Digital Commons Network^™

Outdoor Education And The Effects On Social-Emotional Outcomes In Elementary-Aged Students: A Pd Series, Christopher Windman

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research has sought to find ways that educators can increase student engagement, social attitudes, cooperation, and other domains of social-emotional learning in the classroom. Outdoor education researchers have long hypothesized that outdoor education can help increase student social, emotional, and academic outcomes. There are many different definitions of outdoor education and several frameworks for social-emotional learning. This project uses a definition of outdoor education derived from a combination of historical research from Lloyd B. Sharp and Phyllis Ford, international research and curriculum analyses, and several environmental, place-based, and nature-based education research studies. This project utilizes the CASEL framework and EDTRUST’s …

Lgbtqia+ Inclusivity In The Outdoors, Allison Brown

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

LGBTQIA+ individuals face barriers, inequities, and discrimination while accessing outdoor spaces and participating in outdoor education and recreation. This project focused on creating an online, asynchronous toolkit with learning activities designed for individuals and organizations within the fields of outdoor education and outdoor recreation to become aware of barriers the LGTBQIA+ community faces to accessing the outdoors and begin implementing LGBTQIA+ inclusion initiatives. The activities are intended to be completed in order, but can be adapted to best meet individual and organizational needs. Each learning activity was influenced by the research conducted for the capstone project and by examining inclusivity …

Creating An Engaging And Ecocritical Project Based Curriculum For High School Environmental Science, Hannah Stewart

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question that inspired this curriculum project was: How can educators create an engaging and ecocritical project based curriculum for high school environmental science? This curriculum utilizes a project based learning framework, based on A Framework for High Quality Project Based Learning, in order to create an engaging curriculum for students in a high school environmental science class. Additionally, this curriculum incorporates themes of critical ecology. Critical ecology is a way of studying the environment that asks us to consider how our perceptions and attitudes toward the environment can perpetuate the environmental and social injustices we are facing in …

Improving Global Competence In Classroom-Based Experiential Learning Activities, Juyoung Lee, Caroline Kobia, Jihyeong Son

Journal of Global Education and Research

The purpose of this research was to develop learning activities to improve global competence for a classroom-based course in the field of clothing and textiles and explore how those activities affected the global competence of college students. To achieve this goal, the researchers proposed the following objectives: (a) develop learning activities on global competence and (b) explore the influences of newly proposed learning activities on the global competence of college students. The authors analyzed students’ reflective essays to identify themes through constant comparative analysis. The authors found participants learned about the Japanese culture through diverse aspects of global competence—affective, cognitive, …

Staffing Remote Schools: Perennial Failure, Sally Knipe, Christine Bottrell

Journal of Global Education and Research

Educational and socioeconomic disadvantage in remote communities, and the inadequacies of government action to bring about significant change needs to be addressed. This article presents a descriptive study examining the complexities of staffing remote and very remote schools in Australia with appropriately-qualified teachers. The findings of analysis of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on behalf of the Australian Government through the National Schools Statistics Collection (NSSC) indicate that the majority of students in remote schools in Australia live, and are educated in, Indigenous communities in three jurisdictions. This raises concerns of unacknowledged and unacceptable discrimination. Complexity within …

Business Schools Should Be Schools Of Management: An Evolutionary Perspective, Kai Peters, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter looks at the original driving forces which led to the creation of institutions, particularly in the US, including the vision of their founders which would support our perspective in favour of schools of management. It looks at the years following the Second World War and how the Ford and Carnegie ‘Foundation Reports’ as well as the Cold War led to further evolution away from a school of management to a business school mission. The chapter looks at the period roughly from 1970 to 2000 during which US business school funding, which had been largely provided by the foundations, …

“I Just Kind Of Felt Like Country Come To Town:” College Student Experiences For Rural Students At One Flagship University, Phillip D. Grant, Dena Kniess

The Rural Educator

Rural undergraduate students at flagship universities in the United States are typically outnumbered by their urban and suburban peers. Students from rural demographic backgrounds bring different forms of social and cultural capital to higher education with them. This phenomenological study at a flagship university in the Deep South region of the United States examines their experiences through the lens of Constructed Environment Perspectives to assess how rural students evaluate their sense of fit at an institution of higher education. Rural students in this study noted that they began their first year of postsecondary education with a smaller social network than …

Conceptualizing Rurality In Education Policy: Comparative Evidence From Missouri, Abby Burrola, Dorothy Rohde-Collins, J. Cameron Anglum

