Education Commons^™

Schooling At The Intersection Of Refugee Identity And (Dis)Ability: Implications From North Korean Students With Refugee Backgrounds, Yosung Song

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Researchers have previously found that school-age refugees and asylum-seekers are frequently characterized as experiencing physical, emotional, or psychological disabilities or disorders in schools because of the adversity that they face and a lack of adequate resources during their refugee journey. In their relocated society, many refugee students are interpreted as having disabilities or receiving special education services. While refugee experiences are often framed as causing deficits in students, the purpose of this study was to better understand the interplay of (dis)ability and refugee identity at a school that publicly proclaimed refugee experience as an asset. Grounded in a qualitative methodology, …

Lemons Into Lemonade: Black Undergraduate Women's Embodiment Of Strength And Resilience At A Pwi, Jordan Shelby West

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This dissertation is a qualitative research project for Black undergraduate women and about Black undergraduate women. The aim of this dissertation is to lift, center, and share the lived experiences of Black undergraduate women as they reflect on the messages and memories of coming into their Blackness, their transition to and experiences while attending a PWI, and the ways in which they continue to make meaning of space. Informed by Black Feminist Theory and Critical Race Theory, the framework and methods used in this project prioritize the care of the participants and allow them to be co-creators of their own …

“Is That Okay With You?”: Examining A Simulated Discussion About Accommodations Between University Students Identified As Having A Disability And A Standardized Faculty Member, Justin E. Freedman

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Postsecondary students identified as having a disability in the United States are commonly expected to discuss the use of disability-related accommodations with faculty members. Researchers have previously used surveys and interviews to examine what students report about discussing accommodations with faculty members. However, little is known about how students advocate in the moment when communicating with faculty members about accommodations. In this study, I designed a clinical simulation to examine how 15 university students identified as having a disability engaged in and reflected upon a meeting with a standardized faculty member – an actor who I trained to communicate questions …

An Investigation Of Practices, Resources, And Challenges In Mathematical Word Problem Solving Among Swahili-Speaking African High School Bi-/Multilingual Students In The United States, Victoria Mwia Wambua

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In this study, I examined the practices, resources, and challenges in mathematics word problem solving (MWPS) among the Africa Swahili-speaking refugee high school students in the United States. Specifically, I investigated the language practices and linguistic resources the participants used during MWPS, as well as the linguistic challenges they faced. I also explored the mathematics practices and mathematical resources the participants used as well as the mathematical challenges they faced during MWPS. Lastly, I determined the role of the language practices and/or resources (LPRs) in the participants’ mathematical processes.

To accomplish this study, I used a language background survey (LBS) …

Cognitive Presence In Peer Facilitated Asynchronous Online Discussion: The Patterns And How To Facilitate, Ye Chen

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This study, in the context of peer-facilitated asynchronous online discussion, explored the characteristics and patterns of students’ cognitive presence, and examined the practices that aim to enhance cognitive presence development. Participants were 53 students from a graduate-level online course that focused on the integration of educational technologies. Data were collected from discussion transcripts, student survey, student artifacts, and researcher’s observations.

Results demonstrated four phases of students’ cognitive presence: Triggering event, Exploration, Integration, and Resolution. Among the four phases, students’ cognitive presence tended to aggregate at the middle phases: Integration and Exploration. Percentage of the Resolution was very low. The distribution …

A Mixed Methods Comparison Of The First Principles Of Instruction In Flipped And Face-To-Face Technology Integration Courses, Jacob Hall

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This dissertation examines the impact of the First Principles of Instruction (FPI) model when applied to face-to-face (F2F) and flipped technology integration courses. Through this investigation, I demonstrate how the FPI inform the design of problem-centered environments, their impact on participants’ technological, pedagogical, content knowledge (TPACK), and the essential aspects of experiencing these FPI-based courses. Using an embedded quasi-experimental mixed methods design, the quantitative analyses of pre- and post- TPACK outcomes were examined and related to the interventions’ mechanisms via the descriptive phenomenological analysis of participants’ course learning experiences. Participants were 32 preservice teachers enrolled in the second of three …

Narrating Political Disability Identity, Steven J. Singer

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This dissertation documented the political disability identities of nine disabled adults. It also explored how these disabled adults enacted their political disability identities. I used narrative analysis to analyze the data, which included life history interviews and the authoring of memoirs. From these memoirs, the participants (Narrators) and I selected critical moments in the formation of the political disability identities. The findings show Narrators shifted or shaped their political identities when strangers pushed them beyond their personal limits by spouting ableist norms. Narrators also developed their political disability identities when they had access to political discourse and the relative freedom …

We Know, Now What? Teaching, Learning, (Un)Knowing And Educating Toward Epistemic Justice, Azam Wendy Nastasi

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This dissertation maps the role of testimonial injustice in education and the role of pedagogy in addressing knowledge injustices. Drawing from the disciplinary positions of philosophy of education and social justice education, this dissertation provides an analysis of student academic work to explore intergroup dialogue pedagogy. Specifically, this dissertation investigate if and how the education practice of intergroup dialogue pedagogy can facilitate epistemic justice. This analysis combines philosophical inquiry and document analysis to describe the ways in which practices of learning are related to social identifications. Finally, this dissertation offers applications of this theoretical analysis of epistemic justice for education …

