Secondary Education Commons^™

Exploring High School Teachers’ Perceptions Of Facilitating Conditions Prior To The Implementation Of A 1:1 Learning Environment, Ellen Kathleen Lawrence

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Technology is embedded in teaching and learning. Many public high schools are implementing 1:1 learning environments. Questions remain regarding conditions which facilitate such an endeavor. This explanatory correlational study utilizes Ely’s Conditions of Change framework to explore suburban high school teachers’ perceptions of eight facilitating conditions prior to a 1:1 implementation. The conditions; (a) Dissatisfaction of the Status Quo, (b) Sufficient Knowledge and Skills, (c) Availability of Resources, (d) Availability of Time, (e) Rewards or Incentives, (f) Participation, (g) Commitment, and (h) Leadership, have been studied in K-12, higher education, and business industries but not specifically at the high school …

Exploring Factors Related To Acceptance Of 1:1 Devices Among High School Students, Victoria Therriault

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Studies show that students in lower socioeconomic status (SES) districts tend to have fewer resources, and in turn have greater achievement gaps than their affluent peers from neighboring districts. In an effort to bridge these gaps, schools have turned to 1:1 computing to bring electronic resources to their students that they might not have otherwise. However, to date there are minimal studies indicating whether or not high school students are willing to accept technology for classroom instructional purposes. This study examined the extent to which student demographic characteristics (e.g., sex, race/ethnicity, SES) are related to their acceptance of Chromebook use …

The Relationship Between Middle School Lexile Growth And School Nutrition, Lori A. Joiner

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Children in poverty tend to have malnutrition and iron deficiency, and often receive their only meals for the day from a school nutrition program. Students of poverty are underperforming their academic peers. The average reading score of a student can be predicted by the accumulated levels of childhood poverty. Research has found that iron can have a positive impact on brain health. Nutrition deficiencies during the adolescent years may increase the risk of decreased cognitive function. School breakfast and lunch programs follow USDA guideline that limit portions, fats, salts, and sugars, but do not fortify vitamin and minerals necessary …

How Does The Classroom Teacher Promote Academic Success In The Spanish Native Speaker Class: A Study Of Classroom Teachers' Perceptions Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy In The Spanish Native Speaker Course At The High School Level, Michael Angelo Ayala

Dissertations

The achievement gap between Latino and White students is a significant problem, prompting the need to address the cultural conflicts that hinder relationships and compromise learning opportunities for Latino students in the United States. This exploratory qualitative study focused on Spanish Native Speaker (SNS) teachers' perceptions and use of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) at the high school level. Framed with theory related to CRP, data were collected through interviews and classroom observations with four SNS teachers who teach a SNS class at various high schools in the suburbs of Cook County. A thematic analysis and an analysis using Herrera's (2010) …

Critical Conversations With Suburban Administrative Leaders On Special Education Disproportionality: Case Studies Of Suburban School Districts, Jennifer Colleen Sterpin

Dissertations

This dissertation study explored high school administrators' beliefs about why racial disproportionality exists, sought to understand the local practices that contribute to disproportionality, and identified interventions and supports that impact disproportionality in the special education referral, eligibility, and placement process. Research shows that students who are disproportionately represented in special education are negatively affected by factors such as stigmatization, substandard instruction, zero tolerance policies, and isolation from the general education setting (Sullivan, Kozleski, & Smith, 2008). Administrators were invited to participate in this study because they have a significant impact on student achievement and system-wide changes in schools.

