Digital Commons Network^™

High Expectations And Teacher Implicit Biases In A Culture Of Care, Jacqueline K. Haynes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This graduate project was part of a group project completed by five school and district administrators in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for teachers who are able to establish a culture of care in their classrooms that support students academically but transform their learning through experiences that enable them to be more highly engaged and productive students, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, perceived academic abilities, and backgrounds.

My project component looked at research on teacher expectations and their effects on student success. Why does the color of a child's skin tone trigger lower expectations by …

Are Community College Students’ Transfer Choices Impacted By Their Perceptions?, Jean Hearn

Journal of Global Education and Research

This investigation examined the influence perceptions play in the transfer decisions of community college students. Studying this problem provided insight which facilitated the transition from two- to four-year university and helped retention efforts. A quantitative method was used, employing an anonymous Likert survey. Two hundred and eight Early Childhood Education students received an invitation to participate in the research project via a link to the anonymous survey. Thirty-two percent of the urban community college students invited to participate did so. A descriptive picture of the participant sample was painted using frequency tests. Analysis of the relationships between the dependent variable …

The Role Of Mental Translation In Learning And Using A Second/Foreign Language By Female Adult Learners, Julia Falla-Wood

Journal of Global Education and Research

The purpose of this study is to ponder some theoretical considerations concerning a predominant phenomenon of mental translation (MT) observed by second language teachers and learners in learning and using a second/foreign language. The sample available to the researcher consists of seven female adult learners speaking different languages. The choice of the sample is not related to the age level of the learners, but their English level (5-6) according to the Canadian Language Benchmarks. The research instruments used in this study are two compositions written on two occasions, during 2013-2015 and in 2016, a personal questionnaire, a strategy questionnaire, and …

Efl Teachers’ Preparation And Beliefs In Niger, Peter Wiens, Bong Gee Jang, Katrina Liu, Billa Anassour, April Smith

Journal of Global Education and Research

Niger is a French-speaking country with a history of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in its middle and high schools. The teachers providing instruction in these programs have been trained in different ways including university-based programs, out of country programs, or no training at all. This study sought to examine the beliefs of Nigerien EFL teachers and analyze the relationship between their beliefs and their training. All EFL teachers in Niger were surveyed to understand their beliefs related to teaching. We found that training was related to teacher beliefs. As Niger determines how best to allocate its limited …

Exploring Young Children’S Digital Composing Practices, Megan D. Cross

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the many layers involved in young children’s meaning-making as they digitally compose. Utilizing a multimodal, social semiotics theoretical framework to analyze children’s digital compositions using a composing app, this study was designed around one research question: What is the nature of three and four-year-old children’s multimodal meaning making while using a composing app? The qualitative study involved four focal participants from a three- and four-year-old classroom, who attended an inquiry-based lab school in the southeastern United States.

The data were collected over a period of eight weeks, where the children were invited to tell their stories using …

Exploring The ‘Spaces Between’: Teachers’ Perceptions Of Teacher Leadership Within Professional Networks, Cynthia B. Bauman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The enactment of teacher leadership can be challenged by both policy initiatives and school contexts (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). However, teachers can have a positive influence on each other and their broader school community by building capacity for leadership, innovation, and student achievement through the relationships, or networks, they develop and maintain (Baker-Doyle, 2015; Hovardas, 2016; Hunzicker, 2012; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2012). This single exploratory case study takes place in a Title I elementary school and uses a combination of Social Network Analysis and content analysis to uncover patterns in teacher professional networks, the context …

Early Identification Of Students In Accelerated Curricula With Signs Of Academic And Emotional Risk: Working With Teachers To Identify At-Risk Students, Elizabeth D. Storey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As part of a comprehensive, multi-tiered system of support for students’ emotional, academic, and behavioral success, effective universal screenings are essential to identify students who may benefit from early intervention and targeted prevention services (Strein, Kuhn-McKearin, & Finney, 2014). Although many screening procedures and methods have been developed and evaluated for general education populations, more research is needed on screening procedures designed for one traditionally underserved population in school-based mental health services—students in accelerated curricula (namely, students in Advanced Placement classes or in the International Baccalaureate program; AP/IB). When teachers are involved in universal screening procedures, regardless of student population …

Perceived Roles Of Academic Advisors In Pursuing Internationalization At Public State And Community Colleges In Florida, Tony W. Long

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research study investigated the perceptions of academic advisors in the Florida College System (FCS) concerning globalization, internationalization, and their role in the process of internationalizing their colleges. Participants in the study included 54 academic advisors from 15 of the 28 colleges in the FCS. The sample was comprised primarily of female advisors with master’s degrees, who had been working in higher education for less than 13 years. This was a nonexperimental, quantitative study and analyses included descriptive statistics, ordinary least squares regression, and Pearson’s product moment correlations.