Use And Integration Of Ipads With Students With Low Incidence Disabilities In Elementary Schools, Katie Louise Heath

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I focused this dissertation on what is happening within schools regarding iPad usage and students with disabilities. Technology usage is thought to help provide students with another modality for learning the curriculum. iPads, specifically, are leading the technological revolution in classroom environments. One benefit of iPads in instruction is that they assist all students, especially those with disabilities by helping them complete a task with increased ease. The focus of this research was to study the usage of iPads in K-6th educational settings with students with low incidence disabilities. Technology usage among students with disabilities continues to rise, yet teachers …

Middle Grades Mathematics Teachers’ Learning Through Designing Structured Exercises And Learner Generated Examples, Annmarie H. O'Neil

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Exemplification is significant for the teaching of mathematics and revealing mathematical structure to learners. Structured exercises and learner generated examples (LGEs) are pedagogical tools intended to provide opportunities for learners to discern and generalize mathematical structure. The aim of this study was to understand how middle school mathematics teachers develop their knowledge about designing and implementing sets of structured exercises and LGEs and the factors that influenced their use and implementation of structured exercises and LGEs. Four middle grades mathematics teachers participated in a series of four learning study cycles focused on the design and implementation of tasks that incorporated …

Peer-Led Team Learning: The Effect Of Peer Leader And Student Interactions On Student Learning Gains And Course Achievement In Introductory Biology, Christina Winterton

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This study sought to connect the literature on Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) to the work on student-teacher interactions as well as STEM role models. Student and peer leader interactions were explored to determine the effect of these interactions on student learning outcomes. Students and their peer leaders were both asked to determine the student’s learning gains from the PLTL course. Perceived learning gains were measured using a modified version of the Student Assessment of their Learning Gains (SALG) instrument. Peer leader responses were paired with their student’s responses to determine differences in peer leader ability to discern learning gains, learning …

Consensus Messaging Using Scholarly Literature: Impacts On Students' Conceptions Of Global Climate Change, Jeremy David Sloane

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Despite near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists, the misconception of substantial scientific disagreement over the reality of human-induced global climate change persists among members of the general public. Within the research literature on climate science, there exists robust work which quantifies and reviews the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change. This study evaluated the efficacy of using such research literature as a tool for consensus messaging among undergraduates taking an introduction to biological research course at a large, private, research-intensive university in the northeastern United States. Outcomes investigated include the potential impact that reading and discussing such research literature may have …

Struggles Of Korean Americans Labeled With Intellectual Disabilities To Claim Adult Status, Eun Young Jung

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The transition to adulthood is complicated for youth with intellectual disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) Families. This ethnographic research explores the daily lives of six adults with intellectual disabilities who live in one urban Korean American community. In particular, the ethnographic observational, interview and textual data have been analyzed in terms of which activities associated with adulthood the participants could or could not engage in, in comparison to the practices of their non-disabled peers in this community. Besides the six focus participants with intellectual disabilities, I also interviewed six other youth and adults with disabilities, six parents of …

Inclusive Education In Practice: District-Level Special Education Administrators' Leadership, Chelsea P. Tracy-Bronson

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Considering six million children ages six through 21 receive special education services in the United States (Department of Education, 2017), it is critical to examine the leadership it takes to provide equitable education to students with disabilities. This study employs a qualitative research methodology utilizing in-depth interviewing to understand the leadership experiences of seven district-level special education administrators who are committed to enacting inclusive educational practices using the following three paradigms or ideological approaches: phenomenological perspective, social construction perspective, and transformative inquiry. The following research questions guide this dissertation: 1) How do district-level special education leaders articulate their conceptualization of …

Behavioral Interdependence In Project Team Collaboration: Study Of Engineering Students’ Collaborative Behaviors In High Levels Of Interdependent Task Settings, Yiyan Wu

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In teamwork learning settings, tasks are often designed at varying levels of interdependence that requires students to complete the tasks by relying only on their team members sharing resources, knowledge, and skills. However, well-structured tasks do not always guarantee task-related collaborative behaviors will occur and are simply not adequate for us to understand the collaboration process and participants’ actual collaborative behaviors. To deepen our understanding of collaboration and explore how increased collaboration may be promoted in high-level interdependent task settings, this study uses behavioral interdependence as an analytical concept to describe and examine individual students’ actual behaviors as they worked …

Engineering Is Elementary: Identifying Instances Of Collaboration During The Engineering Design Process, Lora Kulakowski Gruber-Hine

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21st century educational reform initiatives value creativity, collaboration, innovation, and higher-order thinking (Scardamalia, 2002), the skills needed for students to successfully address the complex engineering challenges facing society. A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practice, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas (NRC, 2012) acknowledges that advances in knowledge occur through collaboration, with many minds working together to communicate and share ideas over time. It has been proposed that collaboration, creativity, and persistence are of value to engineering (Cunningham, 2012), and that engineering possesses a unique set of epistemic practices, including envisioning multiple solutions and teamwork (Cunningham and Kelly, 2017). Cunningham (2012) …