This research …

Teaching Chemistry In A Spiral Progression Approach: Lessons From Science Teachers In The Philippines, Joymie R. Orbe, Allen A. Espinosa, Janir T. Datukan

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

As the Philippines moves towards implementing the K-12 curriculum, there has been a mismatch in teacher preparation in science. The present teacher education curriculum prepares science teachers to specialise in a specific field (e.g. integrated science, biology, chemistry, and physics). However, in the K-12 curriculum, they are required to teach all the sciences in a spiral progression approach. Hence, this study analysed the experiences of science teachers in teaching chemistry in the K-12 curriculum in order to identify their challenges and how they are overcoming them. Findings suggest that the teacher’s content, pedagogy, and assessment in chemistry are problematic; specifically, …

Attracting Preservice Teachers To Remote Locations, Kenneth D. Young, Peter Grainger, Dennis James

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Teaching in rural/remote regions poses many challenges to teachers and is identified as a priority research area by the state government. Despite initiatives by the state government and university providers to solve the issue through various incentives designed to attract teachers, the problem remains significant. This research describes and analyses the impact of a regional university initiative to attract teachers to rural and remote locations in Queensland. The data was gathered through analysis of responses from preservice teachers completing education degrees at a regional university in Queensland. The data revealed that a pre-graduation teaching placement to a rural/remote region resulted …

An Application Of The Solo Taxonomy To Classify Strategies Used By Pre-Service Teachers To Solve “One Question Problems”, Joanne C. Caniglia, Michelle Meadows

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

: The purpose of this article is to report on the strategies of secondary mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) as they solved conceptually rich problems. Using the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes by Biggs and C (1982) (SOLO) Taxonomy, 15 PSTs’ solutions (in groups of 3 or 4) were analyzed by a panel of three mathematics educators. In addition, the authors studied questions posed by PSTs during their student teaching experiences through video analysis. Questions were then categorized using Crespo’s criteria of problem posing. Results showed a significant majority of the problems posed were procedural while PSTs own problem solutions showed …

Examining The Perceived Benefit Of Education For Aboriginal Secondary Students In Western Australia, Mary-Anne Macdonald

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Indigenous and remote Australians have lower education and employment levels than non- Indigenous and urban Australians and face continued socio-economic disadvantage. Many contemporary voices have called for quantitative evidence for Indigenous education policy. The current thesis responds to this gap in the literature by developing a factor model of Indigenous education engagement, and supports this with regression equations and qualitative interviews exploring the impact of various experiences on Indigenous engagement with secondary school. The current study found that, despite gap in attendance rates, Year 12 completion rates, and tertiary education enrolment and completion, Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants alike ascribed a …

Learning To Write, Writing To Learn: Cedar Valley High School Teachers' Use Of Formative Assessment, Kenna Marie Koster

Honors Program Theses

My goal for this thesis, as well as for my time at UNI, was to examine pedagogies that will inform my future practice as an English teacher, enabling me to provide a better learning environment for my future students through various means of assessment. In this study high school English teachers in three towns in the Midwest were interviewed to find out: (1) What is really going on in the writing classroom in terms of writing assessment? (2) How is formative assessment specifically being used in the writing classroom? And (3) Does the teacher find these methods effective? Speaking to …

Priorities For School Safety: The Alignment Between Federal And State School Safety Legislation And Safety Needs As Perceived By Education Stakeholders In Florida Private Schools For Exceptional Students, Anthony D. Mortimer

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the apparent threat assessment priorities of potential risks to safety in the school environment in the United States and whether stakeholders in Florida private schools that serve exceptional students agree with the priority given to specific identified potential threats. Faculty and staff, high school students, and the students’ parents and guardians at four Florida private schools for exceptional students rated their perceptions of the severity and likelihood of occurrence of nine potential threats identified in a review of federal and Florida state school safety laws and national and state government surveys of incident occurrences. Results showed that …

Conscious Conclusions: The Effect Of Positive-Attitude Cues On Teacher Candidate Dispositions About Mathematics, Shelletta Baker

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to use elements for developing teacher identity, personal philosophy, beliefs about teaching and learning, and reflection to frame an examination of the effect of Positive-Attitude Cues (PACs) on teacher candidates’(n = 135) mathematics anxiety and expressive writing. Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment (PACs) or control group (No-PAC) and their dispositions about mathematics were examined using the Revised Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS-R); which had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.96 and an expressive writing task before and after the intervention. A significant main effect of test time showed that participants …

Learning Strategies Employed By College Aged Students With Disabilities: The Link Between Metacognition, Motivation, And Working Memory, Michael Rodriguez

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study is two-fold. First, we want to understand the levels of metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates with learning disabilities. Previous research states that recall is the most effective method of studying, but most students prefer to reread their notes or textbook which is ineffective. Second, we want to explore the link between Working Memory and metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates with learning disabilities. The learning strategies that college students with and without disabilities is examined, we found that students in both groups preferred the usage of the same strategies equally. The most …

Infographic: Be An Engineer, Leroy L. Long Iii, William Wanyagah

Publications

Infographic on how to become an engineer.

