Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Expressive Writing On Emotional Intelligence In College Undergraduates, Elizabeth Harrington Walker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Attending college is often so stressful that as many as 40% of students leave without earning a degree. Many students desert during their first and second years of study. Emotional intelligence has been associated with effective coping skills, student achievement, and psychological well-being. The act of expressing emotions through writing has been shown to engage many capabilities associated with emotional intelligence. Few studies have examined the effects of expressive writing on emotional intelligence. The theory of emotion regulation provided theoretical framework. The purpose of this quantitative experimental study was to examine the effects of expressive writing on emotional intelligence and …

Instructional Reading Practices For Third Grade African American Males, Kimberly Dawn Whaley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American males often struggle to read on grade level. However, 3 East Texas Title I schools demonstrated exceptionally high levels of reading proficiency with this population. This study addressed the knowledge gap of understanding the instructional practices linked to high reading achievement of third grade African American males in Title I schools in East Texas. Guided by Ladson-Billings's theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, which builds upon academic success, cultural competence, and development of critical consciousness, and supported by Vygotsky's theory of social and cognitive constructivism, the reading instructional practices of the 3 schools were investigated. Research questions focused on …

Teachers Support For English Language Learners To Build Inquiry Skills In Online Biology Simulations, Hermione Joseph-Orelus

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The population of English language learners (ELLs) is on the rise in the United States, but they are lagging behind English speaking students in several subject areas--including biology. Scholarly literature lacks information on how biology teachers use scaffolding strategies to support ELL students with inquiry skills during online simulations. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore how biology teachers support ELLs in learning biology, using biology simulations to promote inquiry learning. The conceptual framework for this study included the constructivist perspective regarding the zone of proximal development, Electronic Quality of Inquiry Protocol, and technology use in science …

Contributors To The Development Of Intercultural Competence In Nursing Students, Esther Zazzi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nurses deal more effectively with cultural diversity when they have an ethnorelative orientation toward cultural difference and commonality on the Intercultural Development Continuum, which was the theoretical framework of this study. Scholarly literature shows limited knowledge on what fosters nurses' intercultural development. Thus, this quantitative, retrospective study was the first investigation in health care in Switzerland conducted on nursing students' orientation on the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the relationship to student demographic variables. The sample for this secondary data analysis consisted of the IDI results from nursing students enrolled between 2010 and 2016 at the largest nursing college in …

Promoting English Fluency Through Peer Feedback And Dialogue Journals In An Esl College Classroom, Sarah L. Stone

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study investigated research methodologies which were proven to be successful in promoting English fluency among ESL students in the college level classroom. The history of second language learning was tied to popular teaching practices, such as journal writing, dialogue journals, peer feedback, and teacher feedback. Due to a lack of cohesion between the above methods and a rising gap in related literature, an experiment was formed to determine whether dialogue journals could be combined with peer feedback to facilitate an accelerated comprehension of English as an L2 language. Over a three-month period, 19 ESL students at Gavilan College were …

Art As A Mediating Tool: Children And Learning In A Music And Arts-Based After School Program, Claudia Saldana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the experiences of primarily Latina/o children with learning music in a Music and Arts-Based Program (MABP) the context of a low-income neighborhood on the U.S- Mexico border. This year-long ethnographic study was conducted in an after-school art program in the Rio Grande Elementary School, in a low-income neighborhood located within one-mile of the U.S.-Mexico border. The purpose of the study is to understand how music and art can be used as a mediating tool for children to construct social and cognitive learning within a culturally diverse community, thus, enhancing the social environment in which they interact. The …

Transnationality And Teacher Educator Identity Development: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study, Wei Liao, Jihea Maddamsetti

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Transnational teacher educators, who cross national, social, and cultural boundaries to prepare teachers, play a vital role in nurturing teachers’ awareness and appreciation of learner diversity. However, transnational teacher educators tend to encounter tremendous challenges in developing their professional identities. To date, though many studies have investigated how teachers and teacher educators in general develop their professional identities, scant attention has been paid to that complex process of “transnational” teacher educators. To begin to close this research gap, this collaborative autoethnographic study examines how we develop our teacher educator identities through teaching a diversity course in the United States as …

