Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Assessing The Impact Of Computer-Based Simulations On The Interprofessional Education Of Undergraduate Students, Heather Isaacson

All NMU Master's Theses

Interprofessional Education (IPE) is not unique as it is a concept that has been advocated for more than 40 years by the Institute of Medicine (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [ASHA], 2016). Interprofessional education occurs “when two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes” (World Health Organization [WHO], 2010, p. 13). It is a staple in the education of nurses and doctors; however, it is starting to make an appearance in Communication Sciences and Disorders programs. As a result, this is a topic of great interest to faculty teaching in the …

Reaching First- Generation And Underrepresented Students Through Transparent Assignment Design, Ryne Leuzinger, Jacqui Grallo

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter discusses the findings of a national survey conducted to gain insight into academic librarians’ assignment design practices for one- shot and semester courses, with a focus on the degree to which librarians are utilizing elements of transparent assignment design.

Impacts Of Growing Technology On Students' Reading And Writing Skills, Jacquelyn Ogborn Corpuz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Technology has radically changed the ways in which students and teachers function within the classroom. The use of mobile technologies, specifically laptop computers and internet use, has transformed teacher instruction along with student expectations. Given that students have a high exposure to technology in the classroom, especially at the middle school level, this senior capstone examines the impact of growing technology on their reading and writing skills through the use of literature review, teacher interviews and survey, interviews with principals and superintendents, and online teacher survey. The result findings reveal that there are several positive impacts of technology integration on …

Escapando Las Trampas: Teacher Preparation For Mexicanas, Monica Medrano

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Developing Maestras face and overcome linguistic, academic and cultural forms of gatekeeping while trying to navigate through our current education system. For this Capstone Project, the impact that gatekeeping has on developing Maestras and how it affects their academic and professional aspirations was investigated. This is an important issue for developing Maestras, the University of Gringolandia as well as for the education system of Nepantla county. The success of developing Maestras Mexicanas closes the racial gap and directly impacts the student success rate within Nepantla county. The literature and data results analysis indicate that the gatekeeping practices that keep Mexicanas …

No Habla Español: Are Monolingual Teachers Getting The Support They Need?, Natalie Correa

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

For this Capstone Project, the researchers investigated how monolingual teachers view the support and resources they received to teach English Language Learners (ELL) and what they thought could be done to improve their teaching effectiveness. An evidence based argument is offered that monolingual teachers were not being provided with effective support and resources. More specifically, three themes emerged from an analysis of the data obtained from interviews of monolingual teachers and administrators. Based on the emergent themes, an action was undertaken to help monolingual teachers better address the needs of ELLs. This is an important issue for monolingual teachers because …

Creating A Meaningful Experience: On Service Learning And Teacher Preparedness, Telia Krown, Nhat-Dzu T. Bui

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The focus of this Capstone project is on the effectiveness of service learning and its role in teacher preparedness. This is an important issue for Liberal sStudies students, professors, and the community because in the Integrated Teacher Education Program, service learning is treated as preparation for teaching, and it can be seen that way for Traditional Pathway students as well. It is argued that while service learning works towards an admirable goal, there are obstacles and design decisions that keep it from being fully effective in preparing Liberal Studies students in becoming teachers. The three primary stakeholder perspectives chosen were …

The Van Hiele Analysis Of Curricular Materials: A Comparative Study, Vinay Kumar Kalyankar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to investigate K-8 geometry curriculum standards and textbooks for their effectiveness in preparing students for high school geometry. The basis for the study is van Hiele theory pioneered by the Dutch educators and researchers of geometric understanding in adolescents, Dina van Hiele Geldof and Pierre van Hiele. Another driving force for this dissertation is research into mathematics textbooks and curriculum standards of school mathematics as seen in CCSSM and state specific standards documents, both of which influence the mathematics students have the opportunity to learn.

