Introduction: A Vision For Transforming Early Childhood Research And Practice For Young Children Of Immigrants And Their Families, Fabienne Doucet, Jennifer Adair

Occasional Paper Series

This special issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that can positively impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. We consider the intersectionality of young children’s lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children’s experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve.

Affective Reflexivity: Endeavors To Push Methodological And Representational Boundaries Of Curriculum, Eunkyoung Chung

Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative (2011-2025)

Presenter will provide.

The Impact Of The Use Of Science Notebooks In Conjunction With A Learning Progression-Based Science Unit In An Urban Middle School, Reagan Williams

Dissertations

Learning progressions are the latest tool to understand the ways science learning occurs and they underlie the structure and framework of the Next Generation Science Standards.Prior research indicated a variety of ways to develop and validate learning progressions and learning progression’s general positive impact on students’ science learning. However, no study has explicitly employed science notebooks as the cornerstone to the development and/or validation processes. Therefore, the research question is: what is the impact on students’ science learning outcomes when a middle school science learning progression is developed and validated using science notebooks as part of an inquiry-based instructional …

Black Exceptionality In Academia: A Cultural-Historical Re-Conceptualization Of Black Male Students Identified With Learning Disabilities In Higher Education, Larry Love, Dosun Ko, Aydin Bal

Journal of Research Initiatives

The under-representation of Black male students identified with learning disabilities (LD) in higher education is a symptom of a larger social injustice, the racialization of educational opportunities and outcomes in the United States. We provided a critical review of literature to examine the structural and social barriers facing Black college students identified with LD in terms of access to adequate support services, refusal of funds of knowledge that Black students bring to higher education, and hegemonic organization of higher education. Following themes are explored: a) historical legacy of racial inequity in academia; b) systemic contradictions in institutional practices; c) absence …

Resilient Scholar: A High Achieving African American Male With A Learning Disability, Shawn A. Robinson

Journal of Research Initiatives

The existing literature on race/ethnicity overlooks learning disability (LD) and the latter often neglects African American males. Further, when the intersection of race/ethnicity and LD overlap, African American males are rarely discussed or viewed as high achievers within the literature. Therefore, I seek to break through the wall of silence and provide an account that explores the rich lived experiences of a high achieving African American male with LD (i.e., dyslexia) in higher education. The article begins with literature relevant to my lived experiences followed by contextualizing those experiences as a high achiever. Next, I use a conceptual framework as …

Bilingual Teachers' Experiences: Being English Learners, Becoming Teachers, And Bilingual Education, Carrie Susan Larson

Dissertations and Theses

Bilingual students are the fastest growing demographic group in U.S. P-12 public schools and offer promise and hope to our increasingly global workforce. However, many bilingual students are lagging behind in school, too many do not complete high school, and their schooling experiences are overshadowed by racial and linguistic segregation, low-academic tracking, and subtractive educational experiences. There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of bilingual and bicultural teachers and leaders who can include students' linguistic, cultural, and community assets in school. This qualitative research study explores the experiences of a specialized group of elementary bilingual and …

Chinese Students In U.S. Universities: A Qualitative Study Of Cross-Cultural Learning Experiences, Transition And Adaptation, Josefina E. Oramas, Hagai Gringarten, Lloyd Mitchell

Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research (2014-2019)

Chinese students represent the largest single group among international students enrolled in the U.S, and globalization has played an important role in impacting Chinese students’ perceptions of what it means to study abroad. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are 85 percent more international students enrolled today in U.S. schools than ten years ago, adding more than 35 billion dollars to the nation’s economy in 2015 (Belkin & Purnell, 2017). This qualitative study adds to the limited research available regarding Chinese students’ cross-cultural transition and academic adaptation to American universities (Kusek, 2015; Yan & Berliner, 2009). Findings add a …

How Persevering Latina/O First-Generation College Students Navigate Their College Experience: Keeping Who They Are While Learning And Persisting In The Culture Of College, Angela Judith Balcacer

Dissertations and Theses

Latina/o first-generation college students, along with their families, are learning a new culture when considering going to four-year universities. While the conversation involving Latina/o first-generation college students can often focus on attrition, I am interested in exploring what, from participants' point of view, are the successes they experience as well as the most challenging obstacles they encounter on their journey to graduating from four-year universities. Employing the theoretical frameworks of constructivism, critical race theory, and cultural capital, the purpose of this study was to go beyond the conversation of Latina/o first-generation college student attrition by examining how they navigate postsecondary …

Voices Of Notators: Approaches To Writing A Score--Special Issue, Teresa L. Heiland

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

In this special issue of Voices of Notators: Approaches to Writing a Score, eight authors share their unique process of creating and implementing their approach to notating movement, and they describe how that process transforms them as researchers, analysts, dancers, choreographers, communicators, and teachers. These researchers discuss the need to capture, to form, to generate, and to communicate ideas using a written form of dance notation so that some past, present, or future experience can be better understood, directed, informed, and shared. They are organized roughly into themes motivated by relationships between them and their methodological similarities and differences. …

Sharing Identity: Indexing Cultural Perspectives Through Writing Responses To Graphic Novels, Alex Romagnoli

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Indexing identity through writing responses among ELL students in response to a graphic novel helps provide insight into how writing responses represent people and how graphic novels can aid in that process of self-discovery through their inherent multimodalities. This study takes looks at four students in an ELL class at an urban high school in southern Pennsylvania as they responded in writing to a portion of Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City (2006). All of the participants took events from the portion of the graphic novel provided to them and indexed their urban, cultural perspectives through their …

The Hidden Curriculum In Financial Literacy: Economics, Standards, And The Teaching Of Young Children, Debbie Sonu, Anand R. Marri

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Gender On Spatial Ability And Spatial Reasoning Among Students In Grades 2-8, Sharon W. Morris

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences across three types of spatial ability; namely, spatial perception, spatial visualization, and mental rotation in conjunction with working memory. The study utilized a causal-comparative research design involving group comparisons. In this design researchers collect data about variables that they have conceptualized to be in a causal relationship to each other, but there is no intervention as in experimental research. Participants in this study included approximately 200 students in second through eighth grades at one public school and one public charter school, all located in the same school district/county. Spatial ability …

Critical Reflections In International Contexts: Polyethnographic Accounts Of An International Doctoral Research Seminar, Lisa Fedoruk, Jon Woodend, Janet Groen, Avis Beek, Sylvie Roy, Xueqin Wu, Xiang Li

The Qualitative Report

As the world becomes more globally interconnected, international partnerships, including those within higher education, have increased. In an exemplar of these international partnerships from an academic standpoint, selected doctoral students and faculty from Australian, Chinese, and Canadian universities participated in an International Doctoral Research Seminar held in China in December 2015. The objective of this seminar was to have academic debate regarding educational reform. A critical by-product of this seminar was the meaning made by the participants from this experience. This paper reviews the critical polyethnographic reflections of the Canadian participants for three salient and influential topics including the role …

Best Practices For The Development Of English Language In Rural Elementary Schools In Prevention Of Long Term English Learners, Heather Christine Gomez

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the best practices of English language development programs in rural South San Joaquin Valley elementary schools in the targeted areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking and best practices in teacher professional development to prevent Long Term English Learners from the perspective of principals. An additional purpose was to identify and describe obstacles to the implementation of best practices of English language development in rural South San Joaquin Valley elementary schools from the perspective of principals.

Methodology: Through data analysis, rural elementary schools in South San Joaquin Valley were identified …

An Intensive Esl Camp Curriculum And Excursion Activities For International High School Graduated / College Students, Ying Chen

Master's Projects and Capstones

There are many factors for students’ poor command of English among international students in the native language institutions. One of the factors is the students’ negative attitude and low motivation in English learning. Another aspect to lower students’ English learning motivation is the inappropriate use of the learning materials. Moreover, learners still lack a chance to immerse in the real language environment and the authentic cultural background to improve their comprehensively intercultural and communicative competence. For the sake that the second language instruction provided in regular schools is limited in time, many students even do not have enough time to …

Mandarin Chinese Tone Identification Training: Developing Materials For Second And Third Grade Classes In Mandarin Chinese Immersion Programs, Xiaoyi Zhang

Master's Projects and Capstones

Among all the different perspectives of Mandarin teaching, Mandarin tone teaching and practicing has been largely ignored. The lack of attention and materials for Mandarin tone teaching is why many students speak, read and listen without the correct tone pronunciation, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding. This field project is a curriculum of Mandarin tone teaching. This project is for second grade and third grade teachers who teach Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language in immersion programs in the Bay Area. This curriculum will enable students to speak and read Mandarin with correct tone pronunciation and distinguish different tones …

An Action Research Investigation Into An Early Childhood Digital, Storytelling-Based Solution, Jessica Smith

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The development of literacy skills prior to the classroom has been established as essential for future school and life successes. However, the present achievement gap between lower-socioeconomic neighborhoods and their higher-income counterparts illustrate vast dissimilarities in early childhood provisions for quality reading materials and instructional aides. In an effort to bridge the educational breach, a collaborative, storytelling-based program entitled Kid Forward was introduced to five nationwide families as a means of assistance for early childhood literacy development. Through the use of demographic surveys, interviews completed before and after the program implementation, and exit surveys, the action research study examined early …

Opportunities Beyond High School: An Eld Unit For Newcomer Students, Karen Toepp

Master's Theses

As an English Language Development (ELD) teacher, I noticed the junior newcomer students at my high school in the Bay Area of California were not being prepared for jobs or careers after their graduation. As newcomers, they are working through trauma, reuniting with their families, learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. Though many arrived with high expectations for school, students stopped connecting graduating high school with having access to higher education, which meant more job training and better employment opportunities. A lack of motivation and unskilled teachers contributed to students struggling in school and leading to …

Living In Two Worlds: The Phenomena Of The Language Immersion Experience, Laura E. Adelman-Cannon

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As Vygotsky (1986) concludes in his seminal work Thought and Language, “A word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness” (p. 246). Even without an in-depth understanding of science and only the most popular appreciation of the police procedural be it Sherlock Holmes or CSI, it is easy to see how a single cell can relate to the whole organism. But how can a word be a microcosm of human consciousness? The purpose of this study was to explore …

An Ethnographic Study Of Intermediate Students From Poverty: Intersections Of School And Home, Shiela G. Rector

Dissertations and Theses

The achievement gap in American schools between middle class students and students from poverty is well documented. This paper outlines the findings of a study designed to explore the experience and conscientization of struggling students from poverty. The argument will be made that poverty can be viewed as a culture and that this view may shed significant light on the dynamics of the achievement gap. Further, using the construct of poverty as a culture provides real life applications that have the potential to impact the achievement gap. The study explored the lived experiences in a public school setting of intermediate …

Pushing Back On School Pushout: Youth At An Alternative School Advocate For Educational Change Through Youth Participatory Action Research, Jessica Hopson Burbach

Dissertations and Theses

In the United States, a staggering four thousand students drop out every school day. Moreover, in 2016, the graduation rate in Oregon was only 74.8%, one of the lowest in the nation. Research shows that a disproportionate number of youth leaving school are from historically marginalized communities. Many of these youth resiliently return to education at alternative schools. This research sought to explore the educational experiences of youth in alternative schools in their own voices and perspectives. From a theoretical framework based in sociocultural theory, cultural capital, and critical theory, this study underscored the importance of youth voice in changing …

Self–Assessment In Efl Grammar Classroom: A Study Of Efl Learners At The Centre For Languages And Translation, Ibb University, Marwan Saeed Saif Moqbel

International Journal for Research in Education

The present study investigated the implementation of self-assessment in EFL grammar classroom to identify the attitudes of EFL learners at the Centre for Languages and Translation, Ibb University towards self-assessment, their perceptions of the advantages of self-assessment, and the problems or difficulties that EFL learners may face while carrying out self-assessment activities. To collect data, the researcher used three instruments: a questionnaire, a structured interview, and a focus group discussion. The questionnaire was administered to (85) EFL learners. Using the stratified sampling technique, the researcher selected randomly (14) learners for the interviews and (21) learners to participate in the focus …