Innovation In Higher Education: Three Sites In Haiti, Lucas Endicott

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Recent decades have brought seismic changes to global higher education. Educational leaders labor to sharpen administration, funding, teaching and learning practices in response to an increasingly globalized and technological world. The possibilities that this changing landscape may provide are perhaps most exciting for those currently economically disadvantaged and historically underserved by higher education. The advent of a knowledge economy and the need to train hundreds and thousands of new students paired with technological developments may help correct inequalities in access and excellence in education. This study asks the question: What, however, is the lived reality on the ground? Are university …

Using Spanish In English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices, Maria Isela Maier

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is a qualitative study that uses ethnographic research methods to examine the translanguaging practices of bilingual students in first-year composition at a university along the U.S.-Mexico border. Specifically, I observe how and why bilingual students employ translanguaging practices, as they are encouraged or invited by their instructors, in contexts where English Standard Language policies exist. The results of this qualitative project demonstrate bilingual students' use of translation as part of their translanguaging practices, as well as a tool that uncovers students' writing processes which also demonstrates their language negotiation. Furthermore, the students' translanguaging practices reveal the rhetorical use …

Toward Diversity In Texts: Using Global Literature To Cultivate Critical Perspectives, Rick Marlatt

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Abstract Literature study in the 21st Century should be characterized by the inclusion of global texts that afford diverse students the opportunity to engage in their literacy development through and alongside authors, characters, and storylines that represent their own linguistic and cultural traditions. In this narrative analysis, I reflect on the importance of equity-driven literature study from my perspective as a teacher educator at a Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southwestern United States. Following an introduction to the political and institutional contexts surrounding text selection in schools and a brief review of the literature, I situate myself and my students as …

Final Ma Portfolio, Angela Geiger-Fields

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This is a final portfolio reflecting my writing and research for the Master of Arts in English with a specialization in English Teaching program. In this portfolio, I have included four essays or projects that focus on the topics of authentic audiences; argumentative, research, and technical writing; postcolonial film and literature; and linguistics. The portfolio begins with a personal narrative of my time in the program as well as the revisions and research I completed to make the finalized portfolio.

Embracing Intersectionality To Create A Collective Living Theory Of Practice, Sara B. Woolf, Nathalis Wamba

Publications and Research

In this paper, we describe pivotal experiences that have shaped our respective professional journeys when teaching action research. We situate these experiences in relation to how they have contributed to our collective living theory of practice. This discussion unfolded as we explored ways to improve our own practices and the practices of our students. We conclude that this and similar questions can only be authentically answered when we as practitioners and faculty in higher education settings are willing to interrogate the contexts within which we interact and the complex intersections between our own intentional practices and selves and our students’ …

Second Grade Students Learn About Civil Engineers And Erosion, Andrea Earline Anderson, Jessica A. Meier

Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions

The integration of art into curricula focused on teaching science is a new perspective in education designed to reach a broader range of students. The current study examined the process of second-grade students participating in science and art activities through qualitative content analysis. The subjects of science and art were not taught to the students separately, rather, students engaged in both subjects simultaneously, in an integrated manner. Participants were 23 second-grade students (11 female and 12 male; age range 7 to 8 years) who were learning about erosion through sketching and creative construction and the work of civil engineers through …

Unspoken Barriers: An Autoethnographic Study Of Frustration, Resistance And Resilience, Rose M. Wake

The Qualitative Report

Immigration, cultural capital, cultural hybridity are the contributing players within my autoethnographic research as a second-generation daughter of southern Italian migrants from the post war era. This autobiography of my lived experience identifies contributing influences of arrested development within my educational and life trajectory and explores theoretical frameworks as key comparative indicators for my thwarted stages of psychosocial development. My identity and role as a female is further explored within the construct of a determined and culturally hybrid adolescence in an effort to answer research questions of identity and role confusion. My narratives situate my life as a daughter, student, …

La Comunicación Lingüística En Español Y Sus Barreras En El Sistema De Salud De Los Estados Unidos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La enseñanza del español con fines médicos en los Estados Unidos ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, los pacientes de origen hispano se encuentran desprotegidos ante las barreras lingüísticas que impone el sistema de salud estadounidense en muchos contextos monolingües y bilingües. Esta investigación descriptiva muestra como, por un lado, los malentendidos producidos por la comunicación ineficiente desarrollada por intérpretes e intermediarios (familiares, enfermeras con conocimientos de español, facultativos con una preparación lingüística deficiente, etc.) tienen serias repercusiones para la salud en el tratamiento de los casos. Por otro lado, el estudio da cuenta …

Developing Intercultural Competence Through Online English Language Teaching, Didem Ekici

Doctoral Dissertations

With an increasing number of refugees and immigrants in European and American classrooms, teachers need to be prepared to meet their varied and complex needs. In particular, to help these diverse students succeed, teachers need to be interculturally competent, which is a combination of many skills including attitude, linguistic and cultural awareness, empathy, and flexibility. However, developing these skills not only takes theoretical knowledge but also hands-on training and practice. While many programs in school of education provide experiential practicum projects and online collaborations with diverse students, they have not expanded to the population in war zones. Moreover, a review …

Cultural Connections In The Classroom And Pacific Islander Students<'> Value Of Reading, Lyndsai K. Sylva

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on how cultural connections in classroom influences students value of learning, specifically, their value of reading. Several researchers and theorists have emphasized the importance of balancing cognitive and conative aspects of childrens reading development. However, what is lacking in these studies is a focus on Pacific Islander (PI) children. The purpose of this study was to examine value of reading for diverse students who may be struggling in classrooms designed for White, middle-class students. Findings provide educators and those working with diverse students a chance to consider how connecting cultural backgrounds for all students can help in …

Reseña De El Trabajo De Fin De Grado Y De Máster. Redacción, Defensa Y Publicación, De Iria Da Cunha, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Estudio Contrastivo Intercultural De Las Funciones Retóricas De Las Citas: La Producción De Textos Académicos En El Nivel De Posgrado Escritos En Español E Inglés, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

The main objective of this research is to discover which rhetorical functions were used in the Master´s thesis writing written by eight (8) American and eight (8) Spanish postgraduates in their na-tive language. A computerized tex-tual analysis of the rhetorical func-tion of citation was used to study this phenomenon (Petrić, 2007). The results obtained from the re-search showed that the different cultural conventions in the thesis writing indicate that when com-pared with native Spanish writers, the American writers of English use the highest number of cita-tions, and write a relatively longer Introduction and Conclusion parts. On the other hand, the …

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 …

Where Do They Come From And How Can We Find More? Recruiting Teacher Candidates During Lean Times., Bruce Saddler, Kristie Asaro-Saddler, Tammy Ellis-Robinson, Matthew Lafave

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

Teacher preparation programs are facing an alarming drop in enrollments around the country. Our university, The State University of New York at Albany, has not been exempted from decreased enrollments. Low enrollments have led us to initiate direct attempts to recruit quality applicants to our master’s programs. As part of our overall recruiting plan, we created a survey of our applicants to determine how they discovered our programs and why they want to attend our programs so that we can better utilize our limited advertising resources. Survey results and implications for recruiting teacher candidates are discussed.

Expanding Capacity To Serve Multilingual Learners: A University-School District Partnership, Beth Clark-Gareca, Kim Fontana

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

In a time of new teacher certification requirements in New York, school districts are grappling with how to meet the regulatory expectations imposed by Commissioner’s Regulations Part 154. One way that schools are solving staffing challenges is by forging new collaborations with university partners to expand their collective capacities to serve Multilingual learners (MLLs). In this article, we document a partnership between SUNY New Paltz’s Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program and the Pawling Central School District during the 2017-18 academic year. We describe the partners’ distinct roles in the university-district collaboration, and discuss the logistical considerations …

Using Virtual Exchange To Advance Media Literacy Competencies Through Analysis Of Contemporary Propaganda, Renee Hobbs, Christian Seyferth-Zapf, Silke Grafe

Journal of Media Literacy Education

With the rise of so-called fake news as a global phenomenon, interest in propaganda analysis has advanced along with the recognition of the fundamentally social process of interpretation. In this essay, we explore the use of cross-national dialogue among German and American undergraduate students who are seeking to better understand how media messages are interpreted and how they inform and guide the civic actions of citizens. We describe and analyze five lessons that used a virtual exchange using a variety of digital media platforms, texts and technologies to support the cross-national study of contemporary propaganda. We observed that cross-national dialogue …

Building Capacity For Quality Leadership With English Language Learners, John Leonard, Betty Alford, Neill Armstrong

School Leadership Review

Waxman, Téllez, and Walberg (2004) advocated that school leaders must assist staff developers in providing English language learner (ELLs)-related professional development that includes “demonstration of theories of language, sustained coaching, and evaluation programs measuring teacher implementation and impact” (p 2-3). These professional development goals are central to the leader’s purposeful expansion of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions concerning the unique needs of ELLs and communicating the importance of the effective curricular integration of well-planned and embedded strategies designed to meet the needs of the often marginalized ELL population. School leaders must be willing to provide a systematic program of professional …

Metacognitive Reading Strategy And Emerging Reading Comprehension In Students With Intellectual Disabilities, Natasha Cox-Magno, Peter Ross, Kathleen Dimino, Andrea Wilson

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This article ventures to address the gap in special education practices by providing a metacognitive reading strategy to support the emerging reading comprehension skills of kindergarten students with intellectual disabilities. Historically, students with intellectual disabilities have low reading comprehension skills that can impede their overall academic success. There is a gap in practice regarding the identification and effective use of evidence-based reading comprehension instructional strategies for students with intellectual disabilities. Guided by Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s constructivist theories, the purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a metacognitive reading strategy on the emerging reading comprehension (ERC) skills of …

Teacher Attitude And Self-Efficacy Differences Regarding English Language Learners And Disabled Learners., Miriam Carballo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been little research combining both groups of students who were English Language Learners (ELLs) and Exceptional Student Education (ESE) students in relation to teacher attitudes and self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to compare teacher attitudes and self-efficacy related to instructing either ELLs with or without disabilities in elementary schools

Teachers from six elementary schools in the XYZ Excellence School District participated in a 52-item comprehensive survey. Two questionnaires and the demographic form were combined to create one comprehensive questionnaire totaling 52 questions for the purposes of this study. Teachers were solicited to participate in the study …

Pakistani English Language Teachers’ Preparedness: An Investigation Of Ideological Meaning-Making In Higher Education Institutions In Pakistan, Yasir Hussain

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This research study is an attempt to understand the ideological preparedness of English language teachers at the higher education institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan. The construct of preparedness is unique in this study because the phenomenon of preparedness is simplified for pedagogical methodologies and teaching practices. This study is a journey of understanding ideology, its representations through discourse, and its enactment through discursive practices of the participant-teachers. In this hermeneutical phenomenological study, I used interview texts as the data source and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytical framework. The participants included 15 English language teachers at nine different HEIs in …

Insight For Teacher Preparation Program Administrators: Enhancing Pre-Service Educators' Lntercultural Sensitivity And Deep Proficiency In Culturally Responsive Teaching Through Short-Term Study Abroad, Gloria Gresham, Paula Griffin, Tracy Hasbun, Vikki Boatman

School Leadership Review

Teacher preparation program administrators face the issue of expanding curricula to prepare teacher candidates for the diverse population of students they will encounter {Trent, Kea, Oh, 2008). Globalization demands that teacher candidates grasp how to function in a more integrated and interdependent society (McGrew, 2005). According to Smith-Davis (2004) students from non-English speaking countries compose the fastest growing United States K-12 student population, and those identified as limited English proficient were over 10 million in 2004. The United States Census reported in the "New Census Bureau Report" the number of individuals five and older who speak languages other than English …

Superintendents And Professional Development: Voices From The Field, Juan M. Nino, Mike Boone, Israel Aguilar, Dessynie Edwards

School Leadership Review

The primary task of the educational leader is to assure high quality learning environments for all students. Research (Gordon, 2004; Sparks, 2007) supports the proposition that effective professional development contributes to instructional improvement by building educator capacity. Much of the research on professional development focuses in principal leadership in improving instruction (Blase & Blase, 2004). But district level administrators, especially the superintendent of schools, also have a role to play in school improvement. Standards for the preparation of school leaders specify competencies for superintendents that include the design and implementation of professional development programs based on sound research, best practices, …

The Augmentation Of Bilingual/Bicultural Courses In Educational Administration Core Requirements, Ava J. Munoz

School Leadership Review

"Cultural competence should be a fundamental aspect of school principals' preparation and practice" (Hernandez & Kose, 2012, p. 513). However, educational leadership programs have been remiss, and somewhat lackadaisical, in exploring and including bilingual/bicultural curricular content in their principal leadership programs (Hernandez & Kose, 2012). Presently, few or minute advances in increasing bilingual/bicultural knowledge in the curricular content of educational leadership course requirements is the norm. Moreover, "when these topics are introduced, they are often special topics courses or seminars that are not part of the core curriculum of leadership preparation" (L6pez, 2003, p. 70).