Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Extreme E-Service Learning: Remote Learning For Undergraduate Students And Telehealth Intervention For Children With Autism, Madiha S. Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Extreme e-service learning courses in higher education, in which all components of the course including the instruction and service is provided online (Waldenr et al., 2012), offer rich educational experience as well as mutual benefits to the students, community and the higher education institutes. Very few studies have examined extreme e-service learning. We examined an undergraduate extreme e-service learning course in psychology; students learned through a virtual class and provided telehealth behavioral intervention services to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Utilizing mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative measures including student observations, assignments, and self-reports) and a mixed design (single subject …

No Excuses Yet No Solutions: The Inherent Anti-Blackness Of The No-Excuses Charter School Model, Tshala A. Pajibo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The No Excuses model of education has routinely been labeled abusive and harmful to students. The No Excuses model has garnered significant pushback from students, families, and stakeholders because of procedures and policies that have caused physical, mental, and bodily harm to young students. While many education stakeholders have examined how No Excuses charters and their policies have harmed Black children, not many have examined why. This paper argues that the No Excuses charter model is completely at odds with Black cultural and educational values. This paper suggests deeper studies of the educational mindsets and opinions of No Excuses …

Refugee Higher Education And Participatory Action Research Methods: Lessons Learned From The Field, Hadas Yanay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Refugee access to higher education is devastatingly low. Recognizing the complex barriers facing refugee learners, global educational initiatives are innovating flexible learning models which promote blended online and in-person learning modalities. This article describes the implementation of a five month, online-based internship pilot offered to 21 refugee participants in qualitative and quantitative research methods, through a participatory action research (PAR) framework in five different countries -- Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Lebanon. The internship is part of the Global Education Movement (GEM), which brings refugees accredited online college degree and career development opportunities. Through direct engagement, observation of the …

Rethinking Thinking About Thinking: Against A Pedagogical Imperative To Cultivate Metacognitive Skills, Lauren R. Alpert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In summaries of “best practices” for pedagogy, one typically encounters enthusiastic advocacy for metacognition. Some researchers assert that the body of evidence supplied by decades of education studies indicates a clear pedagogical imperative: that if one wants their students to learn well, one must implement teaching practices that cultivate students’ metacognitive skills.

In this dissertation, I counter that education research does not impose such a mandate upon instructors. We lack sufficient and reliable evidence from studies that use the appropriate research design to validate the efficacy of metacognitive skill-building interventions (not just evaluate their relationship to learning outcomes). I argue …

Coalition And Creativity On The Bridges And Fringes With Immigrant Student-Contributors In Nonprofit Adult Education, Katherine E. Entigar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The nonprofit education of adult immigrants is an under-researched aspect of U.S. education. Adult immigrants, often perceived as passive and quiescent, bring voices and contributions to learning in powerful yet unheard ways. This research agenda invokes a new critical lens in education scholarship to uplift and center these contributions as a coalitional, dialogical project. Drawing upon critical sociocultural, women of color feminist, and poststructual theories, critical intersectional epistemology, and Bakhtinian dialogical thinking, this research project pursues inductive, recursive meaning making as an innovative exploration. A multiphase, sequential study including surveys and two focus groups foregrounds the complex, fluid ways adult …

Understanding Gender Differences In Traditional And Cyberbullying: An Evaluation Of Construct Validity Of The 2013 School Crime Supplement To The National Crime Victimization Survey, Anthony Betancourt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Few measures assess cyberbullying and traditional bullying simultaneously while also reporting standards of reliability and validity. As a result, it remains unclear whether cyberbullying should be considered a separate type of bullying. This dissertation advances the literature by examining data from the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS-SCS) to provide psychometric information about the factor structure of the 2013 NCVS-SCS traditional and cyberbullying scales. Furthermore, the dissertation uses that information to evaluate if cyberbullying emerges as a unique factor. Finally, measurement invariance will determine if bullying holds the same meaning for boys and girls (e.g. …

Doing Discipline Different: Evaluating The Implementation Of Restorative Justice As An Alternative To Punitive Discipline In New York City Public Schools, Virginia Diaz-Mendoza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given that punitive discipline practices have disproportionately impacted its poor students of color, New York City is committed to transforming school discipline and improving school climate by implementing restorative justice as an alternative. This study is an evaluation of the restorative justice pilot program funded by the New York City Council and managed by the New York City Department of Education where key stakeholders including officials at the Department of Education, school administrators, educators, school staff, and community organizations are involved in the implementation of restorative justice in schools with high suspension rates. Data was collected through interviews, observations of …

A Quantitative Examination Of Black And Hispanic Students’ Time-To-Graduation, Ferdinand A. Verley Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What factors influence Black and Hispanic students’ time-to-graduation, and is it different for their special opportunity program peers? Using theoretical lenses including intersectionality, class struggle, justice, and sociological practice, this dissertation employs data from a large urban public university system to examine the relative impact of demography, academic preparedness, and financial background on students’ time-to-graduation performance.

