Education Commons^™

Book Review: Renewing The Mind: A Reader In The Philosophy Of Catholic Education, Betsy Ackerson

Journal of Catholic Education

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A National Study Of Regional Catholic School Systems, Nicholas Wolsonovich Dr., Mark Smilaycoff, Maria Ribera

Journal of Catholic Education

This article presents the results of an inquiry into the advantages and disadvantages of regional Catholic school systems, executed by practitioners in the field of Catholic Education. The findings support the idea that the regional Catholic school system is a valuable strategy for providing Catholic education in areas where traditional parish-based schools are no longer viable and suggest that the six major school functions--management, educational programming, school community, Catholic identity, finances, and enrollment--are strengthened as a result of the regional Catholic school system approach. The findings indicate that implementation of the regional system will be most successful when it is …

Incorporating A Class-Wide Behavioral System To Decrease Disruptive Behaviors In The Inclusive Classroom, Kathleen B. Aspiranti, Alanna Bebech, Kristen Osiniak

Journal of Catholic Education

The Color Wheel System is a class-wide behavioral intervention that provides clear rules and expectations to decrease inappropriate behaviors. We implemented the Color Wheel in two classrooms that included students with autism to explore the effectiveness of the Color Wheel in inclusive classrooms within a Catholic elementary school setting. During implementation, there were large and immediate decreases in inappropriate vocalizations in both classrooms. The majority of the students liked the intervention, and the teachers saw positive changes in student behavior and wanted to use the Color Wheel with future classes.

Teaching In The 21st Century: Perspectives From A Catholic University Partnership, Barbara Stacy Rieckhoff Ph.D., Roxanne Farwick Owens Ph.D., Brenda Kraber Ed.D.

Journal of Catholic Education

The 21^st Century Learning Collaborative Initiative was a project designed to understand the role of blended learning in conjunction with the development of a community of practice to support the goals of Catholic elementary and secondary schools in providing engaging teaching and learning. This initiative was part of a foundation grant provided to a large Midwestern urban university in collaboration with area Catholic schools. One purpose of this two-year grant was to continue the university and its College of Education’s commitment to Catholic schools by encouraging and supporting a pedagogical shift through the use of blended learning to engage …

School Improvement In The Digital Age: A Study Of The Alliance For Catholic Education Blended Learning Pilot, Anthony J. D'Agostino, Monica Kowalski

Journal of Catholic Education

This article presents a description of the Alliance for Catholic Education’s (ACE’s) approach to and experience of implementing a pilot blended learning and school improvement initiative in five Catholic schools in three U.S. (arch)dioceses. Program evaluation data is summarized, including results of teacher surveys measuring increases in perceptions of knowledge of and attitudes toward components of the model. The project description and findings offer a model for other Catholic schools considering introducing blended learning approaches as part of school improvement efforts.

The Influence Of Catholic Culture Type On The Spiritual Lives Of College Students, Betsy V. Ackerson

Journal of Catholic Education

This paper considers the Catholic culture of American Catholic colleges and universities in light of their ultimate mission and purpose—that of fostering and drawing students to a deeper knowledge and understanding of truth and themselves in relation to Truth, who is God. Drawing on Catholic theology, philosophy, magisterial teachings, and scholarship on culture and human development, the study explores the relationship between Catholic culture and students’ spiritual development at Catholic colleges and universities. It applies the Morey-Piderit Catholic culture framework and analyzes survey responses from more than 10,000 college students to identify the relationship between Catholic culture type and spiritual …

A Vision For Catholic Higher Education In The 21st Century: Reflecting On The Boston College Roundtable, Patrick Mcquillan, Michael J. James, Timothy P. Muldoon

Journal of Catholic Education

The nucleus of any university is the intellectual life that unfolds among faculty and students. Inevitably, that intellectual life is shaped by the broader university context. Examining that process—in particular, its connection to a Catholic understanding of university mission—offers insight into pressing issues. For instance, what shifting social and academic conditions—both opportunities and challenges—set a context for campus conversations? How might Catholic institutions respond to these conditions? Can Catholic institutions provide a hospitable place for integrating faith and reason at the institutional and personal levels? Can the Catholic intellectual tradition serve as a constructive and creative lens for transforming Catholic …

