Educational Leadership Commons^™

Is Collegiate Political Correctness Fake News? Relationships Between Grades And Ideology, Matthew Woessner, Robert Maranto, Amanda Thompson

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

While considerable quantitative research demonstrates ideological liberalism among American professors, only qualitative work examines whether this affects undergraduate education. Using the HERI dataset surveying students in their first and fourth years in college (n=7,207), we use OLS regressions to test whether students’ political beliefs are associated with reported college grades and perceived collegiate experiences. We find that while standardized test scores are the best predictors of grade point average, ideology also has impacts. Even with controls for SES, demographics, and SAT scores, liberal students report higher college grades and closer relationships with faculty. Nevertheless, conservative students consistently show higher levels …

An Introduction To Transformative Inquiry: Understanding Compelling And Significant Relationships For Personal And Societal Transformation, Mark L. Mccaslin, Kelly A. Kilrea

The Qualitative Report

Transformative inquiry is a theoretical model designed to facilitate the inquiry of important and meaningful relationships that transform and potentiate us. Creswell (2007) described the essential elements of a research agenda: the axiological, ontological, epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical. Each carries with it assumptions that hold implications for practice and research. Transformative inquiry addresses all of these elements through considerations given to deep ecology, transdisciplinarity, integral meta-theory, heuristic research, and eudaimonistic philosophy, respectively. Transformative inquiry is an approach to understanding and fostering the full range of deep and meaningful relationships from the personal to the political, and beyond. It is a …

Rewriting Honors 300: Teaching For Teaching Assistants, Nina Schenk

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this project is to rewrite the curriculum of Honors 300: Teaching Honors for Honors Students. After conducting research via survey and reading and analyzing works by Gonzales, Dallimore, and other university and pedagogy websites, meeting with organizations on campus, and getting feedback from other Honors TAs, the goal of my final project is to rewrite the Honors 300 curriculum and syllabus; this includes a restructuring of the TA selection and pairing process, a series of suggestions on training and orientation, and the recommendation for renaming the Teaching Assistants. I developed the following by consulting literature on pedagogy, …

Factors That Impact Blue-Collar Worker Higher Education Entrance And Completion: A Grounded Theory, Jerrod Michael Ward

Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a study involving ten blue-collar workers who are not currently working towards a four-year degree. The dissertation study analyzed the experiences of the participants from answers they provided during interviews, as well as through observation protocols the researcher took during those interviews. Through narrative inquiry, this study explored the lived experiences of blue-collar workers as it affected their predisposition and interest in attaining a four-year degree. Working class, blue-collar students must negotiate the difficult transition from their working-class culture, to that of the culture of academia, to be successful in college. This type of transition typically requires …

Inside The Black Box: Stakeholder Perceptions On The Value Of Arts Field Trips, Angela Watson

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This descriptive, qualitative study, an extension of an experimental primary study, documents stakeholders’ experiences and perceptions of attending multiple field trips where urban elementary students in fourth and fifth grades were randomly assigned to receive three arts field trips including an art museum, a live theater performance, and a symphony concert. Evidence of declining K-12 attendance to educational cultural or arts field trips has been mounting for decades. Further, minority students in struggling schools and their teachers report attending fewer field trip experiences, as well as limited access to arts experiences in their schools. The full impact of this declining …

Sr-18-19-54 Lac, Marshall University

Recommendations

No abstract provided.

Curriculum Analysis: Hardin Middle School Math, Michael Zitzer

Educational Specialist Scholarly Papers

The City of St. Charles School District, particularly Hardin Middle School (HMS), has routinely been outperformed by its St. Charles County counterparts in math. Consequently, it is necessary to evaluate curriculum development, implementation, and resources to begin to determine the causal factors of low performance. If HMS’ curriculum is not effectively facilitating high quality instruction, it could be a leading factor in their low performance. To determine whether HMS’ curriculum is impacting student achievement the research will conduct an analysis of both the written and implemented (textbook) curriculum. The analysis will be designed to determine whether the district’s current curriculum …

Failure To Launch?: Advancing The Case For Financial Literacy Interventions In Postsecondary Education, Cathleen Snyder

Dissertations, 2014-2019

For college undergraduates, the thought of managing money is often new, exciting, and terrifying in the same breath. Some students have learned well from their parental and prior academic influences, and yet others may be overwhelmed by a lack of those same resources. As postsecondary institutions endeavor to level the proverbial playing field, helping college graduates launch into meaningful, financially independent lives, it begs additional consideration on the intervention methods that might be most impactful.

