Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Portraits Of Professional Collaboration: Faculty-Librarian Teaching Partnerships, Carrie L. Forbes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many regional accrediting organizations for higher education have embraced information literacy as a key component for both student success and student learning outcomes. Through embedded librarianship practices, librarians are now taking a leading role in developing and promoting users’ information literacy skills and in adopting an active classroom teaching approach. Faculty-librarian team teaching is a best practice for integrating information literacy into the higher education curricula, but the extant research has largely focused on the barriers to collaboration. Using Walsh and Kahn’s (2010) model of “collaborative working” as a conceptual framework, this dissertation explores the qualities and characteristics of four …

Brokering Social Capital: A Qualitative Case Study On How A Hispanic Serving Institution Fosters Social Capital For First-Generation, Latinx, On-Campus Student Employees, Christian Corrales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Around 80 percent of undergraduates enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions are employed (Carnevale et al., 2015; Kena, Musu-Gillette, Robinson, Wang, Rathbun, Zhang, & Velez, 2015). Research shows that student employment is one of the most critical activities that affect students' post-secondary experiences and decisions while enrolled (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Perna 2010; Riggert et al., 2006; Tinto, 1993). The present study aimed at understanding how employing organizations and workplace environments of first-generation Latinx on-campus student employees influenced their ability to build social capital and navigate through higher education.

A social capital lens was used to help understand student participants' …

Photographs In My Mind, Through Darkness And In Light: An Auto-Criticism Of A University Teacher, Melanie Renee Witt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an auto-criticism, a new qualitative inquiry founded in educational criticism and arts-based research, which describes and analyzes my lived experience as a female university teacher. The purpose of this study is to describe, interpret, evaluate and thematize my experiences with professional stress, pregnancy loss, and self-care. Secondly, it illuminates auto-criticism as a methodology with potential contributions to qualitative research and higher education.

Personal documents, internal artifacts, and external artifacts generated during a challenging period of my life as a university teacher are used as data. Language and photography combine to story my lived experiences and findings.

This …

The Effects Of Instructor Self-Disclosure On Students’ Cognitive Learning: A Live Lecture Experiment, Stephen Michael Kromka

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the causal influences of relevant (and irrelevant) instructor self-disclosure on student affect and cognitive learning. Relevant self-disclosure involves the instructor directly relating personal disclosures to important lesson content, whereas irrelevant self-disclosure involves the instructor’s personal disclosures straying from the lesson topic. Given previous correlational self-disclosure research, the researcher predicted that relevant (compared to irrelevant) instructor self-disclosure would lead to increased reports of affect toward the instructor. The researcher also predicted that instructor self-disclosure relevance (compared to irrelevance) would enhance lesson coherence, and in turn, foster students’ cognitive learning. The researcher conducted a …

Knowledge Of Content For Clinical Nursing Educators: An Ethnographic Investigation Of Clinical Experts Who Transition To The Role Of Novice Clinical Nursing Educator, Stacy Wheat Huber

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The purpose of this research study was to identify and describe the teaching practices and the grounding experiences of the teaching practices novice educators use when teaching undergraduate students in the clinical patient care area. The following research questions guided this investigation: What teaching practices and teacher knowledge do novice clinical nursing educators demonstrate or draw from when teaching undergraduate nursing students in the clinical patient-care area? In what ways do novice clinical nursing educators change or adapt their teaching behaviors as a response to the context of the teaching/learning environment? What grounding educational or professional experiences do novice clinical …

The Impact Of A University/Online Program Management Provider Partnership On Faculty Approaches To Teaching Design: A Case Study Using Activity Theory, Swati Ramani

CGU Theses & Dissertations

As the number of online courses increase in Higher Education, many higher education institutions outsource online course development to an Online Program Management (OPM) provider because of a lack of budget, staff, and technology. Current research indicates that OPMs often do not have instructional design (ID) services tailored to a specific university. This research uses a Case Study in order to analyze how the nature and dynamics of a business partnership between a research university and an OPM provider impact faculty engagement and development of pedagogical and technological knowledge. They Activity Theory conceptual framework was used to direct inquiry and …

Professional Growth: How Do Cooperating Teachers Grow Through The Experience Of Having A Student Teacher?, Ashton D. Coppley

Doctor of Education Dissertations

Cooperating teachers and student teachers share a unique internship that allows the development of skills for both individuals. The literature states that cooperating teachers can grow from student teachers; however, there are a few sources that state the areas in which this growth occurs. The purpose of this study was to determine if growth or impact happened in the areas of instructional practices, coaching skills, and self-efficacy during the student teaching process. This mixed methods study included a survey, focus group interview, and single interviews to determine whether any change was made. The survey created descriptive statistics, a Pearson correlation …