The K-8 geometry curriculum standards and textbook instructional segments …

Identity Fluidity, Empowerment, And Engendered Poverty: Performing A Veteran-Latina-Online-Graduate Student, Maricela Burns

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project is to use critical race theory and gendered discourse to shed light on engendered poverty, cultural capital and resilience in efforts to identify how the American educational system affects marginalized groups when the systems of power and privilege were not created for them. It is through a poignant narrative of one of these students (myself) in the educational system that I reflect, recollect, write and interweave my lived curriculum with what the literature says about ethnic experiences like mine. The efforts here serve to analyze the processes of constructing and building social and gender identity …

An Examination Of Professional Learning Community And Teacher Leadership Practices As Perceived By Educators In A District-Wide Plc, Melissa Castaneda

Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative research explored the correlational and causal analysis between professional learning community (PLC) and teacher leadership, as well as the demographic and capacity-building variables and dimensions of the PLCA-R and TLSS instruments as perceived by educators in an identified emergent district-wide PLC (Lopez, 2015) located in south Texas. The overarching question focused on examining the associations between professional learning communities (PLCs) and teacher leadership in South Central ISD (pseudonym).

The findings lend support to the notion that teacher leadership and PLCs are correlated concepts, and further establish that a healthy school culture embraces and empowers teachers by providing professional …

The Digital Reading Experiences Of Middle School Readers: A Phenomenological Study, Laura A. Hayward

Theses and Dissertations

Reading digitally is part of the 21st century New Literacies, residing in the curriculum as a comprehension skill developed with print reading skills. Differences exist between purpose of digital reading and print reading, manifested in the association of digital reading as a mostly non-fiction genre, the immediacy to digital information and its relevance to a reader’s decision about the usefulness of the information. Contrastingly, print reading can be fiction or non-fiction with access to all the text. The differences suggest that learning focused on immediate evaluation, synthesis, and application of information while reading digitally should be taught in the context …

Cultural Clashes And Cultural Bridges: My Story In Afghanistan, Joe A. Hinojosa Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Narrative inquiry and grounded theory are the methodology used to tell the story of the researcher’s experiences in Afghanistan. This entailed identifying and researching a process of storytelling and weaving experiences together into a coherent and meaningful whole. The narrative inquiry method is appropriate for this project because the critical sources of data consist of the researcher’s perceptions and experiences in Afghanistan, as reported in the form of narrative stories. This qualitative analysis focuses on examining and interpreting concrete pieces of evidence, formulating quantitative analysis along with sharing personal and professional experiences. To that end, external resources, including letters and …

Investigating The Use And Effectiveness Of The Istation Advanced Reading Program With Fourth-Grade At-Risk Struggling Readers, Andres Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of computer-based-instruction (CBI) and multimedia when used as an intervention with upper elementary students experiencing reading difficulties on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Reading Assessments. The researcher employed a quantitative, causal-comparative research design for this study. A Texas supplemental reading program, the Istation Advanced Reading Program, was used as a Response to Intervention (RTI) for those at-risk students of failing their Reading STAAR Test in the fourth grade and to sustain an effective reading program district-wide.

Archived data was collected from three South Texas Title I …

A Critical Bricoleur Assumes Positive Intent: Pablito's Problem, Paul Perez-Jimenez

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation serves to further critical theory research through bricolage autoethnography of a Latinx English teacher from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The bricolage functions to unify reflective constructs that expose an emancipatory catharsis and painful reacquaintance with individual and cultural identity. This project offers the concept of a happening as a construct embedded with the ongoing, reflective, and liberating critical consciousness process. Four happenings are offered and establish that the dichotomies of oppression and liberation, how they happened, are happening or may happen are not easily recognizable unless critical introspection is involved. The leading happening titled Pablito’s Problem …

Toward Critical Counseling: A Content Analysis Of Critical Race Theory And Culturally Relevant Pedagogy In Community College Counselor Education, Lyman A. Insley

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Background: Prior to the early 1990s, most counselor preparation programs did not have multicultural competencies. Therefore, a call was made for the use of multicultural competencies in counselor preparation programs. Yet, the popularization of multicultural competencies of this time in education had a Eurocentric bent, a kind of colorblindness

More recently, scholars confirmed that these Eurocentric multicultural competencies had become the primary template from which counselor preparation programs taught culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy. Therefore, a call was made for the use of critical race theory (CRT) in counselor preparation programs to challenge and change Eurocentric cultural competence.