This study examined a for-credit, curriculum-based intervention specific to personal finance topics. It attempted to answer several key questions: How knowledgeable are students relative to …

The Impact Of Peer-Led Diabetes Education: A Quasi Pre Post Experimental Study, Stacey Bell Sloas

Student Theses and Dissertations

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic illness costing over $300 billion per year in the United States with an estimated 100 million individuals with diabetes or pre-diabetes. Complications due to diabetes place individuals at increased risk for heart attack, stroke, amputations, blindness, kidney failure, disability, and early death. Education has been shown to be effective in improving health behaviors that decrease complications due to diabetes. Common risk factors for development of diabetes are modifiable behaviors such as sedentary lifestyle and obesity. A peer-led approach to diabetes education has the potential to overcome multiple barriers to receiving education. Peer-led diabetes education …

Board Of Trustees Meeting Minutes, May 2-3, 2019

Board of Trustees Minutes

Minutes from the Wright State University Board of Trustees Meeting held on May 2-3, 2019.

A Qualitative Case Study Of Student Persistence In A Bachelor Of Science In Forestry Program, Maxwell Holmes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Educational leaders in forestry have been challenged to increase and diversify the pipeline of ‘society ready’ foresters. To meet these challenges, leaders must shift their focus to student retention. By understanding the factors that influence student engagement and persistence, these leaders will be better positioned to support students in forestry programs, thus positively impacting retention. This qualitative case study investigated student persistence of second-year forestry students in an undergraduate forestry program. The study was guided by Social Cognitive Theory and Social Capital Theory and explored the malleable psychosocial mechanisms of self-efficacy, sense of belonging, emotion, and well-being proposed by Kahu …

Gender Equity In Outdoor Adventures: How Gender Constructs Shape Engagement At The University Of San Diego, Lauren Wong

M.A. in Higher Education Leadership: Action Research Projects

Outdoor Adventures (OA) at the University of San Diego bridges the industries of outdoor education and higher education. This action research investigates the constructions of gender that inform programming and relationship building within OA. Through a survey and focus groups, I collected data from OA professional staff and student leaders. The purpose of this research was to explore how different genders engage with experiential learning in an outdoor setting through a lens of queer theory, by evaluating the engagement of OA professional staff and participants. My findings indicate that the constructs of gender inform the ways students experience their capacity …

A Grounded Theory Study Of Orientation Leaders' Perspectives On The Impact Of Their Involvement In Orientation, Rochelle Ramirez

Theses & Dissertations

Theory suggests students benefit when they become involved in co-curricular activities outside the classroom (Astin, 1993). While there is some literature on college orientation programs, most is dated and focuses on the participants attending orientation, providing little knowledge on the student orientation leaders (OLs) who help execute the programs (Pierson & Timmerman, 2004). Therefore, this grounded theory study was conducted to describe the details of the participants’ lived experiences serving as orientation leaders. The intent of this qualitative study was to extract meaning and understanding from the OLs personal accounts and their unique interpretations of their experiences. Individual in-depth interviews …

Public High School Principals’ Perceptions Of Leadership Strategies For Improved School Performance, Christine Keyser-Fanick

Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore what leadership behaviors and strategies public high school principals perceived to be most effective in achieving school improvement. The qualitative constructivist grounded theory research methodology used for the study was modeled after the work of Kathy Charmaz (2014), who acknowledges that the researcher is a part of the process, as observer, data collector, analyzer, and interpreter of the data. Data were gathered through one-on-one interviews with six principals from high schools with student populations of 1,200 or more whose schools showed improvement based on state standardized test scores and whose high schools …