Moments Of Reflection: A Phenomenological Study Of Preservice Teacher Reflection, Jane Ferris

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

Transitioning from their training programs to their own classrooms, new teachers may feel a disconnect between what they learned and what they experience. To help with this transition and to promote teachers’ abilities to respond to the varying and unique needs of their students and schools, teacher training programs, beginning in the 1980s, have incorporated the use of reflective practice. Reflection provides teachers an opportunity to engage with their experiences in such a way that prereflective understandings, assumptions, biases, and beliefs may be identified. Reviewed literature suggests that teacher training programs do not clearly define and implement reflection instruction into …

The “Other” Teacher: Understanding The Experience Of Graduate Teaching Assistants In Neoliberal Teacher Education Settings, Jing Zhang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In this study, I critically examine how graduate teaching assistants’ (GTAs’) experiences are discursively shaped by the exercise of power in neoliberal higher education contexts and hence, to reveal the hidden aspects of educational institutions, which are central to our understandings about the meaning of truth, fairness, and equity embedded in neoliberal academic settings. To understand the experiences of graduate teaching assistants in this neoliberal teacher education setting, the major research questions of this study explore how the different identities that GTAs possess influence their interactions with the neoliberal higher education context and how they navigate as well as resist …

Factors Predictive Of Self-Efficacy In First Year Teachers, Jessica Leigh Hamelin

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research demonstrates that there are increased teacher burnout rates within the first 5 years of entering the field (Darling-Hammond, 2003; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2010; Yost, 2006). Consistent with those findings is that teacher preparation matters when conversing about recruitment and retention (Brown, Lee, & Collins, 2014). As more research is conducted in the area of teacher preparation it has become clear that teacher effectiveness is directly related to preparation (Darling-Hammond, 2010). As teachers enter their first-year teaching, philosophical stances can change, inflated beliefs about the teaching profession can be altered, and self-efficacy is influenced. Drawing from Hoy and Spero’s (2005) …

I Don’T Really Work Here: Part-Time Faculty And The Adjunctification Of Higher Ed., Maggie Cawley

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This critical action research thesis will explore the 40-year rise of adjunctification, the term coined to describe the increased reliance on adjunct and contingent labor in institutions of higher education. This thesis will examine adjunctification’s detrimental effects on teaching in higher education as a profession, on adjuncts and contingent teachers, and on students. Institutional overreliance on adjunct faculty as cheap, ad hoc labor flies in the face of the role that education should play in society: to develop student potentiality and capacity for critical thought. I believe that the casualization of teaching and the subsequent rise of adjunctification preclude these …

An Exploration Of Evolving Faculty Instructional Beliefs And Practices Viewed Through The Lens Of Transformative Learning, Joseph Huston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

The purpose of this study was to explore the phenomenon of transformative learning within the context of instructional beliefs and practices among collegiate math and science faculty. Participants included nine full-time instructional faculty teaching within a biological science, mathematics, or physical science department at a public, two-year degree-granting state college. The study employed a qualitative research methodology, engaging participants in semi-structured interviews through a descriptive phenomenological design. Qualitative coding and thematic analysis were conducted, consistent with Colaizzi's (1978) Method for phenomenological research. Data analysis resulted in the emergence of four themes related to transformative learning experiences and four themes related …

New Perspectives On Faculty Stress: Its Relationship With Work Engagement, Teaching Effectiveness, And Program Preferences To Manage Stress, Rocio Alvarenga

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to analyze faculty stress with three interrelated parts. First, the study examined the relationship between work engagement, stress factors, stress outcomes, and faculty characteristics. Next, the study analyzed the relationship between students' perception of faculty stress, faculty teaching effectiveness, class size, and student classification. Finally, the study investigated faculty preferences for health and wellness programs in the workplace. The study used two anonymous online questionnaires to collect data from 45 faculty participants and 119 student participants from a U.S. public, four-year research university. For faculty, the results demonstrated statistically significant strong relationships between all …

New State Of Mind: A Living Learning Community For Out-Of-State Students, Molly Rorick

West Chester University Master’s Theses

The term out-of-state resonates with any person who does not permanently live in a particular state but has visited from across state lines multiple times. In this case it is in relation to students who have decided to pursue their education at an institution that is located in a different state. This thesis examines the lack of resources for OOS students living within the university's walls using the lens of transition theory. With the lack of resources, this creates a barrier between the student and their potential for their success. New State of Mind is a proposed intervention, which opens …