The Rural Educator

For education policies to be implemented most effectively in local contexts, policymakers must consider diverse school and community geographic characteristics. For example, rural geographies often present particularly important dynamics for public schooling, including challenges with school enrollment, school funding, and teacher labor markets. We focus on Missouri, where over two-thirds of its school districts are located in rural areas. Enrollment in these districts varies over 100-fold, yet little research describes the similarities and differences between these districts and how to appropriately distinguish between them to best advise contemporary policymaking. In this study, we analyze data from the American Community Survey, …

Motivations And Barriers To Participation In Community Outreach And Engagement Among Environmental And Water Resources Students And Postdocs, Sydney Donohue

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

There is a need to utilize knowledge exchange avenues between academia and non-academic communities in order to advance environmental science and engineering education. Many universities and research centers attempt to enhance knowledge sharing by organizing broader impact outreach events such as lab tours, demonstrations, hands-on activities, and public presentations. Anecdotally, at two NSF-funded centers, the Transformation Network and Center for Water and the Environment, we have seen that only the same small subset of students and postdocs frequently participate while over 70% of those invited never volunteer. This study aims to survey environmentally-focused undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs’ motivations …

Remembering The Ladies! A Decision-Making Activity For Teaching The American Revolution, Presley Shilling, Jeffrey Byford, Deanna Owens-Mosby

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This content-centered American Revolution activity encourages students to utilize Robert Stahl’s rank-order approach to promote decision-making in the social studies classroom. The incorporation of women’s contributions in the years leading up to the American Revolution influences students to analyze various perspectives surrounding this historical event. Employing Robert Stahl’s four phases of decision-making, students examine a situation and rank-order the efforts of the daughters of liberty, while investigating the political, economic, and social causes of the American Revolution. Students, individually or in groups, determine which of the seven solutions will be most effective in undermining the British and King George III’s …

Creating Law And Order: A Content-Centered Manifest Destiny Activity, Presley Shilling, Jeffrey Byford, Alisha Milam

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This content activity shows how Robert Stahl’s negotiation activity approach can promote decision-making in the social studies classroom. The effects of the activity on students’ ability to replicate the actions of settlers taking the journey to the western territories in search of gold. Incorporating Robert Stahl’s four decision-making phases, students negotiate social, political, and economic issues associated with the mining town of Bodie, California. In doing so, students must, individually or in small groups, decide and prioritize a series of proposals to better the living conditions, economic struggles, and social problems that have plagued Bodie for some time.

Wmu Board Of Trustees Formal Session June 29, 2023, Wmu Board Of Trustees

WMU Board of Trustees Meetings

• Acceptance of the Agenda
• Approval of the Minutes (April 27, 2023 Meeting)
• Remarks by the Chair
• Remarks by the President
• Updates by the Faculty Senate President
• Updates by the Western Student Association President
• Western Michigan University Employee Graduates
• Trustee Emeritus Tribute
• WMU’s Investment in the Future – Academic Tenure and Promotion
• Public Comments Regarding Action Items

• Action Items

1. Student Room, Board, and Apartment Rates 2023-2024
2. Tuition and Required Fee Rates Fall 2023
3. General Fund Budget, Fiscal Year 2023-2024
4. Purchase of Grand Rapids Downtown Facility - 200 Ionia Avenue
5. Repurchase of BTR Parcel (Unit 30)
6. Five Year Capital Outlay Plan
7. Conditional …

Understanding Computational Thinking In The Gameplay Of The African Songo Board Game, Rebecca Y. Bayeck

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Computational thinking is a necessary skill for the 21st century. While previously examined in computer-rich settings, researchers are increasingly studying computational thinking in unplugged environments such as board games. Focusing on the African board game Songo, this study shows that computational thinking practices are embedded in Songo board gameplay and interact with the cultural context. The study also reveals a computing practice peculiar to Songo gameplay, songoputation. This paper suggests that researchers can benefit from exploring computational thinking and computing practices beyond board games in western contexts.

Case Study On Increasing The Amount Of High School El Students College And Career Ready, Octavio Patino

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative multicase study was to describe the leadership practices of high school principals who work with their staff to close the college and career achievement gap for English language learners (ELLs) based on Anderson and Ackerman Anderson’s (2010) change model (mindset, behavior, culture, and systems).

Methodology: This qualitative multicase study was conducted through interviews with four high school principals of Title I schools in California. I selected qualitative methods because they describe the leadership practices that worked with their staff to close ELLs’ college and career readiness (CCR) gap.