Time-to-graduation, operationalized in this dissertation as the duration of years before a student earns a bachelor’s degree, for full-time students often represents an investment of time at the expense of earning a wage or salary in the job market. The economic gain that accrues …

Asians Applying For Postsecondary Success: Students, Schools, And Socioeconomic Status, Avery M.D. Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Higher education recruitment rates are rapidly declining as schools are stymied by dynamic demographic shifts and a competitive ecosystem. Despite the constant realities of this challenge for tertiary institutions, the complexities of the interplay for demographics, student motivation, parental influences, and school environments during the postsecondary education application process is often overlooked. This thesis analyses how these four domains impact Asian American students within the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) in terms of the number of postsecondary schools to which they apply? This study examines a sample (N = 662) of the ELS by employing multivariate regression analysis on the number …

Class Matters: School Affluence And Other Predictors Of Attainment For Wealthy And Poor Students, Alison Brockhouse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public schools in the United States are becoming increasingly segregated by socioeconomic status. Though the educational consequences of socioeconomic segregation are well researched, segregation is often ignored or exacerbated by education reform. To learn more about the wider implications of socioeconomic segregation, this study utilizes theoretical frameworks derived from Max Weber’s theory of social stratification to analyze over 10,000 students’ experiences from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) 2002, 2004, and 2012 waves of data collection. More specifically, this research explores the impact of attending an affluent high school on long-term educational attainment. It finds …

Mathematics Attitudes And Mathematics Performance: Novel Approaches Towards Noncognitive Educational Measurement, Applications To Large-Scale Assessment Data, And Examinations Of Multigroup Invariance, Kalina Gjicali

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Academic performance is predicted by a multitude of demographic, contextual, cognitive, and noncognitive constructs. The noncognitive factors of achievement in mathematics that have previously been explored in depth are study skills, collaborative problem-solving, confidence, self-efficacy, and personality traits (Kyllonen, 2012). Limited applied research has explored the predictive value of noncognitive factors such as attitudes and beliefs in mathematics achievement – even though attitudes towards mathematics are a promising avenue for understanding the variability in mathematics achievement. The current research uses the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain high school students’ performance in mathematics in a series of three studies. …

Hierarchical Meta-Analysis: A Simulation Study Comparing Classical Random Effects And Fully Bayesian Methods, Nancy R. Andiloro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Meta-analytic data have a natural hierarchical structure to them, where individuals are nested within studies, and have both within-and between-study variation to model. A random-effects hierarchical linear model is useful to conduct a meta-analysis because it allows one to appropriately parse out the two components of variation that exist within and across studies to determine an observed effect. Empirical Bayes estimation considers the reliability of variance estimates; when the reliability of the effect size estimate for a study is high, substantial weight is placed on that estimate. However, problems with estimation arise when the number of studies and their sample …

The Narration Of Conflicting Accountabilities In The Era Of High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation, James Christopher Head

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S. Government’s Race to the Top program inspired a wave of education reforms across the nation aimed at holding teachers individually accountable for their students’ “growth” on test scores. These individualized programs implemented new forms of audit technologies aimed at orienting teachers’ priorities toward the calculations produced by students, rather than towards students’ holistic growth and well-being. In so doing, these programs signify an ideological rupture for teachers in that their long-shared sense of interpersonal accountability is institutionally re-directed – and reinforced with consequences – toward calculative accountability. In this dissertation, I investigated teachers’ experiential navigation of the introduction …

Pipeline To Failure: Social Inequality And The False Promises Of American Public Schooling, Adia Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My experience as a New York City public school student was absolutely electrifying, though filled with many trials. While my mother would have preferred to put me in private school, having access to some of the world’s greatest institutions and resources offered unique opportunities and exposures. The performing arts provided me with an outlet to express myself and build skills and confidence. In particular, dance education kept me occupied and disciplined in a large city full of danger. Every so often, I witnessed hostile, or even violent exchanges between students, or students and staff. While some of my schoolmates became …

Open Source Micro Diplomas: New Credentials For New Learning, Jack F. Powers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The standard model for college in America—a four-year bachelor’s degree that teaches critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication skills—is unaffordable and unattainable for most Americans. Only about a third of citizens aged 25 and over have achieved a baccalaureate degree or better. Two-thirds are left behind in precarious jobs that pay substantially less and that are losing ground. Everyone from politicians to parents repeats the mantra of “college for all”, but the reality is more like “college for the socio-economically gifted.”

