of care in their classrooms that support students academically but transform their learning through experiences that enable them to be more highly engaged and productive students, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, perceived academic abilities, and backgrounds.

My project component looked at research on teacher expectations and their effects on student success. Why does the color of a child's skin tone trigger lower expectations by …

The Role Of Mental Translation In Learning And Using A Second/Foreign Language By Female Adult Learners, Julia Falla-Wood

Journal of Global Education and Research

The purpose of this study is to ponder some theoretical considerations concerning a predominant phenomenon of mental translation (MT) observed by second language teachers and learners in learning and using a second/foreign language. The sample available to the researcher consists of seven female adult learners speaking different languages. The choice of the sample is not related to the age level of the learners, but their English level (5-6) according to the Canadian Language Benchmarks. The research instruments used in this study are two compositions written on two occasions, during 2013-2015 and in 2016, a personal questionnaire, a strategy questionnaire, and …

Efl Teachers’ Preparation And Beliefs In Niger, Peter Wiens, Bong Gee Jang, Katrina Liu, Billa Anassour, April Smith

Journal of Global Education and Research

Niger is a French-speaking country with a history of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in its middle and high schools. The teachers providing instruction in these programs have been trained in different ways including university-based programs, out of country programs, or no training at all. This study sought to examine the beliefs of Nigerien EFL teachers and analyze the relationship between their beliefs and their training. All EFL teachers in Niger were surveyed to understand their beliefs related to teaching. We found that training was related to teacher beliefs. As Niger determines how best to allocate its limited …

“I Don’T Even Know Where Turkey Is.”: Developing Intercultural Competence Through E-Pal Exchanges, Miranda Lin

Journal of Global Education and Research

Using current events to help preservice teachers understand the world they live in encourages preservice teachers to learn about global issues. It also encourages them to develop skills in analytical thinking and reflective judgment by reading and discussing complex real-life scenarios. A semester-long pen-pal project was crafted to help understand how preservice teachers develop intercultural competence, critical empathy, and become less ethnocentric. Twenty-Six American early childhood preservice teachers in Midwestern state were randomly paired with Turkish early childhood preserivce teachers as their pen-pals. The findings of this qualitative study revealed American preservice teachers had learning curves, but many eventually came …

Are Community College Students’ Transfer Choices Impacted By Their Perceptions?, Jean Hearn

Journal of Global Education and Research

This investigation examined the influence perceptions play in the transfer decisions of community college students. Studying this problem provided insight which facilitated the transition from two- to four-year university and helped retention efforts. A quantitative method was used, employing an anonymous Likert survey. Two hundred and eight Early Childhood Education students received an invitation to participate in the research project via a link to the anonymous survey. Thirty-two percent of the urban community college students invited to participate did so. A descriptive picture of the participant sample was painted using frequency tests. Analysis of the relationships between the dependent variable …

Pilot Study Of The Influence Of Social Anxiousness On Students’ Classroom Interactions Among Chinese Undergraduates, Lili Zhang, Yu Zhang

Journal of Global Education and Research

Although most people acknowledge the importance of interactions in class, it is commonly seensome students still rarely actively participate in face-to-face interactions, especially those from a Confucian cultural background. Previous research focused on many factors to understand this phenomenon, yet social anxiousness has not been given enough attention as a possible reason. This correlational study on 93 Chinese undergraduates attempted to investigate the influences of social anxiousness on students’ interactions in class, using Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS) by Leary (1983), and a self-reported measure of students’ interaction in class developed by the researchers. Results indicated that both students’ social anxiousness …

Exploring Young Children’S Digital Composing Practices, Megan D. Cross

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the many layers involved in young children’s meaning-making as they digitally compose. Utilizing a multimodal, social semiotics theoretical framework to analyze children’s digital compositions using a composing app, this study was designed around one research question: What is the nature of three and four-year-old children’s multimodal meaning making while using a composing app? The qualitative study involved four focal participants from a three- and four-year-old classroom, who attended an inquiry-based lab school in the southeastern United States.

The data were collected over a period of eight weeks, where the children were invited to tell their stories using …

Review Of Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind By Susan Carlile, Alexis Mcquigge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This article reviews Susan Carlile's recent biography of Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Because much of Lennox's life story, and many of her works, remain mysterious to contemporary readers, Carlile's work highlights some unique and important aspects of the life of a - at least in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, a celebrated literary minds. Carlile's work is an important and necessary addition to the study of women's writing in the period, and contributes a great deal to those studying the works of Charlotte Lennox.

