Education Commons^™

Educational Histories Of Newcomer Immigrant Youth: From Countries Of Origin To The United States, Joanna Yip

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation details the educational histories and linguistic portraits of newcomer immigrant youth in their countries of origin, and provided accounts of their academic trajectories after arrival in the United States. The data provide evidence of poor quality instruction, particularly in literacy, and educational environments in low-income sending countries. The study shows that prior schooling experiences in the country of origin have an impact on school readiness, the degree to which immigrant youth are prepared for education in secondary classrooms in the U.S. The dissertation also provides an analysis of how pre-migration education interacts with educational performance after immigration, leading …

Teacher Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Character Building Initiatives At An Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound High School, Adeola A. Alexander

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses as its conceptual foundation the research on teacher beliefs to examine how teachers at an Expeditionary Learning School in Brooklyn, New York perceive the character building initiatives at their school. Using thematic case study methodology, the study found that teachers believed that character education is important and should be taught. Not only should character education be taught in schools, but the teachers believed that schools should be intentional about the teaching and development of student character. Teachers also believed that teachers are capable and should be allowed to spearhead the school initiatives intended to develop character. According …

Thiscollegestory.Com: How Interactive Writing Media Influenced The Way First-Year Students Made Sense Of Their College Transition, Philip Kreniske

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing on insights from Bakhtin (1986) that demonstrated the significance of writing as an interaction, and building on recent developments in narrative analysis that offer insights into narrator’s sense making processes (Daiute, 2014; Lucic, 2013); this research explores how freshmen in an educational opportunity program used interactive writing media to make sense of their transition to college. The exploration involved three main questions and each question concerns students’ development over time:

• First, did college students’ writing in two different media (blogs and word-processed text) differ and did these differences change over time?
• Second, how did the narrators and audience interact …

What Factors Influence Urban School Leaders Arts Programming Decisions, Jennifer Katona

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For some urban school leaders Arts Education is the most essential part of the students’ experience and to others it is something that can be easily taught in one afternoon a week. It is either a means of self-­‐expression or merely something fun for the kids. Where do these perspectives take shape and what role and impact does the school leaders’ belief have on the decisions surrounding offering an arts education in their school building? This study explores current research on the importance of an arts education as it pertains to its intrinsic and extrinsic value of the arts to …

The Remedy That's Killing: Cuny, Laguardia, And The Fight For Better Math Policy, Rachel A. Oppenheimer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nationwide, there is a crisis in math learning and math achievement at all levels of education. Upwards of 80% of students who enter the City University of New York’s community colleges from New York City’s Department of Education high schools fail to meet college level math proficiencies and as a result, are funneled into the system’s remedial math system. Once placed into pre-college remedial arithmetic, pre-algebra, and elementary algebra courses, students fail at alarming rates and research indicates that students’ failure in remedial math has negative ripple effects on their persistence and degree completion. CUNY is not alone in facing …

Effects Of Two Prereading Activities On Comprehending Science Text: Reading Abridged Text And Learning Vocabulary Words, Audrey J. Fowler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study examined the effects of two prereading activities designed to improve fifth-grade students’ vocabulary learning and comprehension of science textbook content containing those words. Ninety-three fifth grade students participated in this study. The prereading activities consisted of students reading an abridged version of the text or receiving instruction on vocabulary words drawn from the text before reading the full text once. Students receiving these treatments were compared to a control condition in which students reread the full text passage twice but did not receive any prereading treatment. Students were grouped by reading ability levels into above average, average, …

Excavating Eportfolios: What Student-Driven Data Reveals About Multimodal Composition And Instruction, Amanda M. Licastro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The pedagogical practice of asking students to compose in open, online spaces has grown rapidly in recent years along with an increase in institutional and financial support. In fact, in July 2013, the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) announced the “coming of age” of ePortfolios as the percentage of higher education students using ePortfolios rose above the 50% mark in the U.S. (“About”). There are a host of constituent assertions that support the use of open online writing platforms in college-level courses. These claims include that writing publically cultivates digital literacy through broader audience awareness, facilitates interactivity …

Towards Collaboration Between Lawyers And Social Workers: A Content Analysis Of Joint Degree Programs, Ifem E. Orji

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Collaboration is a central issue in the interdisciplinary education of social work and law students. Joint JD/MSW degrees have the potential to promote collaboration between practitioners of law and social work in areas where their practices converge. The 1969 recommendations by the National Conference of Lawyers and Social Workers (NCLSW) to establish these joint degree programs assumed that collaborative learning would occur within them. However, prior research has not investigated whether or not this occurs. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine whether evidence of the intent to promote collaboration was present in written materials associated with joint degree …

