Education Commons^™

Fish In A Tree Book Study Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

Individuals lead storied lives, and everyone has a story to tell. Our stories can be shared orally and documented in print. Often, learners are exposed to stories through novels and other trade books. Teacher educators may benefit from using the stories in novels and trade books as case studies in preservice teacher preparation course. This assignment description outlines how to use the novel, Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, as a case study to contextualize and understand the lived story of an individual living and learning with dyslexia. Through the novel, preservice teachers experience the dilemmas faced and …

Language Learning Simulation Using Duolingo Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

It is likely that preservice teachers will work with students learning English as their second (third, fourth, etc.) language. For preservice teachers to better understand the language learning process, Duolingo was used to simulate the learning experience. The assignment description outlines how preservice teachers can reflection pre-simulation and post-simulation about what they learned about language learning.

Exploring Etymology Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

The English language is a borrowed language, a blend of words from many languages from around the world. We see this in the various ways sounds are represented by letters and letter combinations. In transparent or shallow orthographies, there is high predictability and consistent letter-sound correspondence whereas in opaque or deep orthographies, there are many ways to spell the same sound as well as there are many sounds for the same spellings (Burkins & Yates, 2021; Moats, 2020). This assignment description is a guided inquiry for preservice teachers to explore the concept of etymology by watching and reflecting on six …

Home Of The Brave Book Study Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

Individuals lead storied lives, and everyone has a story to tell. Our stories can be shared orally and documented in print. Often, learners are exposed to stories through novels and other trade books. Teacher educators may benefit from using the stories in novels and trade books as case studies in preservice teacher preparation course. This assignment description outlines how to use the novel, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, as a case study to contextualize and understand the lived story of an individual learning a second language and living in a new country. Through the novel, preservice teachers experience …

Moving Through: Supporting Preservice Teachers’ Transition Through College To The Profession Using Homerooms, David Wolff, Mark Diacopoulos, Alexis Durman, Alexis Monks, Madison Adamson, Kim Ballew

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

Preservice Teachers at Pitt State undergo a significant transition from student to professional. Faculty in the College of Education created a weekly Homeroom to support this shift, covering topics like goal setting, power dynamics, generational differences, self-care, identity charts, and time management. Preservice Teachers’ experiences will be shared.

Magnetic Hallway Huddles: Attract And Retain High-Quality Professionals, David Wolff, Carissa Gober, Donna Zerr

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

This presentation was conducted for a national conference about mentoring. The authors discussed Tinto’s Model of Institutional Departure and Schlossberg’s Model for Analyzing Human Adaptation to Transition as theoretical frameworks to explain the transition and retention of university professors. The focus on the study was the three authors who transitioned to the same university during the 2022-2023 academic year. Authors discussed their experiences of the transition and found themes related to the mentoring process that that acclimated them to the institution and influenced their retention.

Simpson, E. Leroy, Playbook, 1954-1956, Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Finding Aids

A Pittsburg State University football players’ playbook from the mid-1950s, a football program from 1951, and a newspaper clipping.

Edward LeRoy Simpson was born in Miami, Oklahoma in 1934, to Eddie and Ada Simpson. From 1952-1956 LeRoy attended the Kansas State Teachers College (now Pittsburg State University). He played several positions on the football team, including quarterback, and lettered all four years. He went on to receive a master’s degree from the Kansas State Teachers College in 1961. After earning a doctorate, Dr. Simpson joined Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska in 1968 as an associate professor of human performance/leisure …

Barnard, Gerald, Photographs, 1936-1938, Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Finding Aids

Five photographs of the football team of the Kansas Teachers College of Pittsburg (now Pittsburg State University) from the 1930s, taken by student photographer Gerald Barnard.

Gerald W. (Jerry) Barnard was born in Oswego, Kansas in 1918. Barnard attended the Kansas Teachers College of Pittsburg (now Pittsburg State University) from 1936-1940 and after graduation, worked as an accountant. He worked with the Deming Investment Company and then the First National Bank of Oswego. He also served as the president of Oswego Industries, chairman of Mid-America, Inc., vice-president of the Kansas Bankers Association, chairman of the Kansas Development Credit Corporation, and …

Gibson Family Collection, 1913-1915, Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Finding Aids

A collection of photographs from the Gibson sisters' time at the Kansas State Manual Training Normal School, including Helen and Evva and their friends.