At the same time, the modern world of work is evolving into a more complex, technical, and computerized …

Letter To The President: Longitudinal Critical Discourse Analysis Of Academic And Hip Hop Genres In A Rap Narrative Program, Debangshu Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The objective of this study was to examine an in-school rap narrative workshop through critical discourse theory (Bamberg, 2012; Daiute, 2014). Twelve youth from a public school serving youth in urban Houston, TX were recruited from an in-school and after-school Hip hop/Rap narrative program to participate in a two-year cohort research study. The primary research question guiding the study was “How do young people participating in a school-based Hip hop/Rap program use a wide range of narrative genres for literacy and psycho-social development over two years in the program?”

The data-intensive study involved assessments of literacy and psycho-social development via …

The Value Of Value-Added: Science, Technology, And Policy In Educational Evaluation, Daniel Douglas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first decade of the 21^st century, researchers and policymakers in K-12 education began to focus on evaluating teacher and school performance based on students’ standardized test scores. One evaluative technique, value-added assessment (VAA), has been given particular attention. This research presents a comprehensive study of the theoretical, technical, historical and political dimensions VAA. Theoretically, the assumptions that underlie value-added diverge significantly from the observed operations of the schools and classrooms these models are supposed to evaluate. Technically, even if the theoretical assumptions are accepted, teachers’ actual value-added rankings are shown to be unstable across time periods and …

Evaluating The Validity Of Technology-Enhanced Educational Assessment Items And Tasks: An Empirical Approach To Studying Item Features And Scoring Rubrics., Ally Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With the advent of the newly developed Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, innovative assessments, including technology-enhanced items and tasks, will be needed to meet the challenges of developing valid and reliable assessments in a world of computer-based testing. In a recent critique of the next generation assessments in math (i.e., Smarter Balanced), Rasmussen (2015) observed that many aspects of the technology “enhancements” can be expected to do more harm than good as the computer interfaces may introduce construct irrelevant variance. This paper focused on issues surrounding the design of TEIs and how cognitive load …

The Consequences Of The State Implementation Of A Nationally Standardized Teacher Performance Assessment As A Certification Requirement: A Mixed Methods Study, Deborah Greenblatt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The edTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment) is a nationally distributed and scored standards-based teacher performance assessment being promoted throughout the country (AACTE, n.d.-a). This mixed methods study investigated the experiences of New York City teacher candidates and teacher educators with the elementary education edTPA portfolio. It was found that teacher candidates experienced various supports and challenges based on their personal demographics, school of education, and student teaching placements. Additionally, the edTPA affected participants' personal, professional, academic and student teaching experiences. Furthermore, the study revealed ways that implementation of the edTPA affected teacher educators and the teacher education curriculum.

Based on the …

Thiscollegestory.Com: How Interactive Writing Media Influenced The Way First-Year Students Made Sense Of Their College Transition, Philip Kreniske

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on insights from Bakhtin (1986) that demonstrated the significance of writing as an interaction, and building on recent developments in narrative analysis that offer insights into narrator’s sense making processes (Daiute, 2014; Lucic, 2013); this research explores how freshmen in an educational opportunity program used interactive writing media to make sense of their transition to college. The exploration involved three main questions and each question concerns students’ development over time:

• First, did college students’ writing in two different media (blogs and word-processed text) differ and did these differences change over time?
• Second, how did the narrators and audience interact …

The Effects Of Descriptions And Images Of Antecedent Stimuli And Outcomes To Correct Responses In Task Analysis Instruction, Bryan C. Tyner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Task analysis (TA) instruction is commonly used for teaching behavior chains; however, little research informs best practices for TA instruction. Data regarding the effects of instructional variables on responding may enhance TA efficacy and learner performance. Linking TA instruction to the three-term contingency may facilitate the development of control by stimuli that are naturally present while completing complex tasks; therefore, this study employed a two-by-two factorial design to analyze the relative effects of supplementing TA instruction with descriptions and images of: (factor A) antecedent stimuli relevant to each instructed discrete response and (factor B) the outcomes of accurately completing instructed …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …