Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Impact Of Musical Mnemonic Strategies On Student Achievement And Engagement In Inclusive Science Classes, Zinna Eaton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Students with disabilities often struggle with comprehending material and performing at grade level, and teachers often find new ways to help their students comprehend the curriculum. A common challenge for special education teachers is incorporating different learning styles and various instructional strategies to better assist their students. One teaching strategy and resource that many teachers incorporate is the use of music in their instruction. This research project examines how incorporating music teaching strategies into daily instruction impacts the level of engagement and the academic achievement level of sixth-grade students with and without mild/moderate disabilities within inclusive science classrooms. The study …

An Investigation Of Early Childhood Staff And Their Transition To The New Western Australian Humanities And Social Sciences Curriculum, Jane Loxton, Christine Cunningham, Marianne J. Knaus

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In 2017, a new Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) curriculum was introduced into all of Western Australia’s classrooms. The aim of this study was to investigate how teachers transitioned to that new HASS curriculum. Using case study methodology, the experiences, opportunities and challenges faced by the early childhood (EC) staff in two Perth schools were investigated as they prepared for and implemented a new HASS Curriculum. The results suggested the need for strong leadership in times of change. The results also indicated that these small, independent schools needed good resources and professional development to help understand the changes. The research …

The Face At The Window, Kristina Lenberg

Diverse Families Bookshelf Lesson Plans and Activities

No abstract provided.

Elective Course Choice As A Factor In K12 Graduation Rates, Matthew Wagner

Leadership Education Capstones

This paper explores the relationship that elective course offerings and requirements have on student success through graduation rates. The purpose of this study is to better understand the effect that elective courses have on a student’s academic success. This research focused on the Big 9 conference of southeastern Minnesota Public High Schools, which consisted of nine different school districts. These districts paralleled the makeup and diversity of districts around the state. All data reviewed was public information and included resources such as the Minnesota Department of Education’s Report Card database, and course catalogs from each district in the study. Graduation …

Status Of Social Studies Within One Georgia School District, Tonya Fields Pinckley

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this causal-comparative research was to examine whether differences exist between the time allotted for delivering content, the time allotted for lesson planning, the time allotted for student assessment, instructional perceptions regarding mandated testing, perceptions regarding pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), level of ease of planning, level of understanding of Georgia Standards of Excellence (GSE), level of understanding of the teaching-assessment cycle, and usage of the system provided pacing guides within public elementary schools in one Georgia school district across the content areas of ELA/reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. The research also examined the differences in instructional strategies …

Critical Peace Pedagogy In The Social Studies: A Peace-Oriented Approach To Critical Citizen Education, Matt Dingler

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This two-article dissertation begins by providing a conceptual argument for the inclusion of Critical Peace Pedagogy (CPP) in social studies education. CPP represents the convergence of the peace education tradition and Paulo Freire’s critical praxis. I begin by aligning CPP to the philosophy, goals, and methods of instruction espoused by critical citizen educators seeking to further democracy and human rights. To demonstrate the feasibility of CPP integration within the social studies, I provide a model classroom approach framed according to a nationally recognized instructional design model. I close with a brief exposition on the importance of peace within education’s emerging …

Weekend Spanish Immersion Camp: A Non-Traditional Teaching World Language To Middle School American Students, Jorge Oscar Ramirez

Dissertations and Theses

The nature of today's global economy demands that students demonstrate high levels of proficiency in foreign languages. To meet global demand, most countries around the world are including comprehensive world language instruction in their educational systems beginning at an early age. The increasingly multi-lingual nature of culture within and beyond the Unites States. is escalating the importance of immersing students in world languages as early as possible to ensure a high level of written and oral foreign language skill proficiency by the time students graduate from high school. However, most American students do not have the opportunity to study a …

The Relationship Between Kolb’S Learning Styles And Students’ Gpa: A Comparative Study Between Student Teachers And Physical Therapy Students At Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Reem A. Aldegether Dr.

International Journal for Research in Education

The current study aimed to investigate Saudi female student teachers’ preferred learning styles at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University according to Kolb’s theory and to compare them with female Saudi students from the physical therapy major and its relation to GPA scores. The purpose of the comparison was to find out whether or not students within different disciplines have adopted different learning styles. No research has been done that investigated Saudi female student teachers and physical therapy students. One hundred seventy students responded to the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) developed by Kolb (1999a). Descriptive analysis was used to answer the …

Spatial Production And Nomadic Subjectivities In A Buddhist Learning Space, Chau Bao Le

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Space and place are an integral part in the geographies of education, therefore, knowledge about culturally complex and ethnically diverse transnational communities could inform curricular innovations that meet the needs of individual students. This year-long ethnographic study challenged the prevailing realities that U.S. schools continue to devalue the experiences and cultural backgrounds of immigrant youth, which caused students from ethnic, cultural, racial, linguistic, and religious minority groups to feel structurally excluded and marginalized. Through examining the spatial production and nomadic subjectivities enacted over time in a transnational, diasporic space of a Buddhist temple in a U.S. southern state, the study …

Animal Magic, Secret Spells, And Green Power: More-Than-Human Assemblages Of Children's Storytelling, Angela Molloy Murphy

Dissertations and Theses

Early childhood settings have become contested spaces, or sites of struggle, between economic and sociocultural interests disputing their purpose. Recent years have shown increased pressure on children in early education settings to demonstrate predetermined learning outcomes, which (a) limits the scope of what is possible in the classroom, (b) narrows the range of what learning is considered valid, and (c) privileges the experience and values of the dominant culture, thereby determining who and what matters in early childhood settings. Thus, in the current education climate where conventional knowledges are routinely privileged, unconventional knowledges and small stories from children's lives are …

First & Second Cycles Final Report For: Educational And Workforce Development Through Creation Of Programs In Transportation To Generate Future Careers For Our Students In Navajo Nation Region, Gholam Ehteshami

Publications

Navajo Technical University (NTU) in New Mexico, has made a partnership with the Tran-SET regional center at Louisiana State University, LSU. We have provided learning and training the Native American students in transportation-related Industries to some of STEM students at NTU through these partnerships opportunities. The program was designed and supported by Native American students from high school to STEM undergraduate students. The program was implemented accordingly with four main components: (1). Selected eligible and interested Native American student to paid summer internships to the field and facilities of transportations industries and participate in research summer at LSU. (2). Directed …

Teaching Portfolio: Nick Whalen, Nick Whalen

History Graduate Certificate Portfolios

Nick Whalen's Teaching Portfolio captured on May 20, 2020. This capture includes screenshots of the various portfolio pages found on Nick's webpage (https://nickwhalenhistory.weebly.com/). Where possible, copies of the documents found on the pages have been included as Additional Files.

This portfolio contains the following layout:

• Home/About Me
  
  
• History Graduate Certificate
  
  
• Primary Source Analysis (contains HIST 530 Minnesota: 1862 – Artifact 1, HIST 530 Minnesota: 1862 – Artifact 2, and HIST 530 British, Caribbean/Colonial America – Artifact 3)
  
  
• Secondary Source Analysis (contains: HIST 532 Pirates of the Atlantic World – Artifact 1, HIST 555 Revolutionary/Early National America – Artifact …

Black Unrealia: Handbook For Teaching The Structure Of Past Counterfactual Statements, A. Carter

Master's Projects and Capstones

For various reasons, students are attending California community colleges to learn English. Classes taught are usually influenced by models that integrate aspects of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and courses that center on grammar are rarely if ever taught. There has been a resurgence in interest in Form Focused Instruction and strong evidence that grammar instruction combined with Corrective Feedback can produce marked gains in a student’s implicit and explicit knowledge of grammatical forms. This Field Project proposes that by combining Form Focused Instruction with aspects of Communicative Language Teaching such as authentic materials, or realia, instructors can assist learners …

Lesson Plan, World Geography, 6th Grade, Nelson Muñoz, Lucy Garza, Melissa Moreno

Spring Workshop May 2020

TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills): (A) explain the geographic factors responsible for the location of economic activities in places and regions. B) identify geographic factors such as location, physical features, transportation corridors and barriers, and distribution of natural resources that influence a society's political relationships.

Lesson objective(s): 1. Identify the natural resources that lead to developing the agriculture industry in Rio Grande Valley (RGV). 2. Identify the key landforms that contributed to agriculture industry in RGV. 3. Identify the key leaders that contributed to the growth in agriculture.

Differentiation strategies to meet diverse learner needs: Graphic organizers, visuals, videos, …

Planning Our Lessons (Powerpoint), Joy Esquierdo

Spring Workshop May 2020

No abstract provided.

Valuing The Success Of Failure: Reflective Journaling And Mistake Acceptance, Elisabeth Thomas

Masters of Education in Teaching and Learning

This study examined ninth-grade students’ acceptance of their own mistakes in the classroom. The author implemented a journaling process twice a week in an attempt to give students a positive perception of their academic failures in a school setting. She collected data by using surveys, interviews, reflective writing, and a focus group. On top of this, the researcher asked about student perceptions of the journaling process as applied to the acceptance of their mistakes. Surveys were analyzed using descriptive statistics and were graphed. The constant-comparative method was used to understand major themes. This resulted in four major findings which included …

Impacts Of An International Professional Development Program: A Qualitative Study, Marijn W. T. De Waal

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This qualitative study with phenomenological components examined the impacts of a U.S. State Department-funded teacher professional development program, hosted at a liberal-arts university on the east coast of the United States in the spring semester of 2018. An initial review of the public literature revealed that it was challenging to find evaluation data pertaining to this particular program or ones of a similar nature. Through semi-structured synchronous online interviews with five program alumni, the researcher probed if—and if so, how—the professional development (PD) program had made the intended impacts on participants’ (1) teaching methods/curriculum, (2) content knowledge in their personal …

May Agenda, Wku Graduate Council

Graduate School

Meeting agenda.

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 …

Loose Coupling In Curriculum Reforms: Rural Teachers´ Perceptions Of Peace Education In Post-Conflict Colombia, Pedro Pineda, Markus D. Meier

Peace and Conflict Studies

Previous research has shown how peace education (PE) mutates according to socio-political and curricular/didactic traditions, but we still need to know how PE disseminates at the school level. We surveyed teachers from 12 rural schools of the violent Amazon region of Colombia where a national Law made PE mandatory in schools and universities. Teachers working on schools affected by the armed conflict have high expectations about PE. Respondents identified PE with 21 didactic elements: (a) Approaches: values education, citizenship education, critical pedagogy; (b) Pedagogical principles: diversity and pluralism. (c) Learning processes: peaceful conflict resolution, promotion of a “life project”, political …

A Place Of Yes? Experiences Of Educators Participating In Site-Based Teacher-Led Reform, Elizabeth Hind

Education (PhD) Dissertations

This study examined the experiences of four teachers who participated as mentors in a teacher-designed and -implemented creative community at a middle school in southern California. Using the arts-based research methodologies of poetic inquiry, narrative inquiry, and painting, the researcher explored how teachers experience teaching and learning when they deconstruct structures that perpetuate standardization and choose to approach education as a place of yes, freed from the parameters of mandated curriculum, the idea of education as product, and high- stakes accountability measures. The study revealed that the qualities of the creative community had a humanizing effect on its participants, allowing …

Teaching Practices, Institutional Cultures, And Access To Music Learning, Jonah Garcia

Honors Scholar Theses

The mission of the National Association for Music Education is “to advance music education by promoting the understanding and making of music by all” (NAfME, n.d.-b). Despite these aspirations of equality, research suggests that both demographics and geography have a role in determining who is able to participate and who will choose to participate in school music (Elpus & Abril, 2019; Salvador and Allegood, 2014). This study examined the factors that influence school music participation and the representation of student populations in the music programs of two Connecticut secondary schools. Names of schools and participants have been changed to preserve …

Connecting To History Through Service-Learning: A Qualitative Case Study Investigating Student Engagement In Core History Courses, Kimberly D. Stokes

Theses and Dissertations

Surveys have shown that students are not enthusiastic about taking history in college; some describe the discipline as boring and unnecessary. College is a setting where students are investing in themselves, exploring new knowledge to build a career, and gaining insight into the person they want to become in the future. Learning history through a traditional lecture method where memorization of names, dates, and events seems to be the norm is not appealing to students. Universities, promoting the thought that a well-rounded education is beneficial, commonly add history to the collection of general education core courses that are required for …