Helen C. Gibson Dubois (1894-1978) and Evva Louise Gibson (1896-1980) were sisters who both attended the Kansas State Manual Training Normal School (now Pittsburg State University). Evva received her first bachelor’s degree in 1918. She received a second in 1922, and a master’s degree in 1925, both from Columbia University in New York. She returned to Pittsburg in 1923 as an assistant professor at the college. In 1947, she became head of the Home Economics Department, …

Perry, Esther A., Collection, 1908-1978, Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Finding Aids

A collection of photographs, a program, and a newspaper clipping related to Esther Atkinson Perry, her family, and her friends from the 1910s to the 1970s.

Esther Atkinson Perry was born to John and Mary Atkinson on April 29, 1897. She grew up in southeast Kansas, and lived in Pittsburg, Girard, and Webb City, Missouri. In 1933, Esther married Thomas Hall Perry in Jackson County, Missouri. Afterwards, they moved to Webb City where Thomas was the manager of a café before working as a chemist at the Eagle-Picher Smelting Company in Joplin. Thomas passed away in 1947 of coronary thrombosis. …

Immunization Communication In ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’: Inoculation Theory, Health Messaging, And Children’S Entertainment Television, Josh Compton, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

Entertainment education research has shown that television programs can communicate important health information to television viewers. Much of this research focuses on mass media effects (e.g., behavioral intention of viewers, post-viewing; attitudinal change, post-viewing). Less is known about the rhetorical strategies employed in such messaging. We review para-social and para-proxemics literature to describe the viewing context and then offer a detailed rhetorical analysis of immunization messaging on the children’s television program, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” arguing that, aptly, Fred Rogers’ rhetorical framing mirrored that of the inoculation theory of resistance to influence, presenting “weak” challenges to his young viewers to help …

Disruptive Communication Among The Interdisciplinary Team: Gaining Insight And Providing Nurse Education, Kristen Marie Anderson

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Project

The purpose of this study is to identify what types of disruptive behavior nurses are experiencing, discuss outcomes of disruptive behavior, and educate healthcare providers and administrators of disruptive communication. Understanding the consequences of disruptive communication can help educators articulate the need for training in conflict management and therapeutic communication methods. It can also aid healthcare providers to be more conscious of their behavior in the professional setting. Seven research questions related to communication were developed and analyzed in this study. The author developed a pre-education survey that included demographics, multiple-choice questions, and open-ended questions to assess the nurses' knowledge …

Does Nonbinding Commitment Promote Children’S Cooperation In A Social Dilemma?, Laurent Prétôt, Katherine Mcauliffe

Faculty Submissions

Communication is a powerful tool for promoting cooperation in adults and is considered one of the most important solutions to social dilemmas. One feature that makes communication particularly useful in cooperative contexts is that it allows people to advertise their intentions to partners. Some work suggests that adults cooperate more after making nonbinding commitments to cooperate (i.e., commitments they do not need to uphold) than when they are not allowed to communicate their intentions to their partners. However, we know little about whether nonbinding commitments play a similar role in children. We addressed this gap by testing 6- to 9-year-old …

From Classroom To Real-World: Preparing Students For The Newsroom, Katherine Allred

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the preparedness of college graduates entering the news field. Employers search for the best possible person with the necessary skills and qualifications required to complete the day-to-day functions of a job. In television news, very specific traits and skills are needed to work in the newsroom environment. Working as a news producer at a small TV station for almost seven years, new employees, specifically reporters, would struggle with some of the basic skills needed for their job. Are universities teaching students everything they need to know? How are they succeeding? If they …

Mandatory Busing And Desegregation: Wichita, 1954 – 1999, Pilar Pedraza-Bailey

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Wichita opened its first officially integrated school in 1954. Yet, by 1965, approximately 85% of schools in Wichita were predominantly white. After a 1966 complaint to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and a protracted legal battle, a federal administrative judge ordered the district to come up with a plan for integration or lose federal funding in 1971. The resulting mandatory busing plan remained in effect in Wichita for more than 40 years. Yet, in 2016, nine years after the official end of mandatory busing in Wichita, 25% of the city’s schools had already returned to what the …

Equivalence-Based Instruction To Teach Single-Subject Designs In Higher Education, Griffin Decuir Williams

