Secondary Education Commons^™

Teaching Stem For Social Justice: An Exploration And Analysis Of Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Zachary Minken

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

Research Problem

Reforms in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education over the past several decades have resulted in a somewhat steady pressure to infuse personal, social, and cultural relevance into STEM education (DeBoer, 1991; Gallagher, 1971; Hekimoglu & Sloan, 2005; ITEEA, 1996, 2020; NCTM, 2000; NRC, 1989, 2009, 2010, 2012). This emphasis on relevance eventually resulted in a push for social justice in education as a means to both engage learners and to develop students’ moral and ethical reasoning abilities in hopes that this would lead to a more just world (Dos Santos, 2009; Zeidler, 2016). Amidst rising concerns for …

“Communication Is Important. I Learned That On The Fresh Prince Show.” Soft Skills Portrayed In Five Prime-Time Television Comedies: A Quantitative Content Analysis, Jacquelyn Bader

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

This research study merged the seemingly divergent challenges of a soft skills shortage among workforce-ready young adults and the need to develop curricula that are interesting enough to hold students’ attention. This study, based on social learning and human capital theories, explored the portrayal of soft skills in five prime-time television (TV) comedies from the 2019-2020 broadcast season, with the idea that, if the portrayals were sufficiently frequent, readily identifiable, and led to what the TV characters wanted to achieve by exercising those skills, then perhaps the viewing of TV comedies could constitute part of the elusive yet engaging and …

Text Messaging Between School Counselors And Students: An Exploratory Study, Nicholas R. Gilly

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

This exploratory case study examines the impact of text messaging on mentoring relationships when used as an outreach between school counselors and high school students, where established relationships are lacking. An SMS gateway was used to mediate communication between school counselors (N=2) and students (N=5) over a three-month timeframe. The SMS gateway converted email, sent from counselors, to text messages, which were received on mobile devices of students and allowed students to respond back to counselors. Findings indicate that the use of text messaging may ease scheduling of face-to-face meetings between counselors and students, but evidence does not support any …

Public-School Systems Are Criminalizing Our Young People: Giving Voice To The Marganilized, Carrie Stoltzfus

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

A phenomenological qualitative study using Critical Race Theory and counter-storytelling was completed to investigate what K-12 public schools should be doing to keep young people out of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). This study took place in a large city in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Interviews were completed with former students of the researcher who were previously incarcerated, educational professionals, and justice system professionals. Additionally, observations of the court systems and document reviews were completed in order to triangulate findings. Themes emerged around factors that lead to incarceration and the preferred practices to support young people to avoid …