Purpose: This …

Examining The Educational Experiences Of Community Day School Graduates: A Narrative Inquiry, Willie J. Jones Iii

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Community day school graduates enter society with decisions about college, career, and work. Community day schools operate as a non-traditional education system that provides a separate and often unique education to many disenfranchised students, with lessened accountability protocols to assess whether these systems prepare graduates for life after high school. The number of community day schools and enrollment is declining, due in part to excessive changes within the law and stricter guidelines required to be met.

A Case Study Of Teachers In An Innovative Professional Collaborative And The Evolution Of Their Curricular Conceptions, Practices, And Agency., Alysse Christine Jacobs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I explore the curricular conceptions and practices of seven diverse secondary teachers in an urban, public school district who were involved in a year-long innovative professional collaborative. I also examine the types of ecological influences, including the influence of the collaborative, that played a role in the development of their sense of agency, or lack thereof, focusing especially on their exercise of structurally transformative, or innovative, agency. I examine the following questions in this study: 1. How do teachers perceive curriculum and their roles in curriculum? In what ways do they perceive their curricular conceptions and practices …

Effects Of A Writing Instructional Package For Students With Moderate Intellectual Disability., Beth Newberry Gurney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The development of writing skills is one of the most complex competencies that students are expected to master (Saddler, 2013). Limited research has been conducted on the acquisition of writing skills for students with moderate and severe intellectual disability. Even fewer studies have examined the acquisition of sentence construction skills. The current study examines the effects of a writing instructional package using peer tutoring, response prompting, and sentence frames to teach students with moderate intellectual disability to construct sentences related to adapted grade-level social studies content. Four seventh grade students without disabilities were trained to implement the writing instructional package …

How Accurately Can Religious Educators Predict Student Achievement?, Kyle Lyons

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Teachers make a variety of judgments as they teach. The accuracy of these judgments may influence instruction and student achievement. The present investigation examined (a) how accurately religious educators judge student learning, (b) what cues religious educators report using to judge student learning, and (c) how cue utilization affects the accuracy of judgments of student learning. The research in this study shows the accuracy of judgments for participating teachers is significantly lower than the average judgment accuracy reported in a recent review of teacher judgment literature (Südkamp et al., 2012). The cues participating teachers self-reported using for judging student learning …

The Convergence Of Negotiated Imaginative Play, Literacy Learning And Kindergarten Common Core English Language Arts Standards, Grace Salinas-Casper

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The implementation of strict academic requirements is replacing play as a previously widely accepted developmentally appropriate practice in kindergarten classrooms around the United States, resulting in an imbalance in cultivating the whole child. Research focused on the importance of play in children’s cognitive, linguistic, physical, moral, creative, emotional and artistic development exists. Couched in Vygotsky’s social development theory and the Reggio Emilia principle this ethnographic case study investigates how kindergarteners demonstrate literacy learning, practice and mastery of Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CC.ELA) through imaginative play in a negotiated environment. Research outcomes suggested that negotiated play appears to provide …

An Evaluation Of A Sixth Grade Intensive Mathematics Program And Impacts On Student Achievement, Tammy Dery

Dissertations

The purpose of thisevaluation is to analyze anIntensive Math program’s quality and design, as well as, address the impact of the program to determine whether the intensive mathematics class, and the use of computer-based support,impacts student achievement. The program design incorporates a two-prong model of teacher-directed and computer-based intervention. The relationship of the intensive mathematics curriculum implemented with struggling learners and closing the mathematics achievement gap are evaluated through the analyses of student data, the quality of implementation and program usability and teacher and teacher leader perspectives. The findings indicate that small groups and individualized attention for students is vital …