The results revealed that the responding advisors believe that globalization is inevitable …

Behavioral Thermoregulation And Thermal Mismatches Influence Disease Dynamics In Amphibians, Erin Louise Sauer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Amphibians are currently the most threatened vertebra taxa on the planet. Hundreds of species are thought to have gone extinct while thousands more have been listed as threatened or endangered over the past few decades. Habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, and disease are all thought to have partially contributed to these declines. Two pathogens in particular, infectious viruses in the genus Ranavirus (simply referred to as ranavirus) and the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), have been associated with global mass mortality events of amphibians. Virulent pathogens such as these tend to impose strong selective pressures on their hosts driving the …

Students’ Opportunity To Learn Surface Area And Volume In Middle Grades Mathematics Textbooks, Sofia Hatziminadakis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I conducted a content analysis to examine the treatment of the surface area and volume concepts within four published middle-grades mathematics textbook series. In particular, I examined the treatment of the surface area and volume concepts in terms of the location of surface area and volume lessons in the textbook and the number of pages and lessons devoted to these concepts. I also investigated the sequence of the instructional blocks of surface area and volume lessons. In addition, I evaluated the tasks included in these lessons in regards to the performance expectations of students, the types of visual representations of …

Including Children With Learning Differences: Experiences Of Independent School Teachers, Lisa M. Lockhart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are various types of private schools. This study focused on independent prep schools termed as “British style” (Cooper, 1988 p.19). These select, independent prep schools have a long and distinguished history in the United States. Many, if not all of these schools, have stringent admissions requirements. However, due to special considerations given to certain constituencies (siblings, children of alumni, etc.) there are times when students who are accepted to the schools may display learning or behavioral characteristics that are incongruent with the original mission of the school. In addition, sometimes learning and/or social issues do not present themselves in …

Negotiating My Rainbow: A Self-Study Exploring The Relationship Between Beliefs About Identity And Classroom Practice, Amanda Colborne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teachers bring parts of themselves, among them, gender, age, and race into the classroom. In addition to the routine stress of teaching, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have the added stress of managing the expression of their sexual orientation in the classroom. This study explores the ways in which my own identity as a lesbian influenced my beliefs about teaching, my “pre-active” curricular-instructional decision-making, and my “interactive” curricular-instructional decision-making (Jackson, 1966). A self-study methodology is used to explore these relationships. Data sources include journaling, lesson plan artifacts, student work samples, photographs of my classroom, an observation and critical …

Testing The Validity And Utility Of A Career And Technical Education Programs Of Study Evaluation Instrument, Alisha D. Hyslop

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to build on the research already completed by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) in the development of ACTE’s quality Program of Study Framework and accompanying evaluation instrument to examine the validity of the instrument’s results and its utility when used independently by local educators in a pilot test. The study used a two-phase mixed-methods design. In the first phase, 39 participating programs were evaluated using the instrument, consisting of 102 items organized into 12 elements. Representatives of participating programs, either teachers or administrators, then provided quantitative and qualitative feedback about the …

A Biographical Study Of Bernard Lafayette, Jr. As An Adult Educator Including The Teaching Of Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation, Rozelia Maria Kennedy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the life and work of LaFayette, nonviolence and conflict reconciliation from an adult education perspective. This study explores LaFayette’s life from an early age through his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, his contributions to adult education, and his current views on social change. The nonviolence conflict reconciliation LaFayette teaches is based on the philosophy and strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr. During the last 50 years, LaFayette has been kidnapped, threatened, and survived ventures into hostile environments in his effort to teach nonviolence philosophy, strategies, and methods.

This historical/biographical study used …

Positive Deviance As A Framework For Understanding Motivations And Barriers To Exercise For University Students At Campus Recreation, René Dario Herrera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to use qualitative research methodologies to better understand motivations and barriers to exercise for university students at campus recreation. The secondary purpose was to identify any correlations between physical activity habits and academic success. Ethnographic data obtained from a positive deviance sample and critically analyzed with feminist and postmodern theory could provide additional validation for campus recreation's value in positively contributing to the academic success of university students.

Participant observation, questionnaire, cultural domain analysis, interview, and focus group provided qualitative data.

