Education Commons^™

Introduction: Reframing The Inequality Debate Toward Opportunity And Mobility, Norman Eng, Allan Ornstein

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Education Inequality: Broadening Public Attitudes Through Framing, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Research over the last 50 years have been remarkably consistent when it comes to addressing education inequality: background factors like family and socioeconomics matter to school success. Yet policies remain narrowly focused on school-based reforms like testing, standards, and charter schools due in large part to America’s limited understanding of education and inequality. I argue that scholars, as the experts, are ultimately responsible for changing how policymakers and the public think about these issues—a duty they have yet to embrace. In this connection, the use of framing can help education researchers broaden attitudes and stimulate political will. Drawing mainly from …

Perceptions Of Fidelity And Adaptation In Evidence-Informed Interventions By Women Of Color Sexuality Health Educators, Sara C. Flowers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexuality health educators (SHEs) adapt interventions to the participants’ needs in the dissemination and implementation of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programming. However, there is a lack of understanding of how, why and when SHEs make such adaptations. Success or failure of the transfer of prevention technology to practitioners occurs by determining community capacities and preparedness to adopt/adapt high-impact interventions to effectively manage implementation. Experts argue for evidence-informed interventions (EII), as opposed to evidence-based interventions (EBI), as the best way to incorporate research in applied settings. EBIs are solely guided by recommendations from current evidence, whereas EIIs recognize and incorporate the …

Evaluating The Validity Of Technology-Enhanced Educational Assessment Items And Tasks: An Empirical Approach To Studying Item Features And Scoring Rubrics., Ally Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With the advent of the newly developed Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, innovative assessments, including technology-enhanced items and tasks, will be needed to meet the challenges of developing valid and reliable assessments in a world of computer-based testing. In a recent critique of the next generation assessments in math (i.e., Smarter Balanced), Rasmussen (2015) observed that many aspects of the technology “enhancements” can be expected to do more harm than good as the computer interfaces may introduce construct irrelevant variance. This paper focused on issues surrounding the design of TEIs and how cognitive load …

The Consequences Of The State Implementation Of A Nationally Standardized Teacher Performance Assessment As A Certification Requirement: A Mixed Methods Study, Deborah Greenblatt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The edTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment) is a nationally distributed and scored standards-based teacher performance assessment being promoted throughout the country (AACTE, n.d.-a). This mixed methods study investigated the experiences of New York City teacher candidates and teacher educators with the elementary education edTPA portfolio. It was found that teacher candidates experienced various supports and challenges based on their personal demographics, school of education, and student teaching placements. Additionally, the edTPA affected participants' personal, professional, academic and student teaching experiences. Furthermore, the study revealed ways that implementation of the edTPA affected teacher educators and the teacher education curriculum.

Based on the …

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 …

The Effects Of Descriptions And Images Of Antecedent Stimuli And Outcomes To Correct Responses In Task Analysis Instruction, Bryan C. Tyner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Task analysis (TA) instruction is commonly used for teaching behavior chains; however, little research informs best practices for TA instruction. Data regarding the effects of instructional variables on responding may enhance TA efficacy and learner performance. Linking TA instruction to the three-term contingency may facilitate the development of control by stimuli that are naturally present while completing complex tasks; therefore, this study employed a two-by-two factorial design to analyze the relative effects of supplementing TA instruction with descriptions and images of: (factor A) antecedent stimuli relevant to each instructed discrete response and (factor B) the outcomes of accurately completing instructed …

Should The New England Education Research Organization Start A Journal In The Age Of Audit Culture? Reflections On Academic Publishing, Metrics, And The New Academy, Edward Lehner, Kate Finley

Publications and Research

A large regional educational research association can straightforwardly establish a scholarly journal associated with its annual meeting. However, this work underscores the complicated scholarly ecosystem that an association enters when publishing a journal. The social sciences’ scholarly literature exists in a related series of networks that could be described as a type of “audit culture.” Within audit culture, two major academic publishers, Elsevier and Thomson Reuters, have established competing, yet strikingly collinear, journal metrics systems: Scopus and Web of Science, respectively. These and other bibliometrics systems are used to assess, order, and rank the supposed value of a researcher’s work. …

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 …

How Do Open Educational Resources (Oers) Impact Students? A Qualitative Study At New York City College Of Technology, Cuny, Cailean Cooney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis reports on findings from a study conducted with students using open educational resources as the primary course material in their Health Psychology course. The study took place at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), of the City University of New York (CUNY), a comprehensive college located in Brooklyn. Students were assigned the OER by their course instructor, who developed it as part of a library funded pilot initiative. Two research instruments were employed to collect qualitative data from students: a survey and one-on-one interviews with a smaller student sample. Both survey and interview items asked students …

