Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons^™

Impact Of Concept-Based Mathematics Instructional Strategies On Seventh Grade Student Achievement, Katherine Annette Lawley Ellsworth

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In a nation with declining enrollment in college math courses, it is important to examine how mathematics is being taught in the K-12 education system and to identify best practices. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact concept-based instructional strategies has on middle school student achievement in mathematics when integrated into the traditional mathematics curriculum. Participants included 424 seventh grade students from two middle schools. Students Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Fall-to-Winter data 2018 prior to implementation was used a covariate and Fall-to-Winter data 2019 data during the implementation of concept-based instructional strategies integrated into the traditional …

Truly, Madly, Deeply: Adverbs And Ells, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

In this issue’s column focusing on adverbs and English language learners, columnist Kristin Lems explores some of the basic but not-so-obvious features about adverbs that readers and writers need to learn in order to take advantage of these powerful levers of language. The odds are very good that your native English speakers will also benefit from this information—and you might learn a thing or two as well.

Feasibility Of Modifying Existing Chemistry Demonstrations By Using Substitute Materials, Dane Mykel M. Quiambao, Armando M. Guidote Jr, Rhodora F. Nicdao

Chemistry Faculty Publications

This study aimed to reiterate the use of Chemistry demonstrations as effective teaching tools to students while addressing some of its drawbacks, which discourages teachers from doing them such as cost and safety. Four chosen existing Chemistry demonstrations (Blue Bottle Experiment, Copper Sulfate Experiment, Blown Away, Dancing Flames) were modified by using substitute reagents, which are more accessible, relatively safer, and at lower cost. These demonstrations were chosen based on how easily the substitute reagents will be obtained. Afterwards, with the permission of a private junior high school, they were presented to a group of Grade 9 students of their …

A Spiritual Vision For Catholic Educator Prep In A Time Of Disruption: A Reflective Essay, Angela T. Moret, Ronald R. O'Dwyer S.J.

COVID-19 and Catholic Schools

This essay reflects on the spiritual lessons learned as a Catholic graduate-level teacher prep program guided novice teachers through the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We observed the importance of articulating a clear spiritual vision rooted in scripture, history, and personal experience. The guiding spiritual lens has been the Emmaus story which helps us look to the past and to the future as we form and support early-career educators in Catholic schools.

Philosophical Considerations Always Already Entangled In Mathematics Education Research, David W. Stinson

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

In this paper, I explore how mathematics education research is always already entangled with and in ontological, epistemological, and ethical considerations—that is, philosophical considerations—of the researcher (or research team) from beginning to end. The danger in too much of the existing mathematics education research, however, is limited acknowledgement of how philosophical considerations drive both knowledge production and knowledge dissemination in the field. Illustrating how the concepts ontology, epistemology, and ethics are made sense of across the research paradigm spectrum—predict, understand, emancipate, and deconstruct—sheds light on not only the possible divergences in approaches to research (mathematics education or otherwise) but also …

Embedding Problem Solving In The Math 30x Courses, Kelli Wasserman

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

The Math 30x Quarter Bridge courses have been designed to bridge the gap created in curriculum, as CSUSB transitions from quarters to semesters. The four course series will soon be a three course series, with the fourth course embedded in the other three. These classes will now incorporate reading, problem solving and reflection assignments from Powerful Problem Solving by Max Ray and Thinking Around the Box by Davida Fischman and Shawnee McMurran. These classes will also serve as a model for the Fall semester courses. The following outlines the Group Projects to be incorporated into the Quarter Bridge and Semester …

Improving The Problem Of Teacher Retention In A Rural Middle School In Southwestern Virginia, Meagan Marie Goad

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this applied study was to solve the problem of teacher retention for a rural middle school in Southwestern Virginia and to design training strategies to address the problem. A rural middle school in Southwestern Virginia is struggling to retain teachers. The research question for this study was: How can teacher retention at a rural middle school in Southwestern Virginia be improved. Interviews with former teachers of the rural middle school were conducted specifically to determine why these individuals left. Survey data was obtained to determine why teachers in this rural middle school choose to stay. Exit documentation …

Middle Level Students’ Responses To A Guided Inquiry Of The Weeping Time, John Bickford, Molly Bickford, Razak Dwomoh

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

HISTORIANS’ TASKS, specifically their habits of mind, aremeaningful far beyond the scholarship they produce and far outsidethe discipline of history. Historians critically evaluate ambiguousand seemingly foreign situations. They consider and weigh thebest available evidence—some readily accessible, others obscure—which they rely upon to articulate findings. Historical inquiry, thus,involves gathering and reading documents; thinking carefully aboutwhat one knows, suspects, and cannot know; and communicatingsubstantiated understandings in a persuasive way. The necessaryhabits of mind—or heuristics—transfer to diverse occupations, likean attorney or detective, and are associated with citizenship tasks,like discerning fact from opinion in a campaign advertisement orbeing an informed voter. Historians’ heuristics prepare …

