Digital Commons Network^™

Using A Culturally Proficient Leadership Lens To Effectively Serve Refugee Students, Corinne Brion

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

This teaching case study takes place in an American middle school and tells the story of Dorah, a refugee student from the Republic of Congo who experienced severe trauma. At Lincoln Middle School, the principal and her teachers encounter difficulties serving their refugee students adequately because of their lack of cultural proficiency. This case aims to help leaders in diverse contexts understand how to embrace and advocate for different cultures, beliefs, and norms to increase the cultural wealth of their communities. To achieve this goal, I provide a cultural proficiency model and a trauma-invested framework.

Utilizing K'É To Build A New Mexico Higher Education Collaborative: Supporting Native Student Success, Catherine N. Montoya

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

The purpose of this study is centered around a need’s assessment and creation of a collaborative entity in New Mexico that will support Native students in higher education institutions. There is always a need to support Indigenous students pursuing post-secondary degrees in higher education programs, because often professionals and programs function in silos. Instead, professionals and programs that support Native students would benefit from working to create supportive environments where Native students can succeed; provide encouragement; and make their environments safe and welcoming. This can best be accomplished through collaborative efforts across New Mexico. A state level higher education collaborative …

Elevating The Voices For All Learners Through Shared Stories Of Science Learning, Lauren Madden, Stuart Z. Carroll, Amy K. Schuler

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

This study examines the science learning experiences across the lifespan of two groups of college students: adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in a post-secondary inclusive program, and adults in a preservice secondary education teacher candidate program. Data, in the form of personal narrative science stories were collected using a paired-interview approach in which students from each group interviewed one another about their science learning across their lifespans, and recorded responses using an online form. Across the stories, several clear themes emerged. Similarities and differences were found across and within the groups and are shared in a narrative format. Trends …

Appreciating Empathy: How Writing Center Collaborations Inform Leadership Development For Student Wellness And Success, Hugo Werstler

M.A. in Higher Education Leadership: Action Research Projects

The purpose of my action research project was to understand the practice of collaboration within the University of San Diego’s Writing Center as an emerging leader in Higher Education. The goal of this study was to explore the benefits of empathy and relationship development as practiced by the Writing Center to develop leadership strategies for other campus organizations that regularly interact with the institution’s student population. Using several research cycles of Appreciative Inquiry, I observed that the Writing Center functions as a stellar example of collaboration, focusing on peer-to-peer writing consultations with an emphasis on student empathy and relationship development. …

Not Just Another Professional Development Session: Implementing Effective Social Justice Aligned Professional Learning For Educators, Jessica Bitting

Dissertations

In schools today, teachers are part of a learning environment in which they are the teachers of their students, as well as students themselves. There are a plethora of traditional models for professional learning, however, professional learning is often disconnected from the realities of the classroom or lacks the elements necessary to lead to practical application. Being able to implement effective social justice aligned professional development is particularly critical in our current climate in which students of color are marginalized and are not receiving the same educational opportunity as their white peers. Through the use of autoethnography, the author shares …

Equity Leadership For English Learners During Covid–19: Early Lessons, Magaly Lavadenz, Linda R. G. Kaminski, Elvira G. Armas, Grecya V. López

Academic Journal Articles

This article provides the findings of an exploratory, qualitative study on distance learning policies and practices from a purposeful sample of five California school districts and 25 district and school leaders with large numbers and/or larger percentages of current or former English Learners. To understand the extent to which leaders address English Learners’/Emergent Bilinguals’ (EL/EM) needs during the pandemic, we posed the following research question: What are leaders’ local policies and practices in designing and implementing distance learning to promote equity for English Learners? We gathered three key district policy documents across three moments during the pandemic: (1) COVID-19 Operations …

Equity And Ability Grouping: A Study Of Whole-School Practices And Reflections On Vocal Music Education, Daniel Glossenger, Andrew Cowell

Dissertations

This co-authored dissertation is a macro-level case study of a public high school tracking system and a micro-level autoethnography from a music educator about vocal music placement practices. The case study sought to comprehensively describe and analyze the characteristics of a tracking system in all core subjects at a single school, including the extent of differentiation of levels, placement practices, student mobility, teacher tracking, and inclusiveness by race, class, and gender. It also used network analysis software to map more than 75,000 connections among students created by their course-taking; it used this to quantitatively identify student communities, which then were …