Leading Change In Fresh Food Access: Increasing Food Security Through Urban Agriculture, Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick

Leadership Education Capstones

This pragmatic qualitative case study explored leadership strategies regarding urban agriculture related to food deserts in the research city. One-to-one interviews, a focus group, and a review of documents were the data sources for the study. The themes emerging from the investigation were a moral obligation, policy and protocol influence on individual practice, disproportionate access, health factors, cost factors, take it to them, building community with food gardens, and the need for farmers to grow food. This study utilized a political ecology framework that acknowledges the relationship between environmental, economic, political, and social factors. With rapid population growth expected in …

Historically Black College And Universities Compared To Historically White Institutions: Factors Influencing Graduation Rates, Carlos Young

Dissertations

Historically black colleges, whose graduation rates have been low when compared to white institutions, are facing some serious issues (Kelderman, 2012). Nichols (2004) notes that institutions of higher learning play an important role in preparing students for professions, promoting equality for women and minorities, providing educational opportunities for disadvantaged and low income students, solving socioeconomic problems, servicing government and industry, complying with rules and regulations that ensure the rights of all people, trying to keep tuition low, paying competitive salaries to faculty and staff, providing a quality education, and providing social and cultural services to the community (Jones, 1984; Nicholas, …

Leadership As We Know It, David Albrecht, Kurt Bolstad, T. L. Endrizzi, M. Erickson, R. A. Fricker, Maria Fruechte, Ashley N. Greig, Lynn Hagmann, T. J. Lake, Danielle Magdzas, Lawren Mckinney, Elizabeth Moldenhauer, Cassie R. Ohnstad, Melissa Osland, Paul Preston Jr., Anthony T. Reisdorfer, Tyler Vern Schoh, Naren Selvaratnam, Luke S. Teague, Barbara Holmes, Kendall Larson

Leadership Education Books

Leadership as We Know it is a collection of insights into modern leadership compiled by graduate students in Winona State University’s Leadership Education program during the Spring 2019 semester in a course aptly titled, Change Leadership.

Each chapter was penned by one of 20 unique class members who offer their vision of leadership based upon their eclectic personal backgrounds and professional experiences, whose fields include athletics, business, education, and more.

These diverse narratives offer something for everyone; whether it be a veteran or blossoming leader eager to continue their growth and evolution.

Leadership as We Know it provides accounts from …

Dual Credit As A Key To Preparation: Exploring Dual Credit As A College Readiness Strategy, Rachel Elizabeth Jones

Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Dissertations - Archive

Dual credit is a rapidly-expanding coursework option for high school students that provides a means to early college credit and is also touted as a strategy to increase postsecondary readiness. However, existing studies that tie dual credit to college preparation rely upon indicators such as enrollment, achievement, and completion of degrees; they stop short of a full evaluation of readiness by not including the variety of competencies that are necessary for college success. This dissertation presents three studies that seek to explore links between dual credit participation and an established framework for college readiness. The first is a quantitative analysis …

Community College Stigmatization: Perceptions Of Vertical Transfer Students At The University Level, Melissa Laird

Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Dissertations - Archive

This qualitative study fills a void in research by investigating the experiences of 10 vertical transfer students regarding perceptions of community college stigmatization. Prior studies have explored reasons for transfer student university attrition, and negative stereotyping has been found to have an adverse effect on various populations. However, no known research has been conducted on how transfer students perceive others view them in light of their community college attendance. Therefore, the purpose of this case study was to examine whether vertical transfer students believed there was a stigma connected to community college attendance, and, if so, how they described that …

Black Students’ Perceptions Of Campus Climate At A Racially Mixed Institution, Melissa Ann Brown

Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Dissertations - Archive

Black students are not persisting to degree completion at the same rate as White students. While research about Black students’ experiences at predominately White institutions (PWI) and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) is ample, more research is needed on racially mixed institutions (RMIs), where white students make up less than 40% of the student population. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of campus climate of eight Black students attending one RMI in the Southwestern United States. Using the Modified Mutual Acculturation theory as a lens, this qualitative phenomenological study revealed the experiences of these …