English Teaching Methods Course: Unit Plan Description And Rubric, Nicole Klimow

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This unit plan describes expectations for a unit plan that serves as the cumulative performance assessment for the ESEC 506-E course that single-subject-teacher-candidates in English Teaching Methods Course. In small groups, clustered by the grade level they will be teaching, create a six-week unit plan that incorporates multiple learning standards, assessment practices, and texts grounded by an overarching question(s). This assignment mimics expectations and dispositions that in-service teachers demonstrate daily. The unit must define the academic focus—the big learning expectation that will be assessed summatively—by identifying the learning sequence and formative checkpoints so that learners are “ready” to demonstrate their …

Comic Book Conversations As Pedagogies Of Possibilities In Urban Spaces, Ewa Mcgrail, Gertrude Tinker Sachs, Megan Lewis

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

The researchers in this qualitative case study explored the dialogic experiences of elementary school students during Comic Book Club meetings held in their local community resource center. The researchers wanted to know what experiences of dialogism were manifested in children’s conversations about reading, writing, and comic creation and what concepts of dialogism were evident in those experiences. The interview and observation data and artifacts suggest that co-construction of meaning and intertextuality played important roles in the dialogic experiences of the participants. Children’s co-construction of meaning and intertextuality also demonstrated engaged embodiment due to children’s spontaneous enactment of dance and dramatization …

Promoting Preservice Stem Education Teachers' Metacognitive Awareness: Professional Development Designed To Improve Teacher Metacognitive Awareness, Andrew John Hughes, Eddie Partida

Educational Leadership & Technology Faculty Publications

This quantitative portion of a convergent complementarity, mixed-methods, exploratory study describes the design and implementation of a 5-week preservice teacher professional development (PD) experience and the associated Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) measures before and after the experience. The PD experience was designed to explicitly address participants’ domain-general and domain-specific knowledge and regulation of cognition through a highly integrated academic and clinical preparation regimen centered on a cognitive coaching model. The study participants comprised preservice STEM education teachers (N = 11) enrolled in a dual teaching certification and Master’s in Education program. The findings showed an increase in participants’ regulation …

Exhibit Curriculum For Fighting For Democracy: Unit Three, Sarah Aponte, Martin Toomajian

Open Educational Resources

Exhibit curriculum for the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute exhibit, Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans from World War II.

Students in Global History and U.S. History courses often spend extensive class time studying World War II. Dominicans were involved in virtually every facet of the U.S. war effort. The Dominican Studies Institute's exhibit highlights Dominican veterans who served in both the European and Pacific theaters, in multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces. These same veterans, like other people of color, faced discrimination as soldiers in the U.S. An exploration of these veterans' experiences would be memorable and valuable for secondary …

A Qualitative Study On Adequate Sleep In Preschool Children – Can We Sleep On It?, Seema Zainulabdin Lasi, Noreen Afzal, Somal Kayani

Human Development Programme

Sleep is a significant marker of physical and psychological health. The present research was undertaken to explore perceptions of parents, teachers and pediatricians about preschool children’s sleep patterns, habits, and problems from urban Karachi, Pakistan. A qualitative research approach was employed; data collection methods were Focus Group Discussion (FGDs) and Key Informant Interviews (KIIs). The themes identified were children’s sleep patterns, sleep environment, sleep rituals, distractions, sleep problems, the impact of inadequate sleep, and recommendations to improve. Emergent themes were inconsistency of rules from parents, lack of opportunities for outdoor physical activity, different kinds of stresses, social and cultural events …

Adolescent Mental Health Training For Middle School Educators, Sarah Minton

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Abstract

Background: Adolescent mental health disorders are an increasing concern in the United States. School systems, specifically educators, are in the unique role to aid in early identification of mental health disorders, as well to intervene in mental health distress. However, mental health training for educators is lacking, leaving educators unprepared to manage mental health concerns within their classroom.

Purpose: The purpose was to utilize an evidence-based training, the “Teacher Knowledge Update Guide” from TeenMentalHealth.org to train middle school educators on the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions in the adolescent population with the intent to increase awareness, knowledge, …

Bridge Building Through A Duoethnography: Stories Of Nepanleras In The Land Of Liberation, Ethan Trinh, Leonardo Javier Merino Méndez

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

This innovative volume showcases the possibilities of autoethnography as a means of exploring the complexities of transnational identity construction for learners, teachers, and practitioners in English language teaching (ELT). // The book unpacks the dynamics of today’s landscape of language education which sees practitioners and students with nuanced personal and professional histories inhabit liminal spaces as they traverse national, cultural, linguistic, ideological, and political borders, thereby impacting their identity construction and engagement with pedagogies and practices across different educational domains. The volume draws on solo and collaborative autoethnographies of transnational language practitioners to question such well-established ELT binaries such as …

Too Nepantlera To Write: Building An Inclusive Tribalism For All, Ethan Trinh

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Suicide And Nepantla: Writing In In-Between Space To Crave Policy Change, Ethan Trinh