Review Of Royal Shakespeare Company Production Of Mary Pix’S The Beau Defeated, Retitled The Fantastic Follies Of Mrs. Rich, Aparna Gollapudi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Jo Davies’s reprise of Mary Pix’s comedy The Beau Defeated, Or The Lucky Younger Brother,performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon under the title The Fantastic Follies of Mrs. Rich refocuses the comedy from its original engagement with primogeniture and middling class masculinity towards the female characters. It also diffuses Pix’s Whiggish moralism in Mrs. Rich's portrayal, highlighting instead her energy and verve. Overall, a very successful production, the performance is more Restoration comedy than the transitional work that Pix's play was when it opened in 1700.

Editing Aphra Behn In The Digital Age: An Interview With Gillian Wright And Alan Hogarth, Laura Runge, Gillian Wright, Alan Hogarth

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This interview provides a view of the work in progress for the Cambridge University Press edition of the Complete Works of Aphra Behn. Gillian Wright serves as a general editor (with Elaine Hobby, Claire Bowditch, and Mel Evans) as well as the volume editor for Behn’s poetry. Alan Hogarth is the Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Mel Evans on the computational stylistics and author attribution testing. The discussion focuses on the scope and principles of editing the poetry of Aphra Behn, the role of stylometry in establishing the corpus, the status of work, a few particular poems, and some surprises.

Reading Her Queenly Coiffure: A Collaborative Approach To The Study Of Marie-Antoinette's Hairstyles, Hélène Bilis, Jenifer Bartle, Laura M. O'Brien, Ruth R. Rogers

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Four colleagues--a faculty member, a digital services librarian, a research librarian, and a curator of Special Collections--take turns describing their role in creating an undergraduate student project around an eighteenth-century almanac that belonged to Marie-Antoinette. In recounting the steps taken, the collaborative process, the student research, and the analysis of the contents of the Trésor des Grâces almanac, we share the lessons learned for completing a digital exhibit over the course of one semester.

New Lines: Mary Ann Yates, The Orphan Of China, And The New She-Tragedy, Elaine Mcgirr

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay demonstrates a significant break in eighteenth-century tragedy from tales of fallen women begging (the audience) for forgiveness and redemption to a different kind of she-tragedy, in which the heroine is neither fallen nor sexually desired, but rather transcends nation and politics with the “natural” moral force of maternal love. I argue that this shift was made possible/legible by Susannah Cibber’s ill-health, which forced Arthur Murphy to reconceive The Orphan of China’s heroine and allowed a rival actress, Mary Ann Yates, to step into this new role and to establish a tragic ‘line’ defined in opposition to that of …

Learning In The Margins: The Educational Experiences Of An African American Male With Disabilities, Aisha Holmes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African American males with disabilities meet challenges in K-12 public education and higher education. Educational practices often focus on a deficit interpretation of the abilities of African American males with disabilities. Educational stakeholders who do not reflect their layered identities of race, gender, ability, and socioeconomic status often make educational decisions for this student population. The purpose of this study is to include in the educational conversations the voice of an African American male with disabilities who experienced K-12 public education and higher education. Using narrative inquiry and analyzed through the lens of DisCrit, findings from the study revealed two …

Teacher Attitude And Self-Efficacy Differences Regarding English Language Learners And Disabled Learners., Miriam Carballo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been little research combining both groups of students who were English Language Learners (ELLs) and Exceptional Student Education (ESE) students in relation to teacher attitudes and self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to compare teacher attitudes and self-efficacy related to instructing either ELLs with or without disabilities in elementary schools

Teachers from six elementary schools in the XYZ Excellence School District participated in a 52-item comprehensive survey. Two questionnaires and the demographic form were combined to create one comprehensive questionnaire totaling 52 questions for the purposes of this study. Teachers were solicited to participate in the study …

Improving Elementary Students’ Complete Mental Health: Examining The Added Impact Of A Teacher-Focused Strengths-Based Intervention, Mollie Mccullough Headley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teaching is considered one of the most challenging professions, often associated with high levels of occupational stress and job turnover that perpetuates additional negative outcomes including depleted funding for school districts, poor education quality, and reduced student academic performance. Research shows that teachers are an integral part of the classroom with the power to positively influence students’ perceived classroom support and emotional competence (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Positive psychology has facilitated school-based initiatives that foster feelings of subjective well-being (happiness) through the implementation of brief, scripted activities (i.e., Positive Psychology Interventions; PPIs) that reflect the thoughts and behaviors of happy …