Factors Influencing Student Enrollment In Career Academy Programs, Whitney Stokes Ketchledge

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

Career academies are small learning communities that allow high school students to learn their core content in the context of the career field they may be interested in pursuing. This type of learning environment incorporates business and industry and postsecondary institutions so academy students receive academic curricula that prepares them for higher education and allows students to have experiences in the career field. There is considerable research demonstrating strong benefits of the academy model to students and teachers, but there is little indicating why students enroll in the academy and what methods of recruitment may work best.

The purpose of …

Mobile Learning And Student Cognition: A Systematic Review Of Pk-12 Research Using Bloom’S Taxonomy, Helen Crompton, Diane Burke, Yi-Ching Lin

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

The rise of mobile learning in schools during the past decade has led to promises about the power of mobile learning to extend and enhance student cognitive engagement. The purpose of this study was to examine trends to determine the cognitive level students are involved in within mobile learning activities. This systematic review involved an aggregated and configurative synthesis of PK-12 mobile learning studies from 2010 to 16 and used Bloom’s Taxonomy as a theoretical framework for categorizing the cognitive level of student activities. Major new findings include that students are involved in activities at all six levels of Bloom’s …

Arts Engagement Outside Of School: Links With Year 10 To 12 Students’ Intrinsic Motivation And Self-Efficacy In Responding To Art, Julia Morris

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study draws on student engagement factors to examine the relationship between students’ non-school-based arts experiences on their intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy to participate in visual arts responding tasks. Visual arts responding in the curriculum includes learning about artists and artworks, decoding art and making critical judgements, and is important in building twenty-first century learning skills such as critical thinking and communication. A total of 266 Year 10 to 12 students from 18 schools in Western Australia (WA) participated in the quantitative research, which explored outside-school arts engagement as well as cognitive and psychological engagement factors in their current year …

Development Of Curriculum For Next Generation Science Standards In High School Chemistry, Jennifer L. Brown

Graduate Research Papers

The aim of this project is to develop a unit relevant to students, aligned with three-dimensional performance expectations, and beneficial to teachers in helping students to meet those standards. To effectively meet those goals, an understanding of what curriculum is and how to develop it is needed. Curriculum is “the high-quality delivery system for ensuring that all students achieve the desired end – the attainment of their desired grade- or course-specific standards” (Ainsworth, 2010, p. 4). Without a clear goal for student performance and a detailed plan for how to get them there, lasting, meaningful learning is not likely to …

The Power Of Multimodal Feedback, Breanne S. Campbell, Ann Feldmann

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Abstract: Feedback to students is most effective when it is timely, relevant and meaningful. English teachers spend many hours providing feedback on student writing and are disheartened as students disregard it. An English teacher and a technology specialist, while using available technology, set out to find a way to make the feedback process more streamlined, efficient, and something students would actually employ in the writing process. We discovered that utilizing technology tools available to provide on demand and archivable audio and visual feedback transforms the writing process and student responses are favorable.

Developing Multicultural Self-Awareness Through A Transformative Learning Experience, Cynthia Bezard, Sara A. Shaw

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the ways that a change in perspective can create a better understanding of cultural identity. This study addressed: (1) How does a self-awareness transformative learning experience develop critical cultural competence in career and technical education instructors? (2) How does the practice of critical reflection construct career and technical education instructors’ ability to develop self-awareness of critical cultural competence? (3) How does involvement in critical discourse construct career and technical education instructors’ ability to develop self-awareness of critical cultural competence? A three-phase professional development experience rooted in multicultural education provided key …