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

With the increasing prevalence of online courses and instruction, advanced methods to teach technical concepts for students in higher education are of value. Equivalence-Based Instruction (EBI) is an effective, efficient, and empirically validated teaching methodology. This study developed a match-to-sample EBI protocol embedded in CANVAS to teach four common single-subject designs to graduate students. Results were compared between an equivalence group receiving a reduced-intensity EBI protocol and a group receiving a traditional video lecture to serve as the control. The ability of the participants to generalize the trained relations to novel stimuli was also evaluated. Results indicate that the EBI …

Lortz, Helen B., Collection, 1929-2002, Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Finding Aids

A collection of documents, records, and items pertaining to Helen B. Lortz’s college education, personal life, and career.

Helen Beatrice Lortz, a Food for Peace Program Officer, was born in 1910 and died in 2009. She graduated from Kansas State Teachers College (Pittsburg State University) with a B.S. in Education in 1932. Lortz was a member of the Kappa Delta Pi sorority, staying involved throughout her life. In 1933, Lortz earned a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps where she trained workers to work office jobs, working with the CCC until 1941. She transferred to the Farm Security administration as …

Degruson, Eugene, Papers, 1841-1997, Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library

Finding Aids

This collection documents the professional and personal activities and research interests of Eugene DeGruson, who was Curator of Special Collections and University Archivist at Pittsburg State University from 1968 until his death in 1997.

Anxiety, Depression And Academic Performance, Megan Taylor, Kimberly Ruhl, Hyejoon Park

Posters

Anxiety and depression are common mental health issues among college students and can affect how a student will perform in school. Students with anxiety or depression have poorer academic performance when compared to students who do not. The method being used is a quantitative method of random sampling to ask college students if they have ever experienced anxiety and depression, and if it has affected their academic perfor­mance. The college students can vary in age, gender, race, and majors. The survey consists of ten multiple choice questions that will measure if the student has experienced anxiety or depression, how often, …

Too Many Cooks: Redesigning The English Program Website, Joshua Horton, Alex Battitori, Tyler Breedlove, Morgan Ebbs, Courtney Schlund, Chanda Williams, Celia Patterson

Paper Presentations

The purpose of this project was to produce new content for the English Program webpages for Dr. Patterson’s course, ENGL 875 Seminar: Writing for the Web. Throughout all stages of this project, we consulted Janice Redish’s book Letting Go of the Words. The first stage of the project was to identify the webpages’ target audiences; this was achieved through the creation of personas that reflected the demographics of users. Through these personas, we developed a series of tasks for a preliminary usability test. Subsequently, we conducted the preliminary test on the existing English Program webpages using test subjects that reflected …

Opportunities For Departmental Strategic Planning: Enhancing The Experience For Incoming Transfer Students In The Department Of Communication, Gabriela Gumucio, Katlin Dunsing, Bethanne Elliott, Rebecca Henderson, Kaylin Lake, Karlie Lower, Alicia Mason

Paper Presentations

The COMM 765: Strategic Planning & Communication Campaigns course conducted research on behalf of the Department of Communications to inform the future 2018-2023 planning and goals for the department. A quantitative survey was designed to examine key stakeholder groups including: faculty, staff, donors, current students and alumni. Each stakeholder group received a unique set of research questions. For example, donors were surveyed to determine their willingness, interest and knowledge of how to support department initiatives through the PSU Foundation; while current students were asked to share their thoughts on the effectiveness of current student organizations, and perceptions toward course developments …

Beyond Greening: The Challenges To Adopting Sustainability In Higher Education., Catherine Hooey, Alicia Mason, James Triplett

Faculty Submissions

It is common for colleges and universities to include sustainability in their mission statements and strategic plans. On many campuses, however, sustainability is associated with green practices only, rather than the comprehensive integration of social equity, economic, and environmental principles on which the concept was founded. Here, Hooey et al examine the obstacles to the comprehensive adoption of sustainability in institutions of higher education, in general, and to suggest a conceptual framework of a sustainability culture as one most appropriate for the more effective incorporation of comprehensive practices.

Are Teachers Prepared To Teach Sex Education?, Adrien Stolifer

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explored the history of the United States and its complicated relationship with sex, and how this relationship correlates back to the individuals who are responsible for teaching it to students. History was gathered beginning at the late 1800’s up to current national standards. Seven teachers from three schools around the Pittsburg KS area, including elementary, middle/junior high and high schools, were interviewed and asked what they thought about their experience teaching sex education. Through these first hand experiences, key elements surfaced of communication between teacher and student, disproving that all sex education communication is negative.

Preview Reviews: Bringing The Movie Theater Experience Into The Classroom: A Viable Tool For Increasing Classroom Retention And Recall., Nakia Welch, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

Preview Reviews can be used in any class, in any discipline, at any level of any size. They provide an opportunity for students to gauge their level of content knowledge in a non-graded, low-stakes activity that can be used to prime students for active learning. They are similar to the movie theater practice of integrating advertising and trivia as entertainment while audiences wait for the main event. Preview Reviews mimic

A Study Of Factor B Of The Early School Personality Questionnaire(Espq) As A Valid Measure Of General Mental Ability, Claude S. Iles

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the validity of the general ability factor, Factor B of the Early School Personality Questionnaire(ESPQ), in two ways. First, validity coefficients for Factor B were obtained by computing product-moment correlation coefficients between the ESPQ Factor B raw scores of 40 developmentally disabled subjects and their raw scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Second, the Kruskal-Wallis rank sums test and a distribution-free multiple comparisons test were employed to determine if there were significant differences among the mean ESPQ Factor B raw scores of subjects designated as mentally retarded, learning disabled, or normal. Specifically, it was …

The Leadership Role Of The Principal In The Development Of The Elementary School Library Or Library Media Center, Dorothy J. Sutton

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to discover the extent and nature of the leadership role of the elementary school principal in the development of school library programs. A review of the literature revealed general agreement that the principal should assume a leadership role in the development of the school library, and is in a strategic position to do so. Questionnaires were sent to ninety-one elementary principals in the following countries of Southeast Kansas: Allen, Bourbon, Cherokee, Crawford, Labette, Mongomery, Neosho, Wilson, and Woodson; seventy-three were returned. According to answers received on the questionnaire, elementary principals in Southeast Kansas do …

Examiner Influence With Children In The Draw A Person Test, Stephanie Syler

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the influence of the examiner on children administered Machover's Draw A Person Test. Forty third and fourth grade children from two elementary schools served as subjects. The administrators were college students.

The subjects were randomly divided into four groups of 5 at each school, so that each examiner administered the test twice, once at each school. Examiners were also randomly assigned to their groups.

It was hypothesized that children tend to use the administrator of the DAP as a model for their drawings. The statistical analysis of data, however, did not support the hypothesis.

During the course …

The Difference Between The Number Of Correct Responses Of Three Intellectually Defined Groups On The Digit Symbol Subtest Of The Wais, Brian Lange

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study was a preliminary endeavor concerned with an investigation into whether young adults of defined age ranges and defined intellectual levels obtain significantly different scores on the Digit Symbol sub-test of the WAIS.

With the confidence level set at .05, the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference between the Digit Symbol sub-test scores of the retarded, normal, and superior groups was tested. The term young adults was used to describe subjects between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. The intellectual level defined as retarded, included Intelligence Quotient scores between 50 and 70; the normal level had Intelligence …

Classical Conditioning Of Shock-Elicited Fighting Behavior In Paired Rats, Jerry T. Treadway

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The present experiment investigated the effectiveness of two methods of stimuli presentation in classically conditioning shock elicited fighting behavior in paired rats.

The results indicated that fighting responses occurred to the unconditioned stimulus (shock), however, at no time did a fighting response occur to any of the tone-alone test trials.

Therefore, it was concluded from the data in the present study that shock-elicited fighting in paired rats did not appear to be a behavior which could be classically conditioned using either a simultaneous or a random method of stimuli presentation.

A Normative Study Of Some Developmental Aspects Of The Human Figure Drawings Of Children, Bessie M. Whitehead

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

For many years there has been much interest in the use of human figure drawings as a projective technique for diagnostic use with the mentally ill. Psychiatric implications are attributed to practically every possible characteristic exhibited in the human figure, but until recently, little has been done toward establishing standards or norms describing objectively how various groups in the population actually perform when asked to draw a person. A clinician had no ruler by which to measure the performance of his client. He had no standard by which he could decide that the behavior exhibited was usual or abnormal for …