The Characteristics Of Catholic Schools: Comparative Perspectives From The Usa And Queensland, Australia, Jim Gleeson, John O'Gorman, Peta Goldburg, Maureen M. O'Neill

Journal of Catholic Education

The faith-based identity of Catholic schools is increasingly problematic in a secularised society where the numbers of teachers belonging to religious orders are diminishing rapidly. Teachers’ views regarding the characteristics of Catholic schools are an important aspect of the identity of such schools. The authors locate Catholic schools in the USA and Queensland, Australia, in their respective contexts and compare teachers’ ratings of the importance of eleven given characteristics of Catholic schools as seen by 3,389 teachers in USA Catholic schools and 2,287 teachers in Queensland Catholic schools. When the mean ratings for each jurisdiction were statistically correlated, USA teachers …

Purposeful Explorers: Adolescents Finding Their Purposes In A Catholic High School, Brandy P. Quinn

Journal of Catholic Education

Contemporary research about purpose suggests that adolescents benefit in multiple ways when they develop purpose, and at the same time, that many adolescents are not purposeful. Adolescents in Catholic high schools may receive a unique set of contextual supports that help them develop a sense of purpose and understand what that purpose is. This study was designed to understand the content and organization of purpose for young adolescents during their first year in a Catholic high school. The sample included 153 ninth grade students from a Catholic high school in the United States (M age at T1 = 14.02 …

Disintegrating Worldviews And The Future Of Catholic Education: Addressing The Deep Roots Of Catholic Disaffiliation, Patrick R. Manning

Journal of Catholic Education

Catholic schools in this country continue to struggle with declining enrollment just as the wider American Church continues to struggle with rampant disaffiliation. While some Catholic educators have generated creative solutions to keep their schools afloat, the long-term viability of U.S. Catholic education will require understanding the deep roots of current disaffiliation trends in the gradual fading of the Christian worldview from Westerners’ imaginations. This article addresses this issue by interpreting sociological data about the faith lives of Catholics and Americans in general through the lens of contemporary research on secularization. Working from these interpretive insights, the author suggests concrete …

High School Options And Post-Secondary Student Success: The Catholic School Advantage, David J. Fleming, Stéphane Lavertu, William Crawford

Journal of Catholic Education

Recognizing that post-secondary student attainment and achievement is of increasing import for economic success, this study compares the post-secondary performance of students who attended public and private high schools. The results generally indicate that students who attended Catholic high schools had higher college GPAs, were more likely to graduate, and were more likely to graduate with a STEM degree. This Catholic school advantage was wide-ranging, benefiting many subgroups of students, including non-white, low income, urban, and low-achieving students. We controlled for a rich set of factors and conducted sensitivity analyses to establish the strength of these results.

Self-Generated Notations: A Suggested Methodology Of Introducing Movement Literacy, ‪Shlomit Ofer‬‏

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

The purpose of this paper is to present a method aimed at enabling the acquisition of movement literacy in a communicative-creative manner that does not require long-term expertise. The paper opens with a brief history and description of Eshkol Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN), followed by a discussion of the notion of Movement Literacy and its defined components–conceptualization, representation and kinesthetic performance, as have emerged within the EWMN system. Two additional educational ideas are also mentioned–the constructionism and the independent development of visual representations by learners. Together, these ideas establish a theoretical background for a non-formal study, in which dance-teaching students …

New Identities New Voices: Introducing The Choreographer-Notator, Beth Megill

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

In this practitioner’s perspective paper, the author discusses an experience in which she notated a piece of her choreography using a combination of Labanotation and Motif Notation with the intent of setting the repertory from the score on a group of contemporary dancers, who had never read notation before. She explains her goals as a choreographer and notator proposing a fused creative identity, the Choreographer-Notator. This paper describes how the process of drafting the score and then teaching from the score provided new insights into her work and her identity as a dance artist. The paper concludes with the demands …

The Creation Of Traditional African Dance/Music Integrated Scores, Doris Green

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

African dances are among the oldest dance traditions in existence; their structure is uniquely different because the movement therein is inseparable from the music that governs the movements. The music is associated with the spoken language of the people, which makes it virtually impossible for outsiders to comprehend the music of different African countries. In Africa there is no dance that is not accompanied by some form of music from the voice to orchestras of different percussive instruments. For centuries the dance/music of African people has been passed between generations by a mouth to ear process. Any society that is …