Variations In Experience And Meaning: Accounts Of Leadership Involvement And Identities With Special Education And Disability, Roderick James Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study focused on retired school principals’ involvement in special education. More specifically, it explored various ways former principals conceived of their leadership identity and accounted for their level of involvement in special education and with students identified or identifying as disabled. The following research question guided this study: How do former principals account for their involvement with special education and/or disability? The study’s subquestions were: What are principals’ accounts of being, becoming, and remaining involved with special education and/or with disability?; In what ways do principals attend to special education and/or disability?; and How do principals conceive of …

An Analysis Of The Self-Perceptions Of Women Leaders In Higher Education, Angela Mclendon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to (a) investigate perceptions of women administrators in higher education as they relate to their positions and (b) learn more about women’s perceptions as they relate to gender in leadership in higher education. and (c) determine where we need to go from here in terms of improvement. Investigating these issues in the 21st century will give us a current temperature and a snapshot of where we are and where we need to go from here as it relates to women leaders in higher education.

The focus of this study was women who are administrators …

Perceived Roles Of Academic Advisors In Pursuing Internationalization At Public State And Community Colleges In Florida, Tony W. Long

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research study investigated the perceptions of academic advisors in the Florida College System (FCS) concerning globalization, internationalization, and their role in the process of internationalizing their colleges. Participants in the study included 54 academic advisors from 15 of the 28 colleges in the FCS. The sample was comprised primarily of female advisors with master’s degrees, who had been working in higher education for less than 13 years. This was a nonexperimental, quantitative study and analyses included descriptive statistics, ordinary least squares regression, and Pearson’s product moment correlations.

The results revealed that the responding advisors believe that globalization is inevitable …

Early Identification Of Students In Accelerated Curricula With Signs Of Academic And Emotional Risk: Working With Teachers To Identify At-Risk Students, Elizabeth D. Storey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As part of a comprehensive, multi-tiered system of support for students’ emotional, academic, and behavioral success, effective universal screenings are essential to identify students who may benefit from early intervention and targeted prevention services (Strein, Kuhn-McKearin, & Finney, 2014). Although many screening procedures and methods have been developed and evaluated for general education populations, more research is needed on screening procedures designed for one traditionally underserved population in school-based mental health services—students in accelerated curricula (namely, students in Advanced Placement classes or in the International Baccalaureate program; AP/IB). When teachers are involved in universal screening procedures, regardless of student population …

Exploring The ‘Spaces Between’: Teachers’ Perceptions Of Teacher Leadership Within Professional Networks, Cynthia B. Bauman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The enactment of teacher leadership can be challenged by both policy initiatives and school contexts (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). However, teachers can have a positive influence on each other and their broader school community by building capacity for leadership, innovation, and student achievement through the relationships, or networks, they develop and maintain (Baker-Doyle, 2015; Hovardas, 2016; Hunzicker, 2012; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2012). This single exploratory case study takes place in a Title I elementary school and uses a combination of Social Network Analysis and content analysis to uncover patterns in teacher professional networks, the context …

Behavioral Thermoregulation And Thermal Mismatches Influence Disease Dynamics In Amphibians, Erin Louise Sauer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Amphibians are currently the most threatened vertebra taxa on the planet. Hundreds of species are thought to have gone extinct while thousands more have been listed as threatened or endangered over the past few decades. Habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, and disease are all thought to have partially contributed to these declines. Two pathogens in particular, infectious viruses in the genus Ranavirus (simply referred to as ranavirus) and the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), have been associated with global mass mortality events of amphibians. Virulent pathogens such as these tend to impose strong selective pressures on their hosts driving the …

Students’ Opportunity To Learn Surface Area And Volume In Middle Grades Mathematics Textbooks, Sofia Hatziminadakis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I conducted a content analysis to examine the treatment of the surface area and volume concepts within four published middle-grades mathematics textbook series. In particular, I examined the treatment of the surface area and volume concepts in terms of the location of surface area and volume lessons in the textbook and the number of pages and lessons devoted to these concepts. I also investigated the sequence of the instructional blocks of surface area and volume lessons. In addition, I evaluated the tasks included in these lessons in regards to the performance expectations of students, the types of visual representations of …

Including Children With Learning Differences: Experiences Of Independent School Teachers, Lisa M. Lockhart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are various types of private schools. This study focused on independent prep schools termed as “British style” (Cooper, 1988 p.19). These select, independent prep schools have a long and distinguished history in the United States. Many, if not all of these schools, have stringent admissions requirements. However, due to special considerations given to certain constituencies (siblings, children of alumni, etc.) there are times when students who are accepted to the schools may display learning or behavioral characteristics that are incongruent with the original mission of the school. In addition, sometimes learning and/or social issues do not present themselves in …