Factors Affecting Teachers’ Implementation Of Communicative Language Teaching Curriculum In Secondary Schools In Bangladesh, Mohammad Mosiur Rahman, Ambigapathy Pandian, Manjet Kaur

The Qualitative Report

This study focuses on the selected factors affecting teachers’ implementation of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) curriculum in secondary schools in Bangladesh. The study is explorative, interpretivist, and qualitative in nature. A phenomenology approach, under qualitative method, was adopted to explore how teachers experience the phenomenon of CLT based curriculum change. Four schools were chosen, two from Dhaka (Urban), the capital of the country, and two from the villages in Chandpur (Rural). Eight selected participants were chosen from these schools based on a purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observation and document analysis of curriculum, assessment, and teaching materials were the …

The Effect Of Small Group Intervention Activities In An Enrichment Program With Second Grade Students, Kari Dahlgren

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine whether the effect of using small group reading intervention activities in an after-school program with second grade students can increase their foundational reading skills and oral reading fluency. The students selected for the study were already enrolled in the after-school program. The study evaluated the reading skills of 12 of the 17 second grade students at Circle of Life Academy. The assessments used were the AIMS-web Plus assessment and Assessing Reading Multiple Measures assessments. The results of the AIMS-web fluency scores showed that those students who received interventions in reading fluency …

May Agenda, Wku Graduate Council

Graduate School

Meeting agenda.

Radio Waves And Curriculum Pathways: Jamaican “At Risk” Learners Construct Media, Paulette J. Feraria

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This paper explores radio play as an alternative space for learning language and literacy for Jamaican students labelled as ‘at-risk’ learners. Through the creation of a make-believe radio station in the classroom, students developed oral language skills as a necessary precursor for social literacy. They connected reading and writing activities and the simulated classroom radio station promoted the development of learners’ self-efficacy. The students’ use of the learning space as newscasters, hosts, writers and reporters revealed that those who took risks in learning language and literacy in these spaces subverted the label of ‘at-risk-learners’ and repositioned themselves as risk-takers in …

A Justice And Equity Common Area Requirement: Where Jesuit And Feminist Pedagogies Intersect, Kathleen Bowles

Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies Student Scholarship

Explores the implementation of a Justice and Equity common area requirement as part of the core curriculum at the College of the Holy Cross.

Earthquakes + Tsunamis (A Poetic Diptych), Mindi Rhoades

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

What follows is pair of found poems created by the practice of mining the writings of other authors to form a new work, a piece of language art. This process shares similarities with postmodern artistic practices including collage, appropriation, sampling, remixing, and repurposing. Source materials for found poems can include other poems, novels, newspaper articles, magazine stories, obituaries, letters—almost anything.

For these particular poems, the source materials are academic educational research articles about geological fault zones and earthquakes. The majority of the text in these poems is taken ver- batim from their original articles and used in the order of …

Teaching Juan Rodriguez: Enacting Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy In Elementary Social Studies, Natalie Kuhl

Graduate Student Independent Studies

A fourth grade social studies curriculum and corresponding rationale are presented on the topic of Dominican historical figure Juan Rodriguez, his appearance in the Hudson harbor in 1613, and his legacy as captured by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute in upper Manhattan. Curricularized racism in education and the responsibility of teachers to correct entrenched curricularized racism is addressed in undertaking the writing of an original curriculum centered on the known scholarship of Juan Rodriguez. As a relatively unknown historical actor and a free man of color from colonial La Española (modern-day Dominican Republic), his story is leveraged to help Dominican …

Cowboy City: An Original Children’S Book, Erica Lynch

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Cowboy City is an original children’s book written for eight to ten year olds that touches on themes of race and representation. Too often the stories of Black cowboys go untold. The book was created to provide children with an accurate portrayal of who the cowboys of the Wild West were, as well as who they are now, while also providing teachers with a tool to introduce the concepts of racial representation throughout history. Told through the voice of nine-year-old Jayden, an African American boy living in the city, Cowboy City follows Jayden’s normal school day, interrupted by an extraordinary …