The Role Of Calibration Bias And Performance Feedback In Achievement Goal Regulation, Krista R. Muis, Philip H. Winne, John Ranellucci

Publications and Research

Do achievement goals change across time in response to performance feedback? Does goal orientation relate to calibration of estimated to actual achievement? We studied these issues over three tasks spanning a semester-long course where ninety-nine undergraduates received feedback about performance on each task. Learners were consistently and quite substantially biased in estimating performance with bias inversely related to actual performance. Goal orientation was not stable across time as a function of task, and it varied in some tasks in relation to calibration accuracy. These findings demonstrate goal orientations are sensitive to task and feedback. Moreover, goal orientation had varying and …

Hostos Online Learning Assessment: A Survey Of Student Perceptions, Kate Wolfe, Sarah Hoiland, Kate Lyons, Carlos Guevara, Kristopher B. Burrell, Jacki Disanto, Sandy Figueroa, Aaron Davis, Iber Poma, Wilfredo Rodriguez, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

The Office of Education Technology (EdTech) at Hostos Community College and faculty members from various departments created the Hostos Online Learning Assessment (HOLA) Task Force to design a survey for gathering and assessing data about students’ perceptions of their online learning experiences. The task force wanted to utilize the survey results to identify strengths and weaknesses in online instruction and student preparedness for the online learning environment. Student perceptions of online learning are integral to building upon current best practices and also gauging the preparedness of the students for the online learning environment, particularly in an urban, Hispanic-serving community college. …

High Impact Practices: Student Engagement And Retention, Giselle Bonet, Barbara R. Walters

Publications and Research

Community college students face special challenges that can impede their academic progress, resulting in lower grades and persistence than students in selective four-year colleges. Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, successfully addresses these challenges with learning communities: small cohorts of students in a blocked program of study, which includes developmental or basic English, a one-credit student skills course, and a social or behavioral science course. This research analyzes the short-term effects of the model by comparing a sample of 267 students enrolled in four learning community and four regular sections of sociology and psychology classes. The results demonstrate a …

Classification Accuracy Of Mixed Format Tests: A Bi-Factor Item Response Theory Approach, Wei Wang, Fritz Drasgow, Liwen Liu

Publications and Research

Mixed format tests (e.g., a test consisting of multiple-choice [MC] items and constructed response [CR] items) have become increasingly popular. However, the latent structure of item pools consisting of the two formats is still equivocal. Moreover, the implications of this latent structure are unclear: For example, do constructed response items tap reasoning skills that cannot be assessed with multiple choice items? This study explored the dimensionality of mixed format tests by applying bi-factor models to 10 tests of various subjects from the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) Program and compared the accuracy of scores based on the bi-factor analysis with …

Bronx Community College’S Education And Reading Department’S Catalytic Research Programs, Joan Wilson, Edward Lehner

Publications and Research

Faculty driven research is central to the intellectual integrity and financial viability of any college community. Greenwood and Levin (2005) highlight how colleges and universities have increasingly professionalized and commodified investigative practices in such a way that they no longer benefit the communities that they were created to serve. Bronx Community College's (BCC) Education and Reading Research Program is designed to question and interrupt research tendencies which propel self-fulfilling education and learning paradigms to produce and reify inter-generationally lived-realities and socio-economic reproduction of the least-advantaged communities. It is anticipated that the research efforts will also break the continuity of unintended …

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 …

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 …

Universalizing Primary Education In Sierra Leone: Promises And Pitfalls On The Path To Equity, Grace Pai

Publications and Research

What barriers remain in the progress towards achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE), and how does the UPE agenda affect out-of-school children? Through a mixture of historical, quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, this study examines these questions using the developing context of Sierra Leone as a case study.

Findings from over 100 interviews show that first of all, the most salient barrier that prevents children from participating in primary school is the fact that school is not free de facto in spite of the national abolishment of primary school fees in 2004. Rather than commonly cited constraints such as a …

Taking Stock Of Cuny Esl: What A Survey Of Esl Faculty And Adminstrators Says About The Past, The Present, And The Future, Effie Paptzikou Cochran, Lubie Grujicic-Alatristie

Publications and Research

This report provides a summary of a survey of CUNY ESL faculty and administrators in an attempt to assess CUNY ESL programs’ achievements and to offer an insight into current challenges. In the new millennium, with educational, financial, political, and linguistic concerns on the rise, taking stock of where we are in English as a second language instruction in higher education and planning for the future are at once prudent and pressing.