Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Implementing Writers’ Workshop Into The Special Education Classroom, Taylor Denning

Masters of Education in Teaching and Learning

Writers’ Workshop has developed prominence as a method towards providing authentic writing experiences. The purpose of this study was to determine what happens to student perceptions and quantity of writing when Writers’ Workshop is implemented into a special education setting. This study took place in a self-contained special education classroom of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders. Data was collected through focus group interviews with the teachers, focus groups with two students from every grade, perception surveys, and writing samples.

Surveys and focus group interviews were completed before and after the implementation. Writing samples were collected at the beginning, middle, and end …

Queering Secondary Education: An Inquiry To The Necessity Of Queer Studies For All Students, Ashlign D. Shoemaker

Honors Theses

In the current state of secondary education, queer studies are appallingly underexposed. The subject matter is often completely disregarded due to a perceived discomfort around themes and content regarding LGBTQ+ sexualities. This process of elimination is a disservice to all students as they continue their education and move on to the adult world. Queer studies must be included for all students to ensure a society of empathy and understanding. Including the queer identity in the secondary education, classroom gives LGBTQ+ students the usable past that is essential to their wellbeing and mental health, and it provides exposure and understanding for …

Teacher Perceptions And Implementation Of A Content-Area Literacy Professional Development Program, Osha Lynette Smith, Rebecca Robinson

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The Common Core State Standards recommend that all educators equip students with the literacy skills needed for college and careers. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine middle-level content-area teachers’ perspectives on a district-led literacy professional development program and their implementation of the literacy strategies they learned. The conceptual framework included Bruner’s constructivist, Bandura’s self-efficacy, and Knowles’s andragogy theories. These theories informed the investigation of adult learners’ perspectives regarding the way they learn and gain confidence in providing literacy instruction. Eleven English, math, science, and social studies teachers participated in the study through individual interviews. Data were …

Evaluating An Evidenced Based Program: Ruling Our Experiences (Rox) For 9/10-Year-Old Girls In The Yough School District, Lisa Mumau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During elementary school years, girls experience social, emotional, and physical changes that affect their abilities to manage relationships and establish positive images of themselves. Given the aforementioned issues, girls need effective elementary school programming to support positive self-esteem and the development of girls’ Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies. The purpose of this mixed-method study focused on evaluating the Ruling Our Experiences (ROX) program for 9/10-year-old girls. The methods used were designed to address the three research questions: Based on the implementation of the ROX program in Yough elementary schools, to what extent do participants exhibit a greater level of positive …

A High School Curriculum That Will Help Prepare Students For A Life Outside Of Academics, Kaitlyn Witt

Honors Projects

Current high school curriculums are detailed to push students towards a college education. However, the curriculum does not prepare students for a life outside of academics. After creating a survey, the results showed that individuals that have completed their high school education do not feel prepared to enter the adult world. The individuals that took the survey responded that they did not feel comfortable managing their finances or cooking a meal on their own. In order to help prepare students for a life outside of the education, individuals in charge of creating a curriculum need to make revisions. After conducting …

Global Citizenship Education In Homeschooling Practices And Experiences In Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, And Pennsylvania, Bethany Shackelford

Capstone Collection

Global citizenship education (GCED) has moved to the forefront of U.S. education policy. The core tenets of GCED are knowledge, skills, behaviors, actions, attitudes, and values. Through these tenets, GCED strives to prepare students to be contributing members of society through making positive change. In this study, I examined the extent to which GCED was integrated in homeschooling education in eight families located in four Northeastern states, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

The findings derived from individual interviews and surveys with homeschooling parents and their adult children as well as document analysis demonstrate that seven of the eight …

Civic Imagination: Dreaming Through And Beyond The Covid Virus, Jon J. Schmidt

SPACE: Student Perspectives About Civic Engagement

No abstract provided.

Inequality In Ethnic Representation In Secondary-School Literature Textbooks And National Examination In Vietnam, Anh Nguyen

Honors Projects

This essay studies the dynamic between ethnic minorities and majority in the Vietnamese education system. By examining the appearance and representation of ethnic minorities in national literature curriculum, textbooks, and examinations, the analysis reflects the government's perspectives regarding the “appropriate” portrait of ethnic minorities' heritage and relationship with the majority. The study finds that Vietnamese education framework and content comply with the national construct of a Vietnamese identity across ethnicities. The state determines educational materials and selectively permits only aesthetic, politically benign, and Kinh-like narratives of ethnic minorities’ cultures, many written and/or chosen by Kinh authority rather than the ethnic …

Winter Travel For Cold Weather Novices; Methods For Making Challenging Outdoor Experiences More Inclusive, Anders Fristedt

Capstone Collection

Cold Weather for Winter Novices is a weeklong experiential education trip developed for students, between the ages of 17 and 21, from the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West (UWC-USA), an international boarding school in Montezuma, New Mexico. This trip is an opportunity to examine multicultural perspectives of adventure and wilderness. Specifically, the research question focuses on if the concepts of adventure and wilderness present inherent hurdles for diverse populations.

This program was developed trough a detailed literature review and needs assessment that involved both outdoor education professionals and potential students. The literature review looked at the …

Performative Possibilities In The Development Of Protagonistic Agency Among Graduate Students In China, Yan Wang

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Educational drama is a term that has in recent years achieved a pride of place in the field of arts-based research. During previous centuries, however, drama was considered anathema to formal learning and theaters themselves were considered “sinks of uncleanliness” (Coggin, 1956, p. 38). Only in recent history has educational drama been considered a legitimate means of teaching and learning. While Dorothy Heathcote, Gavin Bolton, Richard Courtney and others have helped to legitimize the fecund role that drama plays in learning, there has, to date, been a dearth of studies utilizing interdisciplinary approaches such as playbuilding (a participatory arts-based research …

Letter From The Editor

Georgia Journal of Literacy

A Letter from the Editor

About The Authors

Georgia Journal of Literacy

Read this to learn more about this issue's authors.