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

This autohistoria, or “a personal essay that theorizes,” is a special piece to me.[1] It is spiritual, poetic, political, and dialogic. This essay thus delves deeper into the mourning, the fear, the tears, the pain, the loneliness, the strength of a Vietnamese queer immigrant in a state of Nepantla in order to relate with other queers of color in the dark (i.e., in suicidal process). “Living in Nepantla, the overlapping space between different perceptions and belief systems, you are aware of the changeability of racial, gender, sexual, and other categories rendering the conventional labelling obsolete.”[2] In this space, …

Photovoice In A Vietnamese Immigrant Family: Untold Partial Stories Behind The Pictures, Ethan Trinh

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

This paper, in the form of walking meditation, sitting, drinking, eating, and traveling among spaces and times, witnesses how the author as a Vietnamese immigrant child living in the United States (U.S.) traces untold stories of their family through family photos. Further, this paper attempts to find, understand and connect the relation between personal and political, between individual and collective, for a Vietnamese re-education camp detainee and his family, situated in political, historical, and cultural context. The use of photo elicitation comes from the desire that the reader can engage with the voices of the family members as they describe …

Still You Resist: An Autohistoria-Teoria Of A Vietnamese Queer Teacher To Meditate, Teach, And Love In The Coatlicue State, Ethan Trinh

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

This piece will be walking, writing, meditating in in-between spaces with me. I call this act queer walking meditation, which blended autohistoria, the Coatlicue State, and meditation to examine my own queer self. This queer walking meditation helps me move between stories, initiates dialogues with a self, recognizes my self's confusion, and leads to a series of actions to fight against the struggles and complicatedness in my identities. As a result, I learned how to mediate and take actions for myself and with my students from the standpoint of a Vietnamese queer, accented, Teaching English to Speakers of Other …

Scholars Before Researchers: Philosophical Considerations In The Preparation Of Mathematics Education Researchers, David W. Stinson

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

In this essay, the author explores how research in mathematics education is always already entangled with and in ontological, epistemological, and ethical considerations—that is, philosophical considerations—of the researcher from beginning to end. The danger in too much of the existing mathematics education research, however, is limited acknowledgement of how philosophical considerations drive both knowledge production and knowledge dissemination in the field. “Practical” definitions of ontology, epistemology, and ethics are provided as well as descriptions of how each concept is made sense of across the paradigms of inquiry spectrum: predict, understand, emancipate, and deconstruct. The author concludes the essay with a …

Cultural Diversity Professional Development In Schools Survey, Krystal R. Thomas, Hillary Parkhouse, Jesse Senechal, Zoey Lu, Laura Faulcon, Julie Gorlewski, David B. Naff

MERC Publications

This report presents findings from the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) Cultural Diversity Within Schools Survey. This survey was designed for school- based professionals (i.e., teachers, instructional staff, administrators) within the MERC region. Administered in the fall of 2018, the survey collected information about experiences of professional development related to cultural diversity, attitudes toward cultural diversity within schools, perceptions of barriers and opportunities, and perspectives on the need for professional development. Section 1 of the report discusses the context for this survey effort: increased cultural diversity in our schools, increased cultural mismatch between students and teachers, and multicultural education as …

Exhibit Curriculum For Fighting For Democracy: Unit Two, Sarah Aponte, Martin Toomajian

Open Educational Resources

Exhibit curriculum for the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute exhibit, Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans from World War II.

Students in Global History and U.S. History courses often spend extensive class time studying World War II. Dominicans were involved in virtually every facet of the U.S. war effort. The Dominican Studies Institute's exhibit highlights Dominican veterans who served in both the European and Pacific theaters, in multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces. These same veterans, like other people of color, faced discrimination as soldiers in the U.S. An exploration of these veterans' experiences would be memorable and valuable for secondary …

Exhibit Curriculum For Fighting For Democracy: Unit One, Sarah Aponte, Martin Toomajian

Open Educational Resources

Exhibit curriculum for the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute exhibit, Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans from World War II.

Students in Global History and U.S. History courses often spend extensive class time studying World War II. Dominicans were involved in virtually every facet of the U.S. war effort. The Dominican Studies Institute's exhibit highlights Dominican veterans who served in both the European and Pacific theaters, in multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces. These same veterans, like other people of color, faced discrimination as soldiers in the U.S. An exploration of these veterans' experiences would be memorable and valuable for secondary …

Culturally Collaborative Teaching: A Path Toward Black Student Learning, J. Love Benton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Inservice teachers’ influence and power are vital components for academic success among Black children. Previous research has shown that when teacher/student interactions are culturally responsive, engaging, and equitable, student learning is positively impacted (Banks, 2001; Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2011; Sleeter, 2000; Warren, 2018). However, equity gaps between Black and White k-12 students continue to exist within classroom settings (Grant & Sleeter, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 2018). Using a mixed-method approach that includes Repertory Grid Technique underpinned by Personal Construct theory to identify the teaching perceptions of inservice teachers, I gathered data that indicate how k-12 teachers understand what enables Black students to …