Voices Of Notators: Approaches To Writing A Score--Special Issue, Teresa L. Heiland

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

In this special issue of Voices of Notators: Approaches to Writing a Score, eight authors share their unique process of creating and implementing their approach to notating movement, and they describe how that process transforms them as researchers, analysts, dancers, choreographers, communicators, and teachers. These researchers discuss the need to capture, to form, to generate, and to communicate ideas using a written form of dance notation so that some past, present, or future experience can be better understood, directed, informed, and shared. They are organized roughly into themes motivated by relationships between them and their methodological similarities and differences. …

Grammatical Gender Acquisition In L2 Spanish, Alanna Quinn, Mónica Cabrera

Honors Thesis

Grammatical gender, identified as “one of the most difficult structures that non-native speakers need to acquire” (Alamry & Sabourin, 2017) does not exist in English. L1 English speakers learning L2 Spanish must acquire this new grammatical feature. This thesis investigates this acquisition.

A literature review synthesizes the findings of studies on L2 acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender, and includes an overview of the structure and function of gender within both English and Spanish, as well as a variety of L2 acquisition process hypotheses. An analysis of four introductory Spanish textbooks is offered regarding their presentation of grammatical gender. The findings …

The Intersection Of Ethnic Studies And Public Policy: A Study Of California High School Board Members' Perspectives, Russell Castañeda Calleros

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The achievement gap between Students of Color and their Euro American counterparts has persisted for decades. Too many Students of Color are becoming disinterested in high school curricula and are being pushed out prior to graduation. This mixed-methods study identified the perspectives of California high school board members toward Ethnic Studies (ES) curricula and the extent to which these perspectives informed public policy. This study was completed in two phases. In Phase I, a link to a survey was sent to all California high school board members, which elicited quantitative data. In Phase II, semistandardized interviews that generated qualitative data …

Beyond The Seal Of Biliteracy: The Development Of A Bilingual Counseling Proficiency At The University Level, Fernando Estrada, Ph.D., Magaly Lavadenz, Ph.D., Meghan Paynter, M.A., Roberto Ruiz, M.A.

Practitioner Journal Articles

In this article, the authors propose that California’s Seal of Biliteracy for high school seniors can serve as an exemplar to advocate for the continued development of bilingual skills in university, graduate-level students—and counseling students in particular. Citing literature that points to the need for linguistic diversity among counselors in school and community agencies, the authors describe the efforts taken by the Counseling Program in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in partnership with LMU’s Center for Equity for English Learners to address the need. Their pilot of a Certificate of Bilingual Counseling in Fieldwork (CBC-F) involved …

How Stakeholder Engagement Fuels Improvement Efforts In Three Californian School Districts, Magaly Lavadenz

Education Faculty Works

California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was signed into law in 2013, and represents the most significant change in California education finance and governance in 40 years. It moves additional funds to districts with students in poverty, English language learners, and foster youth. The LCFF sends supplemental funds to districts based on unduplicated counts of these target student groups and concentration funds to districts with high proportions (over 55%) of these same students. In addition, the LCFF eliminates nearly all categorical funding and pushes decision-making about how best to allocate resources to the local level. The LCFF also requires districts …

Transformative Youth Organizing: A Decolonizing Social Movement Framework, Emily Estioco Bautista

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The compounding experiences of colonial miseducation of youth of color, neoliberal policies and logics in urban communities, colonial logics that render the role of spirituality in social movements as invisible, and adultism in legal and social institutions constrain the transformative possibilities of youth agency in social movements. This study explored (a) how educators working in youth movements can build a decolonizing paradigm and practice for transformative organizing and (b) new paradigmatic interventions and theoretical directions that can help inform a transformative youth organizing approach. The research was conducted through a decolonizing interpretive research methodology (Darder, 2015a) and utilized the interrelated …

Teachers’ Knowledge, Perceptions And Practices Regarding Academic Literacy Development Of Long-Term English Learners, Daniel William Alamo