Findings: Close examination of data from …

Impact Of Response To Intervention On Achievement, Aimee Leigh Dennis

Education Theses and Dissertations

The Improvement Science Dissertation in Practice focused on an initial comprehensive assessment of the Response to Intervention (RtI) framework, implemented in a district in East Texas, and its impact of student achievement. Following the evaluation, a subsequent improvement iteration concentrated on the impact of RtI, with the use of job-embedded professional learning, on student achievement. Both iterations utilized a mixed-methods case study using an embedded experimental model with a one-phase approach. The findings highlighted that student achievement did improve with statistically significant results except for in the second iteration where there was not statistically significant results in fifth and sixth …

Subversive Cartography: Teaching Mary Prince And Saidiya Hartman, Carolina Hinojosa

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This chapter utilizes Hartman’s methodology of retrieval to create a map1 in StoryMap JS2 (“the map” or “this map”) that analyzes multiple geographic spaces in The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave Narrative and Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. The map is an archive or a witness to some of the geographical spaces Mary Prince lived (and was sold) as an enslaved woman seeking freedom and the places in which Saidiya Hartman has conducted research or visited in Ghana as a “free” woman. Layering the past over present creates a …

Along And Against The Grain: Close Reading The History Of Mary Prince, Kristina Huang

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Due to the highly mediated conditions of its production, The History of Mary Prince presents a challenge to New Critical methods of reading that are frequently taught in undergraduate literature classrooms. Without questioning the British abolitionists’ textual representation of Prince’s experiences, readers unfamiliar with the historical conditions for slave narratives may attribute the publication’s sentimentalism and representations of violence as direct expressions of Prince. This essay mobilizes close reading towards contrary ends: I throw the editor’s (Thomas Pringle’s) paratextual material, particularly the Preface, under scrutiny by close reading its insistence on transparency and symmetry between the first-person narrative and Prince …

Mary Prince’S Undisciplining Lessons: Counter-Narrative And Testimonio In The History, Kerry Sinanan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay discusses teaching The History of Mary Prince at a Hispanic Serving Institution via Ethnic Studies praxis. It develops Nicole Aljoe’s definition of Prince’s narrative as counter-story and testimonio and explores the undisciplining effects of reading Prince’s history as relevant to the lives of Borderlands students. To understand the multiple meanings of “undisciplining’ this essay draws on the theory of Sylvia Wynter and shows how Prince’s testimonio offers an alternative to Western epistemologies via communal resistance and resurgence. Several pedagogic tools are explored for teaching Prince in this way.

Chawton House And Its Library: Legacies And Futures, Kim Simpson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In a review of Women’s Writing, 1660-1830: Feminisms and Futures, Paula Backscheider draws attention to “the miracle that is Chawton House, whose conferences nurtured these essays” in the collection. This essay will examine the legacy of this unique institution and explore the futures for the organization both as heritage site and as home to a substantial collection of women’s writing of the long eighteenth century. The community encouraged and nurtured by Chawton House since it opened to the public in 2003, as is so often the case with all things related to Jane Austen, complicates divisions between the academic …

A Qualitative Exploration Of Food Literacy In International Schools In Egypt, Amy Pugsley

Theses and Dissertations

Food literacy is an essential part of good physical and psychological health, however, food literacy is not a mandatory part of K-12 education in all schools. Many factors can influence food literacy levels including familial culture, socioeconomic status, and education levels. This research seeks to examine perceptions of food literacy in high school students and educators at two private American international schools located in Cairo, Egypt. Through the use of observations and interviews, the researcher used a qualitative approach to understand the self-perceptions of food literacy in students studying the American curriculum. The study revealed that students from high-socio-economic backgrounds …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Peeling Away The Taken-For-Grantedness Of Research Subjectivities: Orienting To The Phenomenological, Melissa Freeman, E. Anthony Muhammad

Curriculum, Foundations & Reading: Faculty Publications

Qualitative research is a multidisciplinary field of practice that acknowledges and values the situatedness and subjectivities of the researcher. Therefore, reflexively accounting for one’s subjectivities is a crucial part of a research report. Less discussed is how subjective understandings are historically, culturally, and socially mediated, often challenging researchers’ abilities to orient themselves critically to this self-reflective undertaking. Phenomenology is a philosophical approach investigating how phenomena such as subjectivity are constituted in experience. This makes phenomenology an essential resource for understanding how complex subjective responses manifest differently depending on one’s orientation to the situation. This paper aims to familiarize qualitative research …

Peeling Away The Taken-For-Grantedness Of Research Subjectivities: Orienting To The Phenomenological, Melissa Freeman, E. Anthony Muhammad