Studies In The Creation And Implementation Of School Cultures: Two New York City Stand-Alone Charter Schools, Olivia-Beate A. Franzini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last thirty years the United States has seen a rise in charter school education and with that an influx of discussion over the best way to successfully educate college and career ready students. Many of these charter schools have their own unique philosophy on education and disciplinary codes to aid in the attainment of their success. The following case studies were conducted through participant observation in two start-up charter schools. At the time of study both institutions were in their second year of creation. These schools have opposing philosophies on education; the first School “A” is an independent …

Filología Reflexiva: Hacia Una Pedagogía “Evaluadora”. Reflexión Y Evaluación Del Campo Filológico Español (1936-1968), Jose Antonio Losada Montero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This doctoral thesis offers an original and valuable contribution to the study of the genealogy of the literary canon between 1939 and 1968. During Francisco Franco´s dictatorship, Spanish Universities underwent a series of important changes in its academic and management configuration and in the way Spanish elites envisioned Higher Education inside the regime. This research focuses in the role that Spanish scholars, inside Hispanic and Modern Language Departments, played in this renegotiation of a new and crucial sociopolitical mission for College Education. By focusing on the period between 1939 and 1968, a moment of sociopolitical instability and conservative literary and …

Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Instruction In An Rti Framework: Supporting Emergent Bilinguals In The Secondary Classroom, Lisa Auslander

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the impact of teacher team collaboration and planning around culturally and linguistically responsive instruction for emergent bilingual students in a secondary school setting supported by a targeted intervention system. To provide a context for the importance of this study, the dissertation begins by 1) including observations of both academic teacher team and guidance collaboration to understand the strategies used to plan instruction and guidance interventions for students drawing on existing research around professional learning communities and guidance structures; and 2) use of an existing observation protocol and frameworks to identify key practices and characteristics of culturally and …

Imagining A "Poethical" Classroom, Erica Kaufman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation begins at the crossroads of three fields—creative writing, contemporary poetics, and composition studies—and attempts to unite what is normally kept separate: the teaching of freshman composition and contemporary poetry. It is rooted, then, in the following anomalies: few students (unless they are English majors) encounter contemporary poetry; and few living poets (who often earn their livings as adjuncts, teaching composition) ever engage in a conversation about composition pedagogy. Fewer still teach the kind of poetry they write. Through a qualitative study of student writing in composition courses, this project investigates how encouraging students to engage with this form …

Voices From On High: Rhetorical Education In A Jewish Women's Writing Center, Andrea Rosso Efthymiou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnographic dissertation looks at how the mission statement at one institution of higher education--Yeshiva University (YU)--establishes rhetorical education for its undergraduate students. The research site for this study of rhetorical education and institutional mission is the college writing center at YU's women's campus, Stern College for Women. This study defines rhetorical education as the way an institution authorizes written, spoken, and behavioral communication, with the goal of developing its students as civic beings, through its institutional mission. My findings demonstrate how undergraduate writing tutors disidentify with institutional rhetorical education to subvert, resist, and revise institutional rhetorical education, offering alternatives …

I Hope I Don't See You Tomorrow: A Phenomenological Ethnography Of The Passages Academy School Program, Lee Adam Gabay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines Passages Academy, a school program that offers educational services for court-involved youth in New York City. Looking specifically at the Department of Education teachers who work in facilities run by the Department of Juvenile Justice, this research focuses on the beliefs and behaviors that inform the teaching experience within these facilities. The critical question of how these educators negotiate the learning spaces within this school community is also examined.

The question that informs much of this study is: how are the philosophies of the various stake-holding agencies enacted daily in real classroom settings? This leads to a …

Gentle Introduction Resource, James Anderson Laird Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Gentle Introduciton Resource (GIR) is an open-access web application that offers digital humanities researchers a malleable platform with which they can crowdsource technical material. Such material often poses challenges to the traditional humanities researcher when trying to implement digital layers to his or her research. The Gentle Introduction Resource (GIR) is an open-access web application designed to allow a single classroom or single institution to crowdsource technical information/instruction filtering out the influence of rhetorical analysis. It is written in the Ruby language on the Rails web framework. Though a GIR instance can be invoked to crowdsource primarily web-based information …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …