Education Commons^™

A Qualitative Investigation: Black & Brown Men Retention And Recruitment In The Grow Your Own Program And Partners Colleges Of Education And Universities, Sunni Ali, Alberto Lopez

Journal of Research Initiatives

Three decades ago, the U.S. Department of Education identified increasing the number of teachers of color as a priority. Three decades later, the nation is still confronting a gap between the number of students of color and teachers of color serving in our classrooms. Black and brown men make up less than three percent of the teaching workforce (Bryk, A., Gomez, L., Grunow, A. 2011). Regardless of race, all students benefit from having black and brown male teachers working in urban settings because it counters the deficit model while affirming minority male students' cultural efficacy. Through focus groups, we interviewed …

A Glimpse Behind The Curtain: The Detailed Structure Of The May Literacy Center, A University-Based Literacy Clinic, Brian M. Flores, Amber Meyer

Journal of Research Initiatives

Literacy centers have existed in the United States since the 1920s and have seen many changes over their vast and essential history. Initially, clinics focused on remediation with a deficit view that positioned struggling readers as lazy and unmotivated. Over time, clinics shifted to a medical model, which also held a deficit view that involved pathologizing, testing, and diagnosing to "fix what was wrong" with the struggling reader. Today, university-based reading clinics focus on research-based literacy practices providing opportunities for undergraduate teacher candidates and graduate students to support struggling readers. Research on literacy clinics primarily focused on funding, student demographics, …

Synchronous Distance Language Learning And Critical Visual Literacy Practices In Greek Primary Education, Marianthi Oikonomakou, Emmanouil Sofos, Argyro Kontogianni

Journal of Research Initiatives

Our research, focusing on critical literacy practices in education, demonstrates the outcome of a teaching scenario applied in 2021 in a primary school e-class learning environment with the aid of distant learning tools. Having taken for granted that: (a) covid-19 pandemic has initiated important changes regarding our understanding of language teaching and (b) the extend we expose ourselves to modern multimodal environments, our teaching intervention attempts at displaying how the use of visual grammar can contribute to the critical understanding and production of multimodal texts by junior pupils in the language teaching framework. In the light of the above, through …

Developing A K-12 School Leadership Plan, Marian E. Truehill

Journal of Research Initiatives

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a K-12 School Leadership plan for public, private, and parochial educational institutions. The K-12 School Leadership plan will help principals, teachers, staff and students focus on how to accurately operate a successful school culture, climate, and improve academic performance at their educational institutions. I used a pseudonym JFK for the high school examined in this paper. Themes represented in this paper will include assessment of ineffective leadership style, assessment of school culture, climate and performance, school improvement areas, explanation of leadership style, most effective style to improve school performance, research-based leadership …

Trauma-Informed Practices For Test-Taking Anxiety At The Elementary Grade Level, Kate Campbell, Shalini Mathew

Journal of Research Initiatives

Test -Taking Anxiety (TTA) is a challenging experience for children of all ages. Childhood exposure to trauma and adverse experience has been increasing. Fortunately, trauma-informed practices, such as mindfulness activities have become more widespread in schools throughout the last few years. Existing school counseling literature offers limited perspectives on how school counselors can support elementary students for TTA. This conceptual article explores the effects of trauma-informed practices on elementary-age students' test anxiety and overall academic success in schools and offers implications for practice.

Faculty Perspectives On Online Teaching In Higher Education: A Qualitative Approach To Understand Faculty Members’ Challenges And Experiences, Felix O. Quayson

Journal of Research Initiatives

This study explored faculty members' perspectives on online teaching in higher education and described, analyzed, and interpreted faculty members challenges and experiences of teaching online courses. Participants were twelve (12) faculty members who have taught online courses or currently teach online courses. Data was collected from 60-minutes semi-structured interview sessions, 78 open-ended questions, three research driving questions, background questionnaire, and personal artifacts from faculty members. Five major themes with subthemes, 15 code categories, and code co-occurrences emerged from the data collection, field notes, memos, and data analysis. However, not all of the code categories were replicated by all of the …

The Parental Involvement In A Multicultural Educational Context, Xanthippi Foulidi, Evangelos C. Papakitsos

Journal of Research Initiatives

This work focuses on parental involvement, which is considered a crucial element of school performance, especially in the case of students belonging to cultural minorities. It presents findings of modern notable research studies that examined the cultural dimensions of parental involvement in middle childhood. It also focuses on the issue that the mutual acceptance of the dominant and minority culture is a prerequisite for cooperation between family and school, to achieve the improvement of school performance. The work is structured in three sections, in the first, the term "parental involvement" is clarified and mainly cultural differences in parental involvement are …

English Teachers' Opinions On Challenges Face In Teaching English As Foreign Language: The Case Of Jalalabad Selected Secondary Schools, Fahim Rahimi, Hangama Samadi

Journal of Research Initiatives

One important goal of teaching is to achieve learning outcomes. It has been observed in universities that many students have different levels of English language proficiency. However, they study in the same English courses at the school level. The main objective of this study is to learn the challenges that exist in teaching the English language as a foreign language in secondary schools that affect the English proficiency of students. In addition, ways in which these challenges will be overcome is reviewed. The data collection tools were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data from English language teachers in selected …

Does The Mathematics Self-Concept Explain The Gender-Gap In Advanced Mathematics Achievement Among Us Secondary School Students?, Asitha Kodippili, Deepthika C. Senaratne

Journal of Research Initiatives

This study examines the role of self-concept regarding mathematical ability in explaining the gender gap in advanced mathematics performance of US high school students. The study is based on data generated from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 1995 – 2015), a large-scale project which investigated the relationship between self-concept in mathematics and mathematical achievement. In the US, secondary school males in advanced mathematics classes consistently show a statistically significant higher mathematics self-concept than females. Male students also consistently have significantly higher mathematical achievement scores than females. However, by controlling for the mathematics self-concept, we found that this …