We Are...Marshall, April 7, 2021, Office Of Marshall University Communications

We Are ... Marshall: the Newsletter for Marshall University 1999-2023

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Ethnic Differences In School Modality Choices During The Covid-19 Crisis, Andrew Camp, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

A growing body of research and popular reporting shows racial differences in school modality choices during the COVID-19 crisis, with white students more likely to attend school in person. This in-person learning gap raises serious equity concerns. We use unique panel survey data to explore possible explanations. We find that a combination of factors may explain these differences. School districts’ offerings, political partisanship, and local COVID-19 outbreaks are all meaningfully associated with and plausibly explain the in-person learning racial gap. As schools start offering more in-person learning, significant efforts may be necessary to ensure that families and students attend those …

Marshall Magazine Spring 2021, Marshall University

Marshall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Pine Technical And Community College Policy Alignment Project, Amy Kruse

Leadership Education Capstones

The purpose of this project is to create an easily navigated campus policy and procedure process by aligning these documents with governing standards.

Jnchc 22:1--About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Owen Cantrell • Tim Christensen • Andrew J. Cognard-Black • Teal Darkenwald • Bhibha M. Das • Linda Frost • Galit Gertsenzon • Wayne Godwin • Jerry Herron • Jason T. Hilton • Elizabeth Hodge • Jessica Jordan • Matthew Carey Jordan • Christopher Keller • Andrew Martino • Lucy Morrison • Jeffrey A. Portnoy • Art L. Spisak • Aaron Stoller • Carmen Walker • Gerald Weckesser • Leah White • Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2021): Forum Essays On “The Boundaries Of Honors”

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Contents

Call for Papers . v

Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines . vi

Dedication to Annmarie Guzy . vii

Ada Long, Editor’s Introduction ix

Forum essays on “the boundaries of honors”

Christopher Keller, “Mad and Educated, Primitive and Loyal”: Comments on the Occupations of Honors . 3

Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison, Crossing the Ohio: Welcoming Students of Color into the Honors White Space 13

Owen Cantrell, “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple”: Existing Politics of Honors Education 21

Leah White, Traveling in Circles: Gatekeeping in Honors . 27

Matthew Carey Jordan,Inquiry as Occupation 31

Andrew Martino, Territorial …

Bridging The Interval: Teaching Global Awareness Through Music And Politics, Galit Gertsenzon

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Inquiry in Global Studies: Music and Politics is a regular course offering in which first-year honors students examine the social and cultural import of music in a global context. This qualitative study examines the practical and pedagogical implications of teaching music and politics during the coronavirus crisis. In a thematic, five-part series analyzing non-Western music both in service to the government and as protest against it, the author describes how students perceived the commonalities and diversities in global culture, history, politics, and society through music while at the same time demonstrating growth in music-making processes and confronting a remote learning …

“Mad And Educated, Primitive And Loyal”: Comments On The Occupations Of Honors, Christopher Keller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay examines the scope of honors scholarship and its role in creating and contributing to meaningful dialogue among practitioners. The author explores how scholarly contributions of honors educators cross boundaries to occupy the social, cultural, political, and economic conversations that shape lives and transform communities. Pointing to socio-political crises of 2020, the author posits that the conjunctive nature of honors discourse satisfies an expedient need for exploration and questioning, and he further considers how honors scholarship might incite positive change in and beyond honors curricula and scholarly record.

Keeping The Faith: Nchc’S Readers And Writers, Jeffrey Portnoy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors advocates and scholars should pursue transdisciplinary inquiry to overcome traditional notions of well-defined knowledge boundaries. This essay examines the publication record of the National Collegiate Honors Council beyond its immediate utilitarian value as a means for communication with its members. Citing usage and metrics, the author suggests that current and past literatures that examine the enterprise of honors, its occupation(s), and what occupies its practitioners are being accessed and integrated beyond honors at an exponential rate. As NCHC publications continue to push beyond the boundaries of honors, the author encourages readers to engage more fully in NCHC-sponsored discourse by …