The Noise From The Writing Boundaries: Collaboration And Tutor Identity In Writing Intensive Courses, Laura Decker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Writing intensive courses, as one facet of Writing Across the Curriculum programs, aim to support undergraduate student writing across the disciplines. Importantly, writing intensive courses are often embedded with undergraduate writing tutors who must cross institutional boundaries to collaborate with faculty and support student writing in these courses. The purpose of this study was to better understand faculty-tutor collaboration in writing intensive courses and to describe how embedded writing tutors negotiate identity and experience transformation in those collaborative spaces. This project attempted to answer three research questions: (1) How does faculty and writing tutor collaboration in writing intensive courses constitute …

My Family, Their History: Using Exploratory Inquiry & Pragmatic Methods To Learn History, Lowellen Sucgang

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

History education is at a crossroads. The availability of information at our fingertips has the potential to change how the non-historian sees history and the other social sciences. This capstone researched ways the non-historian can utilize the changing face of history education by implementing the pragmatic methods of John Dewey’s education philosophy called instrumentalism. Principal issues discussed include the pros and cons of out-of-classroom history education, utilization of exploratory inquiry for research and the usefulness of primary sources for a historiography. To apply instrumentalism ideals and methods, I created a historiography about my ancestors and how their lives intertwined with …

A Library Without Books: The Importance Of Language Representation In Public Libraries, Caelyn Armshaw

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The focus of this project is to assess the degree of access to Spanish-language books in the Omaha Public Library system. After constructing a map of all Omaha Public Libraries using Global Information System (GIS) and analyzing the population around those areas, I cross-referenced individual library catalogs to compare raw numbers of English-language books to non-English and specifically Spanish-language books. The ultimate finding of this project is that even though approximately 10% of Omaha citizens included in the census speak Spanish as their primary language, Spanish-language books make up only 2% of the total books across all Omaha Public Libraries. …

Teaching Spanish In The United States In The Digital Age: Strategies And Approaches On Teaching Spanish In Online And Hybrid Classes, Liane She, Eli Sears

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Virtual technologies are omnipresent in everyday life and are becoming essential to either online, or hybrid classes. In higher education institutions in the United States, virtual platforms are increasingly used for teaching Spanish as a foreign language to students from varying backgrounds. As such, this article proposes an approach to teaching grammar in virtual spaces, that takes into account the communicative goals established in a given syllabus. The methods and strategies we propose offer an attractive language course that allows students to remotely learn and practice a language. As Spanish professors who teach beginning to intermediate level students, we will …

Queering The Curriculum: Establishing Equity For Lgbtqia Students And Educators In Michigan, Miranda Findlay

All NMU Master's Theses

This project examines the state of Michigan’s efforts in creating an equitable learning and working environment for LGBTQIA K-12 students and educators, explicitly focusing on 11^th and 12^th grade English Language Arts (ELA) standards. In the first chapter, I evaluate the relationship between queer theory and pedagogy and illuminate the need to implement queer pedagogy in teaching K-12 ELA classes. The following chapter reviews the progressive state of California for its promotion of culturally responsive pedagogy and its inclusion of LGBTQIA topics in its K-12 curriculum. The third chapter analyzes Michigan legislature and policies to highlight gaps that …

Integrating An Action Plan Into The Standard Entrepreneurial Higher Education Curriculum, Blakely Broder

Honors College Theses

In these increasingly complex times, entrepreneurship has become a common tool for innovative, economic, and social growth. Its adaptability has made it a prime instrument for addressing market failures and facilitating innovation (as cited in McMullen & Cahoon, 1979). Due to entrepreneurship’s crucial role in our modern, innovation-based economy, there has been a particular interest in the efficacy of current entrepreneurial education curriculums and instruction methods.

Discussion has risen about how to design the most effective entrepreneurial higher education curriculum. An effective curriculum in this context would be defined as one that yields the most value creation (Bruyat & Julien …

Assessing Effectiveness Of The Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner Safety Procedures Education, Ernesto Verduzco

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Safe Ag Safe Schools (SASS) is a local pesticide reform organization with members at the state and local levels aiming towards sustainable agricultural practices. SASS focuses on serving agriculturally working families and community members who reside near agricultural areas. The problem addressed by the capstone is that too many marginalized, low-income communities are facing environmental injustices produced by large corporation’s methods of generating revenue. These injustices include high risk of pesticide exposure due to inadequate training and access to equipment. The project focused on assessing farm workers’ knowledge regarding pesticide safety and decontamination procedures. The Office of the Monterey Agricultural …

Change Of Venue: An Exploratory, Multistage Evaluation That Examines The Impact Of Change Based On The Shared Experiences Of The Toe Tag Monologues, Lisa Ann Baaske

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study determined how Vision Theatrical Foundation addresses the needs of troubled and traumatized local youth. I wanted to see if their services and interventions had an impact and if that impact resulted in a change and/or an improved quality of their lives. In addition, I wanted to see if the impact improved mental health literacy. This is a mixed-method, convergent, multistage, process and impact evaluation. An exploratory process evaluation was conducted on the organization utilizing SAMHSA’s Process Evaluation to Monitor Program Implementation (SAMHSA, 2018), which assesses five key questions about the program. The strengths and weaknesses of the organization …