Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Improving Student Achievement Through Professional Learning Communities, Mindy L. Roberts

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study determined how general education teachers in a Midwestern school district perceived their personal skill level in working collaboratively and focusing on academic results while working in a Professional Learning Community (PLC). The overarching question for the research was: Do educator perceptions of their personal skill level in working collaboratively and focusing on academic results while implementing a Professional Learning Community have an effect on student achievement? The study looked at teacher perceptions within the three themes of PLCs: (a) assuring students learn at high levels, (b) creating a culture of collaboration, and (c) focusing on academic results. Student …

First Interim Report Of Schools First: Evaluation Of The 2009 Awards, Robert Simons

Program monitoring and evaluation

Schools First is a national awards program initiated by the National Australia Bank (NAB) in partnership with the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). NAB has committed $15 million in awards funding over three years to recognise and encourage excellence in school-community partnerships. The program was launched in October 2008 by the then Hon Julia Gillard, MP, and is being implemented from 2009-2011 inclusive. Schools First builds on the growing recognition that the task of raising young people who are resilient, adaptable and well-adjusted, rests on the shoulders of the entire community. It …

Assessment Matters #11, Nov 2010, Assessment In Action Committee

Assessment Matters @ WMU

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Enrollment In Middle School Challenge Courses On Advanced Placement Exams In Social Studies And Science, Katherine Glaude-Bolte

Dissertations

Educators seek to guide students through appropriate programs and courses that prepare them for future success, in more advanced coursework and in other challenges of life. Some middle schools offer Challenge, or honors, courses for students who have demonstrated high ability. High schools often offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which are taught at the college level. This study examined the correlation between enrollment in middle school Challenge courses and subsequent AP exam category scores in social studies and science in a suburban school district. The independent variables were the number of years of enrollment in middle school social studies or …

Factors Influencing Teacher Job Satisfaction And Their Alignment With Current District Practices In A Suburban School District, Kimberly Rae Dickens

Dissertations

School districts across the country make many decisions that impact teachers’ satisfaction both positively and negatively. With statistics reporting a significant number of teachers leaving the profession in the first 5 years of experience, determining the reasons for teacher dissatisfaction are important in shaping district practices to be more supportive and satisfying to teachers. The purpose of this research study was to (a) determine the satisfaction level of teachers in a specific school district, (b) determine the practices school principals have put into place and how they relate to the factors identified in the research as being contributive to teacher …

Educational Assessment: Exploring The Relationship Between Computer Adaptive Testing, Data Analysis, And Student Achievement, Michael Donhost

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The research on the potential relationship of the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) and the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) was conducted in two phases and focused on middle schools with a grade configuration of 6-8 in the state of Illinois. The first phase of the research examined whether or not a significant relationship existed between NWEA MAP test participation by middle schools in Illinois, and ISAT growth over time. A total of 86 schools were involved in the research associated with Phase 1. The second phase of the study aimed to find out if the …

Factors Influencing Soft Skills Development : A Study Of Students In Ucsi University., Christine Wong Siew Kuan

Student Works (2010-2019)

Employers today are generally not satisfied with the quality of fresh graduates that graduate from university.  Universities are no longer a vehicle for students to acquire academic knowledge but one to help develop life skills as well.  So what are the graduate employability skills that the industry is talking about?  This study was conducted on the students of UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur to find out the types of soft skills that are lacking amongst students and to find out what can contribute to the learning and development of such skills.  The soft skills highlighted to be studied include communication …

Factors Influencing Teacher Job Satisfaction And Their Alignment With Current District Practices In A Rural School District, Taneal Marie Wallace

Dissertations

School districts’ decisions across the country are influencing the satisfaction level of teachers, in both positive and negative ways. With statistics reporting as high as fifty percent of teachers leaving the profession in the first five years of experience (Ingersoll, 2003), determining the reasons for teacher dissatisfaction are important in correcting district practices to be more supportive and satisfying to teachers. The purpose of this research study was to (a) determine the satisfaction level of teachers in a specific school district, (b) determine the practices building-level administrators have put into place and how they relate to the factors identified in …

Student Teaching Abroad Inter-Group Outcomes: A Comparative, Country-Specific Analysis, Binbin Jiang, Debra J. Coffey, Robert A. Devillar, Sandra Bryan

Faculty Articles

As student diversity becomes the norm in U.S. schools, future teachers must be comprehensively prepared to work with the increasingly diverse student population through application of informed instruction that enhances general and individual student learning and outcomes. Teacher Education programs increasingly promote student teaching in international settings as a substantive step to develop teachers who embody these new competencies and instructional practices. The proposed paper presentation offers a framework and analysis highlighting similarities and differences between two groups of student teachers in Belize (2005 and 2008). Findings are comparative and relate to the type and degree of (1) cultural-, professional-, …

Evaluating Summer School Programs And The Effect On Student Achievement: The Correlation Between Stanford-10 Standardized Test Scores And Two Different Summer Programs, Brian J. Koop

Dissertations

School districts looking for ways to minimize summer learning loss have implemented a variety of programs to combat this problem. Since No Child Left Behind and the need for school districts to meet the goals of Adequate Yearly Progress, it is no longer enough to limit summer learning loss. Now school leaders find it necessary to use the summer months to increase student achievement and prepare students for rigorous learning in the coming school year. This collaborative, quantitative study is an examination of one district’s attempt to improve summer programming in order to meet the need for increased student achievement. …

The Best Test Of Ph.D. Studentsuccess: Response, David F. Feldon, Briana Crotwell Timmerman, Michelle Maher

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Newquist suggests that students' publications are important predictors of post-degree research effectiveness, due in part to the importance of collaboration in innovative research. We agree that publication record is important and helpful, but the collaborative aspects of writing render publications a noisy metric by which to assess individual growth on specific skills (1). The variable time lags between the execution of an experiment, analysis of its data, and publication of findings [e.g., (2)] further limit the ability to identify direct relationships between experiences in a doctoral program and scholarly growth. Doctoral education's overarching goal is to develop competent researchers capable …

2010-2011 Common Data, Morehead State University. Institutional Research & Analysis.