The Impact Of Prior-Prior Year On Federal Student Aid Eligibility, Valerie A. Mockus

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Each year, millions of Americans complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in hopes of securing federal, state, and institutional funding to support their educational goals. The FAFSA recently changed the age of tax data used to determine eligibility for aid, including the Federal Pell Grant—eligibility for which is often used as a proxy for students with the highest need. This study includes a comprehensive review of the extant literature on the subject of prior-prior year. It is also the first look into the actual impact of the recent shift from Prior Year (PY) tax information to Prior-Prior …

Negotiating My Rainbow: A Self-Study Exploring The Relationship Between Beliefs About Identity And Classroom Practice, Amanda Colborne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teachers bring parts of themselves, among them, gender, age, and race into the classroom. In addition to the routine stress of teaching, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have the added stress of managing the expression of their sexual orientation in the classroom. This study explores the ways in which my own identity as a lesbian influenced my beliefs about teaching, my “pre-active” curricular-instructional decision-making, and my “interactive” curricular-instructional decision-making (Jackson, 1966). A self-study methodology is used to explore these relationships. Data sources include journaling, lesson plan artifacts, student work samples, photographs of my classroom, an observation and critical …

Heart Rate Variability Analysis As A Means Of Real-Time Hypercapnia Detection, Joseph Dituri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The motivation for this research is the high prevalence experienced by divers of carbon dioxide (CO₂) issues and concerns throughout their lives. Additionally, CO₂ is naturally occurring, the product of oxidative metabolism, and is undetectable to human senses. Current CO₂ sensor or detection technology is limited to high-cost machines such as arterial blood gas monitors and end tidal CO₂ monitors, or more modern technology relying upon bright lights which measure blood flow. The light technology is notoriously unreliable and does not produce a very effective heart beat allowing a user to detect minimal changes. Heart …

Smart Start For Trauma: A Multiple Baseline Design, Sarah E. Dickinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to address gaps in the trauma treatment literature related to the expense and inaccessibility of evidence-based interventions for children with disabilities who have experienced trauma. Another aim of this study was to provide additional support for a newly piloted intervention for children with disabilities who have experienced trauma. This intervention is known as Smart Start: Parenting Tools for Children with Developmental Delay, Social-Emotional Concerns, and Trauma. A non-concurrent multiple baseline method was used to determine whether there was a functional relationship between the intervention and children’s challenging behaviors for five caregiver-child dyads. In addition, …

Testing The Validity And Utility Of A Career And Technical Education Programs Of Study Evaluation Instrument, Alisha D. Hyslop

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to build on the research already completed by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) in the development of ACTE’s quality Program of Study Framework and accompanying evaluation instrument to examine the validity of the instrument’s results and its utility when used independently by local educators in a pilot test. The study used a two-phase mixed-methods design. In the first phase, 39 participating programs were evaluated using the instrument, consisting of 102 items organized into 12 elements. Representatives of participating programs, either teachers or administrators, then provided quantitative and qualitative feedback about the …

A Biographical Study Of Bernard Lafayette, Jr. As An Adult Educator Including The Teaching Of Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation, Rozelia Maria Kennedy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the life and work of LaFayette, nonviolence and conflict reconciliation from an adult education perspective. This study explores LaFayette’s life from an early age through his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, his contributions to adult education, and his current views on social change. The nonviolence conflict reconciliation LaFayette teaches is based on the philosophy and strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr. During the last 50 years, LaFayette has been kidnapped, threatened, and survived ventures into hostile environments in his effort to teach nonviolence philosophy, strategies, and methods.

This historical/biographical study used …

Positive Deviance As A Framework For Understanding Motivations And Barriers To Exercise For University Students At Campus Recreation, René Dario Herrera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to use qualitative research methodologies to better understand motivations and barriers to exercise for university students at campus recreation. The secondary purpose was to identify any correlations between physical activity habits and academic success. Ethnographic data obtained from a positive deviance sample and critically analyzed with feminist and postmodern theory could provide additional validation for campus recreation's value in positively contributing to the academic success of university students.

Participant observation, questionnaire, cultural domain analysis, interview, and focus group provided qualitative data.

Results indicate university students who frequent campus recreation to exercise are highly motivated …