The Qualitative Report

Qualitative research is a multidisciplinary field of practice that acknowledges and values the situatedness and subjectivities of the researcher. Therefore, reflexively accounting for one’s subjectivities is a crucial part of a research report. Less discussed is how subjective understandings are historically, culturally, and socially mediated, often challenging researchers’ abilities to orient themselves critically to this self-reflective undertaking. Phenomenology is a philosophical approach investigating how phenomena such as subjectivity are constituted in experience. This makes phenomenology an essential resource for understanding how complex subjective responses manifest differently depending on one’s orientation to the situation. This paper aims to familiarize qualitative research …

A Case Study Involving External Stakeholder Perceptions Of Factors Related To Effective Community College Civic Engagement, Matthew David Little

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this case study was to understand external stakeholder perceptions regarding factors related to effective community college civic engagement. The theory guiding this study was empowerment theory, as it allowed for exploring community-academic partnerships through a lens focused on community psychology, linking individual well-being with the larger social and political environment. Purposeful and convenience sampling were used to identify and select 18 highly qualified members of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce. Data collection and analysis were ongoing, emergent, and interrelated processes. Sources of data included individual document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions. Data analysis involved examining, …

The Effect Of Using The Two Infographic Patterns (Fixed And Motion) On Teaching The Arabic Language Among Kindergarten Students In Madaba Governorate, Manal Altawalbeh

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للبحوث في التعليم العالي

The article aimed to identify the effect of using the two infographic patterns (fixed and Motion) on teaching the Arabic language among kindergarten students in Madaba Governorate(Jordan). To achieve the objective of the study, the semi-experimental approach was used, and the study sample was chosen by the intentional method, and it consisted of (45) male and female kindergarten students in the schools of the Golden Shining Academy for the first semester (2022/2023), and the students were distributed into two groups: the experimental group The first group consisted of (23) male and female students who were taught using fixed infographics, and …

The Physical Activity Of Spanish Speleologists: Accomplishment Of Recommendations And Differences By Sociodemographic Variables, Miquel Pans, Laura Antón-González, Maite Pellicer-Chenoll

International Journal of Speleology

Outdoor adventure activities are becoming more popular due to their potential health benefits, although there is little scientific information on speleology as a physical activity (PA). The purpose of this study is to expand the scientific evidence in this field in two ways: (a) describe the PA performed by speleologists, taking into account the variables of interest such as gender, age, education, speleological level, participation in ‘Alpine’ explorations and body mass index (BMI) and (b) identify how far the World Health Organization’s (WHO) PA recommendations were accomplished (i.e.,150 min of moderate-intensity aerobic PA or 75 min of vigorous-intensity aerobic). A …

Disability, Race, And Origin Intersectionality In The Doctoral Program: Ableism In Higher Education, Theodoto W. Ressa, Scot Danforth

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This paper explores the experiences of a doctoral disabled student at a university to examine how ableist structures in graduate programs affect access to higher education and post-degree outcomes. Guided by the DisCrit framework and autoethnography approach, the article illuminates systems and processes that disadvantage graduate disabled students. Through intersectional analyses of disability, race, and origin, the article makes visible manifestations of disability microaggressions and systemic ableism, racism, and xenophobia. It interrogates the perpetuation and normalization of academic transgressions, including exclusionary practices that degrade and oppress graduate disabled students and hinder them from seeking success. Finally, the argument is made …

“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson

Criticism

Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …

Addressing Secondary Traumatic Stress, Burnout, Resilience And Turnover In The Child Welfare Workforce: Results From A 6-Month, Cluster-Randomized Control Trial Of Resilience Alliance, Rebecca Orsi-Hunt, Courtney L. Harrison, Kayla E. Rockwell, Anita P. Barbee

QIC-WD Journal Articles

Introduction: US child welfare agencies have historically struggled with workforce retention and turnover. As part of the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development in Child Welfare, we tested an adaptation of the Resilience Alliance (RA) model in a large, Midwestern state to address workplace stress, burnout and actual workforce turnover. RA is a 24-week, facilitated program designed to mitigate the impact of secondary traumatic stress among child welfare professionals, and to therefore increase job satisfaction, resilience and optimism and to decrease turnover, stress reactivity and burnout.

Methods: Supervisory units of caseworkers and supervisors were randomized to the RA treatment …

Kala In My Moholla - Art In My Neighborhood, Priyata Bosamia

Masters Theses

The l question that I am trying to answer through this thesis is “How do we build safe spaces for free creative expression?” The project "Kala in my Moholla", which means "Art in my neighborhood," looks at art as a force and intends to create space for free creative expression by inserting a network of hyper-local, easy-to-build spaces for making, creating, and sharing that are designed to be accessible, participatory, and democratic. A modular design consists of basic forms and a catalog of materials that can be used for its construction. Designed to be malleable, transformable, and customizable, it can …