Education Commons^™

A Comparative Analysis Of School Counselors' And School Principals' Perceptions Of School Counselors' Activities, Deborah K Buchanan

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative, cross-sectional survey study was to compare school counselors’ and principals’ perceptions of the frequency with which school counselors perform activities that align with the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005) and those activities that do not, as measured by the School Counselor Activity Rating Scale (SCARS) (Scarborough, 2005). Results indicate that the school counselors and principals that participated in the study agreed that school counselors are spending most of their time engaged in activities that align with the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005). Significant differences (p < .05) appeared on 10 items in which five were related to counseling activities, primarily as they relate to small group counseling. Principals indicated their school counselors were conducting small group activities related to academic and substance abuse issues more frequently than the school counselors indicated. Other areas that showed significant differences (p < .05) between school counselors’ and principals’ responses included …

After The Final Bell: The Self-Directed Learning Practices Of Elementary Teachers, Susan Renee Wagner

Doctoral Dissertations

Are elementary teachers self-directed learners? If so, do their learning activities outside their classrooms translate into their classrooms? The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship, if any, between elementary teachers’ self-directed learning and activities in their classrooms. A two phase, mixed methods design first utilized a quantitative study from which the results were used to denote the type of data collected in the second, qualitative phase. The quantitative Phase I of this study involved using a survey instrument in order to identify self-directed learners and identify categories of teacher learners. These quantitative data were gathered through the …

Balancing Student Participation In Large College Courses Via Randomized Credit For Participation, Daniel Fox Mccleary

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study was an extension of research reported by Krohn (2010), which showed that daily credit for self-reported participation in designated credit units tended to balance participation across students (i.e., fewer non-participants, more credit-level participants, and fewer dominant participants). The purpose of the current study was to determine if similar results would be achieved by randomly selecting half of the discussion days in designated credit units for participation credit.

The study was done in 3 large sections of an undergraduate class (approximately 54 students per class). Students self-recorded their in-class comments each day on specially designed record cards. At …

Decolonial Multiculturalism And Local-Global Contexts: A Postcritical Feminist Bricolage For Developing New Praxes In Education, Katharine Matthaei Sprecher

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a conceptual bricolage that explores complex, reflexive, and interrelated dimensions of educational praxes. My work is grounded in the assertion that the ever-changing, local-global nature of contemporary societies requires new approaches to curricula, pedagogies, policies, and practices in U.S. schools to meet the challenges and opportunities of a global era. Presenting my research and findings as four articles, I begin with a dialectical analysis of theoretical and pedagogical literatures to develop an adaptable framework for decolonial multicultural education. In Article 1, I demonstrate how this framework synergizes aspects of social reconstructionist and critical multicultural, global, and …

Assessing Effectiveness Of Multicultural Readings In Increasing Ethnocultural Empathy For Undergraduate Students, Tripti Bhaskar

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined how multicultural readings included in the introduction to psychology curriculum were linked to an increase in students’ multicultural interest and sensitivity. Specifically, this study investigated the impact of reading and discussing multicultural articles on students’ ethnocultural empathy, universality-diverse orientation, and openness to diversity. Second purpose of the study was to examine possible individual differences associated with response to the intervention. Participants in the current study were undergraduate students enrolled in five sections of the introduction to psychology class, which were randomly assigned as control and experimental groups. The multicultural readings are four original research articles that examine …

The Professional Quality Of Life Of Counselors In The U.S. Gulf State Of Mississippi Following Multiple Traumatic Events, Deirdre Juanita Anderson-White

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation was an exploratory research study using a cross-sectional survey design to examine the impact of ecological, environmental, psychological, and financial hardship on counselors of the U.S. Gulf Region. Since 2005, the U.S. Gulf Region, unlike any other region of the United States, has faced multiple disasters including Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav (Walsh, 2010), the Great Recession (Conant, 2010), and the largest ecological disaster in the history of the United States, the BP Oil Spill (Gray, 2010). The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes and characteristics of counselors in one U.S. Gulf State, specifically …

Personality Traits And Career Decidedness: An Empirical Study Of University Students, Ryan M. Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Research on vocational behavior has made progress in identifying broad personality traits associated with career indecision; however, important questions remain unanswered about the temporal stability of relationships between broad personality traits and Career Decidedness (CD), and about the role of narrow personality traits as predictors of CD, both of which were addressed in this longitudinal field study. A total of 2,046 undergraduate students completed an online personality inventory and CD questionnaire. A sub-group (N=267) responded to a follow-up questionnaire seven months later. Results indicated, as hypothesized, that CD correlated positively with the broad (Big Five) personality traits, openness, conscientiousness, and …

The Discursive Construction Of Autism: Contingent Meanings Of Autism And Therapeutic Talk, Jessica Nina Lester

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation was a discourse analysis study, drawing upon discursive psychology, poststructural understandings of discourse, conversation analysis, and a social relational model of disability. The purpose of this study was to explore how autism was performed as an interactional event among children with autism labels, the therapists who work with them, and their parents, in the context of a pediatric therapy setting. I interrogated how the participants’ everyday discursive practices were shaped and, at times, constrained by the social and political institutions that often work to define autism and the related, official plans of treatment. A total of 12 families …

Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Policies Under Race To The Top: A Discursive Investigation, Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel

Doctoral Dissertations

Teacher effectiveness has been a rallying cry for education reform over the last decade. The push for policies that aim to increase teacher effectiveness, fire ineffective teachers and recruit or retain effective teachers unite educational stakeholders; yet, specific, operational definitions of effectiveness remain elusive and divisive. It is easy to say that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in student achievement, but difficult to say what it means to be effective. In this study I take up a Critical Discursive Psychology (Wetherell, 1998) approach to the text of the current Framework for Teacher Evaluation and Professional Growth in …