Results indicate university students who frequent campus recreation to exercise are highly motivated …

Une Analyse De La Vertu Dans Trois Tragédies Historiques De Pierre Corneille, Mariela Saad-Delgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theologians, philosophers, moralists, artists, men and women of letters of the seventeenth century were interested in the notion of "virtue" and the place it should occupy in the education of children and in the life of adults. Because of this interest, literary genres of this period, and more specifically plays, provide us with many references of the word "virtue".

This concept is presented as one of the essential characteristics to be found in a hero and a heroine. However, "virtue" is not a constant concept, for its meaning is determined by the socio-political context, the author's philosophy, and the gender …

Eustress In Advanced Placement (Ap) And International Baccalaureate (Ib) Students, Amanda C. Moseley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Eustress, the positive response to stress, is a relatively understudied concept. Most of the research on eustress has been concentrated in the occupational and management setting. Empirical studies of eustress in adolescents are absent, even though youth experience unique sources and magnitudes of stress. Specifically, Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) students report more stress than their general education peers but excel in their rigorous academic program. Eustress is related to a variety of positive psychological and physiological outcomes among adult samples, which makes it an important concept to explore in adolescent samples. Many constructs such as self-efficacy, hope, …

Evaluating The Efficiency And Correspondence Of Trial-Based And Session-Based Functional Analyses In Controlled Settings, Sarah M. Gonzalez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Functional analyses (FAs) are used to identify the maintaining contingencies of problem behavior. However, FAs present some limitations. Functional analyses can be time consuming. In this study we evaluated the efficiency and correspondence of a modified trial-based FA versus a session-based FA, in a controlled setting. We conducted both the trial-based and session-based FAs with five subjects that engaged in problem behavior. On average, the trial-based FAs were completed in 32.8% less time than the session-based FAs, and took 40% less meeting and calendar days than the session-based FAs. Based on the analyses of four Board Certified Behavior Analysts (Doctoral), …

The Relationship Between First Year Student Expectations And Persistence Into The Second Year Of College, Ashley Baltuch Dees

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Incoming first year students have varying expectations for their college experience. As Florida public education budgets are more closely aligned with student persistence and graduation rates, it is vital institutions retain more first time in college students. The purpose of this study was to better understand how first year student college expectations on academic preparation, co-curricular involvement, socializing, and institutional commitment relate to persistence into the second year of college at one of Florida’s large, preeminent public research universities.

This quantitative study utilized the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) in order to better understand incoming student expectations. The …

Money Matters: An Examination Of Special Education Characteristics In Efficient And Inefficient Texas School Districts, Pakethia Harris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study veers from the traditional perspective of examining school efficiency or productivity as a cost minimizing process, in which educational inputs are minimized to achieve maximum outputs (student performance). Instead, it provides a critical examination of the dominant, cost minimizing assumption associated with efficiency models and suggest schools instead behave similarly to budget maximizers as presented in Niskanen’s (1971) seminal budget maximizing framework. The study examines the relationship between total student expenditures and subsequent student outcomes, establishing the relative efficiency of Texas school districts using stochastic frontier analysis within a budget-maximizing framework. Additionally, the study investigates how special education …

The Intervention Path: The Experiences Of Mothers Seeking Help For Their Child With Atypical Behavioral Development, Renee Hoopes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pre-school aged children experience challenging behaviors at a relatively common rate. Research shows that approximately 10–25 % of preschool-aged children engage in challenging behaviors to a greater degree than would be expected for their age (Lavigne, Gibbons, Christoffel, Arend, Rosenbaum, Binns, Sawon, Sobel & Isaacs, 1996). Problem behaviors are often the result of a child not following a typical developmental trajectory. Atypical development appears when a child either lags behind or jumps ahead of typical peer progress in physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social development or in adaptive life skills. When children with challenging behaviors are left untreated, their everyday functioning …

An Examination Of Middle School Organizational Structures In The United States And Australia, Cheryl Ellerbrock, Katherine Main, Kristina N. Falbe, Dana Pomykal Franz

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

The middle school concept, aimed at creating a more developmentally responsive learning environment for young adolescents, gained a stronghold in the later part of the 20th century. Proponents of this concept have argued continually for the holistic implementation of its six key characteristics if its benefits are to be realized. These characteristics include: (a) a challenging, integrative, and exploratory curriculum; (b) varied teaching and learning approaches; (c) assessment and evaluation that promote learning; (d) flexible organizational structures (i.e., including the physical space, scheduling, and grouping of students and teachers); (e) programs and policies that foster health, wellness and safety; and …

A Framework For Reflective Practice, Diana L. Moss, Claudia Bertolone-Smith, Teruni D. Lamberg

Journal of Practitioner Research

Teaching involves making constant choices and orchestrating interventions that impact purposeful teaching and learning. Finding time to collect information and develop solutions for a teaching challenge can be problematic. Teachers may feel pressure to shift instructional practices without incorporating purposeful reflection. We developed a reflection framework and tested it in a middle grades classroom over a two-week period, and employed practitioner research to investigate the potential of allowing for deep reflection within the middle school structure. We investigated how the framework impacted the teacher’s ability to reflect and adjust based on student learning in the classroom. We conclude that sophisticated …

Creating Laboratories Of Practice For Scholarly-Practitioners: How Leaders Learn Through Action Research Of Clinical Supervision, Ian Mette, Teresa Starrett

Journal of Practitioner Research

The purpose of our work the past three years has been to understand how clinically rich laboratories of practice can be created that allow aspiring administrators hands-on experiences in order to learn how to provide effective supervision to teachers. Through our cross-university collaboration, class members in our Educational Supervision courses have been provided an action learning structure and experiential learning opportunities to develop their own concepts of educational supervision. The two primary goals of our work were to understand a) how aspiring administrators identify when to apply directive versus nondirective supervisory behaviors (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 2014), and b) analyze …

Collaborating Across National Boundaries For Narrative Teaching And Learning, Haji Karim Khan, Theresa Y. Austin

Journal of Practitioner Research

University faculty members always learn through their collaborative engagement in teaching and research. This article reports on collaborative efforts between a Pakistani and US university professor to develop and teach a graduate seminar on narrative inquiry. We used a self-study approach to record, analyze, and report on our experience of teaching narrative inquiry in a graduate research course. We used our reflective journals, course outline, course description, session plans, class-notes, and students’ reflections as data for analysis. As a result, we developed our analytical stories of experiences under several themes.

Findings showcase insights arising from philosophical (ontological and epistemological) underpinnings, …

The Persuasive Art Of Responding, Diane Barone, Rebecca Barone

Journal of Practitioner Research

This practitioner research study looked at how elementary students created persuasive arguments in response to their reading of Doll Bones. Students frequently used settings to ground their arguments. This study suggests that having students persuasively respond to reading serves as a bridge or scaffold to persuasive writing.

Teacher Perceptions Of Students With Conduct Problems With And Without Callous Unemotional Traits, Casie L. Peet

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Conduct problems describe behaviors that violate either age-appropriate societal norms or the rights of others. They include: physical or verbal aggression, theft, lying, arguing with authority, defiance, violation of rules, property destruction, fire setting, and truancy. Among youth with conduct problems, a subset display features known as callous-unemotional (CU) traits. CU traits, or interpersonal callousness, are exemplified in behaviors such as: (a) absence of remorse or guilt, (b) lack of empathy and, (c) callous use of others for personal gain (Frick & White, 2008). This study aims to fill the gap of examining these students in schools and which practices …

Developing Teacher Efficacy In High Poverty Schools, Dawn Stites

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This capstone project was part of a group project completed by three principals in elementary schools in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion to understand effective teachers. Our collective goal was to have more engaged teachers which would create more engaged students resulting in greater student and teacher success.

Our overall group project purpose was to discover the behavior and characteristics an engaged teacher demonstrates and how these behaviors affect the learning environment and the students that are in that environment. The project was guided by the question, how does a culture of engaged teachers develop …

Redefining Supports And Resources For Students And Families In High Poverty Schools, Rick Grayes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This capstone project was part of a team project completed by two school principals in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for meeting the needs of our students in urban high poverty schools being supported by varying district turnaround initiatives. We looked at our district’s previous and current attempts to increase student success in high poverty schools. We questioned the ways in which supports and resources were provided, and we explored ways through which success in high poverty schools might be increased by redefining the supports and resources provided. Our appreciative exploration of the topic was …

Culturally Relevant Curriculum And Instruction In A Culture Of Care, Johan Von Ancken

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This capstone project was part of a group project completed by five school and district administrators in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for teachers who are able to establish a culture of care in their classrooms that support students academically but transform their learning through experiences that enable them to be more highly engaged and productive students, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, perceived academic abilities, and backgrounds.

Our school district has spent significant resources attempting to address the deficiencies that exist within its lower performing schools. A variety of curriculum specialists have addressed challenges these …