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Secondary educators must be knowledgeable in their content while increasing the academic literacy of their students, a process further complicated when working with students who are long-term English learners (LTELs). This mixed-methods study explored the knowledge, practices, and perceptions of six secondary teachers working to develop the academic literacy of LTEL students in content-specific classrooms. Set within a sociocultural framework, the study provides a greater understanding of the challenges and successes educators experience when working at the secondary level with students with diverse learning needs. The data were collected in two phases. Phase I included a quantitative survey of teachers, …

Closing The Gap Of The Educational Needs Of Homeless Youth: A Case Study Of A Mobile School And Youth Learning Center In Los Angeles, Tiffany G. Edwards

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

The number of homeless children and youth in the United States is on the rise (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2016). Between 2016 and 2017 in the Los Angeles County Homeless Count, there was a 41% increase in the number of homeless minors (The Los Angeles Service Authority, 2017). Education is key to bringing people out of poverty and ending the cycle of homelessness.

Using a socio-psychological lens, this case study examined the perceptions of six of the staff and volunteers at one site of the Griffon Learning Center, an organization trying to close the educational gaps of …

Global Education: Assets And Challenges For Global Competency In Catholic Schools, Beate Winkler Nguyen

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Global education for global competency in Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is neither defined nor aligned as a priority for its 21st-century learners. Various schools within the Department of Catholic Schools address global competency through world languages, dual-language immersion, activities, or programs, but no specific global education focus permeates the entire district. The relevance of global competency for nearly 80,000 students from Early Childhood (EC) programs/PreK–12th grade (high school) Catholic schools in Los Angeles is not just a curricular necessity or spiritual aspiration, it is, at its core, a question of social justice, particularly for students of …

En Busca De Un Futuro Mejor [In Search Of A Better Future]: Understanding Charter School Selection By Immigrant Latina/O Families, Carlos Alberto Garcia

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study focused on understanding the process immigrant Latina/o families in the greater Los Angeles area underwent when selecting a charter school for their children. Through narrative interviews, 13 participants shared their perspectives of how and why they chose a charter school, and detailed the factors they considered in their selection process. Through the theoretical framework of cultural community wealth, social and cultural capital, participants answered the research question why and how do immigrant Latina/o parents research and apply to charter schools, and what are the factors they consider in the decision-making process?

Participants described social networks as connections …

Masking The Focus On English Learners: The Consequences Of California’S Accountability System Dashboard Results On Year 4 Local Control And Accountability Plans (Lcaps), Magaly Lavadenz Ph.D., Professor, Elvira G. Armas Ed.D., Associate Director, Sylvia Jáuregui Hodge M.Ed., Doctoral Fellow

Reports

California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), signed into law in 2013, centers equity as a key to increased and improved services for three targeted student subgroups, including English Learners (ELs), low-income students, and foster youth. As a component of LCFF, districts develop Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) to specify their goals and strategies for using LCFF funds for equity and continuous improvement purposes. The California Model Five by Five Grid Placement Report (Spring 2017 Dashboard) included the Five by Five Placement Grid, a key function of which is to identify the needs of diverse ELs. The Dashboard and the …

Facilitators And Outcomes Of Stem-Education Groups Working Toward Disciplinary Integration, Anna E. Bargagliotti

Mathematics Faculty Works

There is a growing societal recognition of the need for transdisciplinary scholarly collaboration which can enhance undergraduate physics, science, and engineering education. A regional conference/network with 100 university education researchers in physics and other STEM fields was formed to address three themes (problemsolving, computational thinking, and equity) with multiple goals including to strive for transdisciplinary publications. As part of an ongoing participant observation study, phone interviews were conducted 3-4 months later. One year later, publications that were completed as a result of the conference were analyzed for their disciplinary integration. The papers showed evidence of interdispliciplanry collaboration but transdiciplinary collaboration …

Beyond The Seal Of Biliteracy: The Development Of Bilingual Counseling Proficiency At The University Level, Fernando Estrada, Magaly Lavadenz, Meghan Paynter, Roberto Ruiz

Education Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Immigration Enforcement Policy And Its Impact On Teaching And Learning In The Nation's Schools, Jongyeon Ee

Education Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Private Schools In American Education: A Small Sector Still Lagging In Diversity, Jongyeon Ee

Education Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Unmasking The Dangers Of Neoliberalism. Overcoming Our State Of Paralysis, Marta Baltodano

Education Faculty Works

No abstract provided.