Intercultural Competence Among Early Childhood Educators, Sara Fanous

Human Development and Family Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess and develop intercultural competence among birth through kindergarten teachers. Intercultural competence is an integral part of creating a welcoming environment for all students in a classroom. It is not only the acknowledgement of individual differences, but the acceptance and celebration of what makes each person an individual and member of a cultural group. This project assessed the intercultural competence of 24 birth through kindergarten teachers and staff at a child development center in the mid-south. Participants completed the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) as pre- and post-assessments. In between assessments, our team conducted …

Process Drama: A Creative Way To Assess Ela Understanding, Nicole Rausch

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

With increasing demands and decreasing amounts of instructional time, teachers are constantly looking for creative ways to integrate, assess, and target instruction to meet the needs of each student. This article takes a look at how one teacher employed the use of a highly engaging process drama to teach and assess multiple subject area content standards. A process drama is remarkably creative, social, and applicable so can be easily adapted to meet the needs of any grade level. The low floor, high ceiling project allows students multiple avenues to demonstrate understanding of skills and concepts.

An Investigation Of The Impacts Of Traditional, Virtual, And Hybrid Biological Laboratories On College Students’ Achievement And Motivation To Learn Biology, Shavonda Jackson

Dissertations

Virtual courses function in a different manner than traditional courses, therefore they require teaching methods and assessment techniques geared specifically to maximize this learning experience. Internet-based learning and distance-education are no longer new concepts in the science field. Because of this, many collegiate biology programs have created courses that can be taken virtual or hybrid. A number of experimental studies have had great influence in terms of the effects and impacts of educational technology in relation to virtual laboratories.

However, not many studies emphasize the impact of hybrid laboratories on student achievement or assess students’ motivation to learn in a …

Why Trouble Sel? The Need For Cultural Relevance In Sel, Julia Mahfouz, Vanessa Anthony-Stevens

Occasional Paper Series

With regards to efforts to imagine more equitable spaces of learning for all students, we are compelled to ask: How can SEL programs address the needs of marginalized, minoritized, and/or historically under-resourced students without deeply considering the cultured context of social interaction and school learning? Although evidence shows SEL programs yield benefits in multiple domains, most programs are based on monolithic approaches that often do not consider dynamics of power and oppression in the context of schooling. In this paper, we discuss the crucial role of culture in SEL frameworks. We propose adopting an interdisciplinary lens to integrate culturally relevant …

Let Them Get Mad: Using The Psychoanalytic Frame To Rethink Sel And Trauma Infomed Practice, Clio Stearns

Occasional Paper Series

This article draws on the concept of the psychoanalytic frame to argue that SEL and trauma-informed practices, as codified constructs, might be excessively rigid when it comes to making sense of children's and teacher's emotional worlds. Drawing on vignettes from observations in a third-grade classroom where there is not yet a mandate for SEL, the author shows how sometimes, the very absence of a codified approach to children's difficult behaviors and emotions can lead to an increase in their sense that they are seen and heard by their teacher and by one another.

Indigenous Wisdom, Storytelling, And Language Renewal Ꭰꮒᏸꭺꭹ, Ꭰꮒᏼꮻꮿ Ꭰꭷꮩꭵꭿꮝꮧ Ꭴꮒꭽ, Ꭰꮴꭿꮠꮧᏹ Ꭶꮼꮒꭿꮝꮧ, Arlo Starr

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Abstract ᎧᏃᎮᏍᎩ

Language, cultural immersion, and intergenerational land-based education have shown the potential to vastly improve dire health issues that Indigenous people face. What is the most effective way to produce a large number of second language learners who speak at a basic level in order to improve Indigenous health?

Relationship is a vital part of Indigenous cosmology. Rather than promoting the consumption of words as things, acquisition will be more readily integrated into relationship-based thought when also interacting with them in context through story, and cultural activities that are fun, understandable, and engage community. Many successful language immersion models …

April Agenda, Wku Graduate Council

Graduate School

Meeting agenda.