Crossing The Ohio: Welcoming Students Of Color Into The Honors White Space, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Honors has long been a space for pushing boundaries and promoting culturally responsive teaching, yet students from underserved and marginalized populations rarely see themselves reflected in the designated intelligentsia of most universities. This essay considers several aspects of boundaries in, and barriers to, the honors experience. Implicit in marketing honors as “value-added” is the boundary between the honors curriculum and the “regular” curriculum from which other boundaries extend. From outmoded enrollment management and admissions policies to curricular and instructional strategies that hold to a pedagogy of whiteness, the author urges honors educators to create paths to student academic success by …

Jnchc 22:1 - Cover, Contents, Call For Papers, Editorial Policy, Dedication To Annmarie Guzy, Editor's Introduction, Ada Long

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Contents

Call for Papers . v

Editorial Policy, Deadlines, and Submission Guidelines . vi

Dedication to Annmarie Guzy . vii

Ada Long, Editor’s Introduction ix

Holding Tight To Our Convictions And Lightly To Our Ways: Inviting Shared Expertise As A Strategy For Expanding Inclusion, Reach, And Impact, Kylie Korsnack, Leslie Ortquist-Ahrens

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

When the global pandemic forced campuses across the United States to send students home in March 2020, instructors were thrown into triage mode, forced to rapidly transition their on-the-ground classroom curriculum to a format that could be completed remotely by students spread out across the country. At the same time, centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) also entered triage mode, puzzling over how to quickly but effectively provide appropriate training and meaningful support to prepare faculty for this rapid transition (Aebersold et al., 2020). The situation’s urgency, coupled with the significant constraints many CTL directors already experienced, necessitated creative, flexible, …

In Search Of Silver Linings: Strategies For Preparing Future Faculty During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Tazin Daniels, Elizabeth Bailey, Anoff Nicholas Cobblah

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In this article, we describe our experience as a racially and disciplinarily diverse, relatively junior program team who embraced the opportunity to transform a 20-year-old professional development seminar for graduate students into a remote offering in response to COVID-19. Our efforts to support our participants and champion an institutional move toward equitable and effective virtual programming are situated alongside the psychological tolls of remote work, a global health crisis, and ongoing racial violence across the United States. We recount our experience using, as a helpful metaphor, Lewin’s change model, which describes the process of “unfreezing,” “changing,” and “refreezing” long-standing assumptions …

Rebuilding A Teaching Conference In A Pandemic: User-Centered Guiding Principles And Lessons Learned, Laura A. Lukes, E. Shelley Reid

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged educational developers, like instructors across the world, to pivot their traditionally face-to-face faculty development programs to online formats. At the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University (classified as research-intensive and the largest public institution in Virginia, United States), we faced the challenge of reimagining our annual pedagogy conference that scaled from 497 registered in 2019 when it was face-to-face to over 800 in 2020 as it was moved online. Under pressures of limited resources and increased uncertainty, leaders can find it difficult to imagine pathways toward innovation rather than just daily responses …

The Application Of Adult Learning And Development Theory In The Undergraduate Classroom, Jennifer Flewelling

Educational Studies Dissertations

Instructors in higher education may have a limited knowledge of ways adults learn and develop. That lack of theoretical understanding may have inhibited the pedagogical practice of faculty in the undergraduate classroom. The purpose of this study was to explore how university instructors described their understanding of adult learning and development in undergraduate settings, and to identify factors that influenced the design and implementation of instructional practice as reported by undergraduate faculty. The study employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods research design. An online survey collected quantitative and qualitative data from 95 university instructors in Northeastern Massachusetts. Follow-up interviews were …

Urban Teachers Program: Culturally Responsive Middle School Teachers Describe Their Competencies, Kristina Sterling

All Theses And Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to document ways that Urban Teachers’ candidates enact culturally responsive teaching practices in an effort to combat the opportunity gaps in education and increase students’ achievement rate. This study focused on documenting responses to the questions: How do Urban Teachers enact culturally responsive teaching practices in their classrooms? How do teachers in the Urban Teachers program describe overcoming perceived barriers to implementing culturally responsive teaching in an urban school district? The problem of the study was a lack of evaluation of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) practices of those Urban Teachers once they entered the …

A Qualitative Case Study Exploring How Title I Schools Build The Capacity Of Staff And Families In Support Of Academic Achievement, Denise D. Atwell

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

This qualitative case study explored family-school partnerships in five Title I elementary schools in one central Florida school district. Literature confirms that engaging parents and families in their children's education provides positive results for a child's well-being socially, emotionally, and academically. Furthermore, partnerships between families, schools, and communities, in which all stakeholders share in the responsibility of a child's academic success, are beneficial to everyone, especially children and schools. The existing problem is that most educators do not know how to do this and many educators receive little, if any, support to build their capacity or aid their efforts in …

The Corridor Of Shame: An Immersed Analysis Of South Carolina Schools, Darren R. Burton

Senior Theses

This research project discusses school funding instruments of rural and urban schools in South Carolina and uncovers its effect on student academic achievement. Educational achievement is assessed based on report card datasets between 2018 and 2019, containing South Carolina Assessment of State Standards (SCPASS) score data and South Carolina College and Career Ready Assessment (SCREADY) score data. This research project uses a comparative analysis to evaluate each group’s performance in the subjects of English Language Arts and science. The statistical analysis tools that this research project uses include analysis of variance (ANOVA), linear regression analysis, and Microsoft Power BI. The …

Developing A Culture Of Care And Support: A Review Of Institutional Practices And Growth Opportunities Affecting Black Male Student-Athletes At Southtown Community College, Roberto D. Torres

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

In December 2018, the Dean of Academic Affairs (DAA) was approached by the coach and members of the Southtown Community College (STC) basketball team regarding academic support for the team. The academic affairs team would delve into this situation and discover several areas where the college had failed these students. This study examines the conditions and climate that lead to the maltreatment of Black male student-athletes at STC and the feedback from the students affected. The feedback from these student-athletes gives a glimpse of their feelings of being mistreated because of their race and arguably their gender. The three goals …

Understanding Performance In Test Taking: The Role Of Question Difficulty Order, Lina Anaya, Nagore Iriberri, Pedro Rey-Biel, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Standardized assessments are widely used to determine access to educational resources with important consequences for later economic outcomes in life. However, many design features of the tests themselves may lead to psychological reactions influencing performance. In particular, the level of difficulty of the earlier questions in a test may affect performance in later questions. How should we order test questions according to their level of difficulty such that test performance offers an accurate assessment of the test taker's aptitudes and knowledge? We conduct a field experiment with about 19,000 participants in collaboration with an online teaching platform where we randomly …

Perceptions Of Secondary Administrators: Looking At Their Experiences And Practices Supporting Science Instruction, Venicia Ferrell

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Secondary school administrators play a vital role as instructional leaders, specifically those that are aimed at improving students’ learning of science content (Hill & Grossman, 2013). Unfortunately, administrators rarely have a background in science (Halverson et al., 2011). Little is known about an administrator's knowledge of science practices and their ability to support science instruction at the secondary level. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the relationship between the structure and focus of an administrator’s instructional roles and their capacity to foster quality science support and instruction for teachers and students. Administrators' perceptions of effective support actions …

The Pursuit Of Equitable Virtual Learning: District Leaders’ Understanding Of The Influences On Designing 100% Virtual Learning Experiences During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kathleen Wolfe Maxlow

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam required all schools to close their doors from March 13, 2020, through the remainder of the school year, causing districts in the Commonwealth to create distance learning plans for PreK-12 education within a matter of weeks. The continued fluctuation of COVID-19 positive case numbers throughout the spring and summer led to several school districts choosing to open the 2020-2021 school year using a 100% virtual model for all students. This qualitative, grounded theory study sought to determine how superintendents understood the influences on the design of their district’s 100% virtual learning plans. …

A Qualitative Study Of Teacher Retention In Project-Based Learning Schools, Elizabeth C. Bielling

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The purpose of this study was to determine factors influencing teacher retention in project-based learning (PBL) schools. Ascertaining these factors and devising a list of best practices could aid both PBL and non-PBL schools in bolstering their schools’ teacher retention rates. School administrators could examine the research to extrapolate specific practices that would benefit the unique culture of their schools. This mixed-methods study utilized a survey and interviews to address the two research questions. Themes that emerged from interviews with current PBL teachers were colleague interactions, administrative support, student interactions, autonomy, and motivation. Themes emerging from interviews with PBL school …