Office of Institutional Research & Analysis Publication Archive

2010-2011 issue of the Common Data.

The Kalamazoo Promise, And Enrollment And Achievement Trends In Kalamazoo Public Schools, Timothy J. Bartik, Randall W. Eberts, Wei-Jang Huang

Conference Papers

This paper examines three types of KPS trends that may represent Promise effects: 1) trends in overall enrollment, 2) trends in relative enrollment by ethnic group, and 3) trends in KPS achievement on the standardized test used by the state of Michigan for No Child Left Behind accountability, the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test.

Walking Box Ranch Planning And Design Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending October 10, 2010, Margaret N. Rees

Walking Box Ranch

• UNLV Public Safety is assisting in identifying security methods needed to guarantee safety and security at the ranch after project completion. This effort will involve the assistance of Metro CPTED program officers as design proceeds.
• UNLV IT is determining the extent to which they can assist with networking and technology issues as project design moves forward. They may assist in identifying consultants to hire to assist with technology.
• We have solicited research/education proposals from UNLV faculty for projects to be initiated in the coming year. The goal is to provide seed funding for projects that will expand as the facilities …

From Walls To Steps: Using Online Automatic Homework Checking Tools To Improve Learning In Introductory Programming Courses, Dwayne Towell, Brent Reeves

School of Information Technology and Computing

We describe the motivation, design, and implementation of a web-based automatic homework checker for Programming I and Programming II courses. Motivated by a problem-based-learning approach, we redesigned our first course to have over 70 short programming assignments. The goal was to change conceptual "walls" into "steps", so that students would not feel overwhelmed at any point in time. At each step along the way, it must be clear where the student is and the next step must feel attainable. Over the last 3 years, we have learned much about proper "step-size" and sequencing of problems. We describe how current computer …

Nebraska Reading First Final Report, Guy Trainin, Kathryn Ac Wilson

Research and Evaluation in Education, Technology, Art, and Design

Reading First has been implemented in Nebraska since the 2004-5 academic year. In two rounds of funding and participation, schools have transformed the way they trained their teachers, measured student progress, and taught. This transformation is one of the hardest tasks in education and it has taken the considerable dedication of school personnel as well as dedicated leaders from the Nebraska Department of education. The program has seen great success in increasing the proportion of students acquiring basic literacy skills of phonemic awareness, decoding, and oral reading fluency. That initial success has led to an increase in outcomes even for …

Mi Educacion, Mi Voz, Nuestro Futuro: Una Investigación Con El Uso Del Diálogo Para Ver Y Entender Las Conversaciones De Los Protagonistas Sobre Los Expectativas, Aspiraciones Y Participación De La Educación Secundaria, Hilary Pollan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

(From Introduction)

The aim of my research, then, is to see and understand how the protagonists of education, high school students participate in dialogue, why do we participate in the dialogue? and what they want resulting from a dialogue?. To accomplish this purpose, I applied a methodology of Paulo Freire for "the investigation of generative themes" of dialogue, so would not only be studying how and why we participate in dialogue, but also practicing it in my research. I made a day of dialogue, which involved seven students from different schools and public high schools, private subsidized and private pay. …

The Relationship Of Personality Traits To Satisfaction With The Team: A Study Of Interdisciplinary Teacher Teams In Rhode Island Middle Schools, Michele D. Humbyrd, Robert K. Gable

Teacher Education

Shared practice in schools has emerged; teachers are moving from isolation to team collaboration where personality traits could be related to quality interactions. Team personality traits and team satisfaction were examined. A survey and interview approach was used for N = 244 full-time teachers from N = 49 interdisciplinary teams at N = 7 middle schools. Descriptive, correlational, multiple regression analyses and coded themes about team members’ personalities and interactions were employed. No significant relationships were found between the BFI traits and Satisfaction with the Team. Team-level analysis indicated a significant negative correlation between Satisfaction with theTeam and Extraversion and …

Teacher Professional Development Models: Inquiry Into Concurrent Versus Separate Technology And Pedagogical Knowledge And Use, Brooke Robertshaw, Jeffery Olsen, Andrew Walker

The Instructional Architect Research Group

Examining two iterations of a teacher professional development workshop series, a qualitative inquiry into the extent to which teacher espoused knowledge and in-use teacher knowledge was affected by teaching technology skills concurrently and separately with the problem-based learning model was examined. Using data collected from pre-post surveys and journals, a stratified purposeful selection of three participants from both workshop iterations were selected based on overall PBL and self-reported technology knowledge scores.

Using Television To Improve Learning Opportunities For Indigenous Children, Michele Lonsdale

Indigenous Education Research

This report is based on a review of the literature on the importance of early childhood learning, the nature of Indigenous learning needs, and the role of educational television programs in improving learning outcomes for preschool-aged children. The report is intended to provide an evidence base for a proposal to develop an educational television program aimed primarily at Indigenous children from three to six years. (In this report the term ‘Indigenous’ refers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.) There is an extensive body of research that shows the critical importance of early childhood in children’s learning and development, including for …