Education Commons^™

Relationship Between First-Generation College Students' Expectations For Experiences With Faculty Members And Students' Success After The First Year, Christina D. Nelson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the landscape of higher education changes to allow increased access for first-generation college students (FGS), emerging research should take into account the unique nature of this at-risk population of students (Aspelmeier, Love, McGill, Elliott, & Pierce, 2012). These students tend to be less prepared for the rigors of college coursework (Horn & Bobbitt, 2000; Strayhorn, 2006; Thayer, 2000) and may lack appropriate expectations (Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004). In particular, FGS may struggle with understanding the importance of creating and maintaining relationships with faculty (Cotten & Wilson, 2006; Davis, 2010).

In order to discover any correlation between expectations …

Developing Differentiated Reading Instruction Online For Gifted Third Graders: A Design Experiment, Beth E. Jordan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The high stakes on standardized testing in the United States of America’s education system pressures teachers to ensure every child meets minimum standards. Teachers report this pressure motivates them to focus the majority of their time on struggling students. Combined with lack of training and resources, intellectually gifted students may remain under-challenged in a regular elementary classroom. To address the problem, the researcher continued the development of an online instructional environment, which teachers may use to extend and enrich the regular language arts curriculum for intellectually gifted students. The researcher conducted a formative design experiment “to create a viable theory-driven …

Relationships Between The Algebraic Performance Of Students In Subject-Specific And Integrated Course Pathways, Derrick Saddler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the algebraic performance gains of high school students who enroll in an integrated mathematics course pathway (i.e., Integrated Mathematics I-II-III) to the algebraic performance gains of high school students who enroll in a subject-specific course pathway (i.e., Algebra I-Geometry-Algebra II). Several studies have been performed in which researchers examined relationships between mathematics outcomes and the course-taking patterns of high school students enrolled in subject-specific course pathways. However, there is little extant research in which researchers have investigated effects of content organization on students' learning and achievement. Therefore, this study addresses calls for …

A Conceptual Analysis Of Perspective Taking In Support Of Socioscientific Reasoning, Sami Kahn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scientific literacy is concerned with the informed citizens' ability to negotiate scientifically-related societal issues. The suite of skills necessary to negotiate these complex issues is referred to as Socioscientific Reasoning (SSR). SSR requires, among other things, perspective-taking abilities in order to consider the multi-faceted nature of these open-ended, debatable socioscientific issues (SSI). Developing interventions and instruments to foster and measure perspective taking in support of SSR is therefore critical to the promotion of functional scientific literacy through both research and practice. Although widely studied in many disciplines, perspective taking is a particularly tangled construct that has been used to describe …

Facilitating Motivation In A Virtual World Within A Second Language Acquisition Classroom, Andrew Warren Gump

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Stories Of Care In The Virtual Classroom: An Autoethnographic Narrative Inquiry, Brooke Boback Eisenbach

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since their inception in 2006, K-12 virtual classrooms have spread across the nation, reaching millions of students every day. Despite the technological changes in today's society, adolescents who lack key personal characteristics may struggle to successfully complete online coursework. A caring teacher-student relationship may assist today's virtual learners in ways that enhance motivation, learning, and online education success. Although a veteran teacher of nine years, in this autoethnographic narrative inquiry, I shared my experience as a novice, English I virtual teacher as I strived to enact relational with my virtual education students.

Parental Deportation And Cape Verdean Youth Experiences: A Case Study, Leila Rosa

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The consistent academic underperformance of students from diverse backgrounds is a national concern and the subject of study by numerous researchers. Some scholars suggest this underperformance indicates teacher lack of preparation to address the needs of a highly diverse student population (Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Ford, 2008; Darling-Hamond, 2004). Central to the overall efforts for improving achievement outcomes should be a focus on the educational experiences of the segment of population that is underperforming, namely students of color, from diverse cultural and linguistic background. Policies of immigration are particularly relevant for the students who are immigrants to the United States …

An Analysis Of The Reported And Unreported Baccalaureate Degree Recipients In Ipeds At A Large Public Research Institution, Mary Elizabeth Wallace

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One of the challenges facing higher education today is to graduate undergraduate students in a timely manner. Graduation rates are reported to students, parents, and the general public as well as academic and political leaders. The rates are derived using different methodologies. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects data annually by law from every institution offering federal financial aid in the United States. The "IPEDS reported" students are considered students who start in the fall semester, full-time, first-time in college, and graduate from the original institution (no transfers). The adult, part-time, returning, and transfer students, or "IPEDS unreported" …

Consequences Of Non-Modeled And Modeled Between Case Variation In The Level-1 Error Structure In Multilevel Models For Single-Case Data: A Monte Carlo Study, Eun Kyeng Baek

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Multilevel modeling (MLM) approach has a great flexibility in that can handle various methodological issues that may arise with single-case studies, such as the need to model possible dependency in the errors, linear or nonlinear trends, and count outcomes (e.g.,Van den Noortgate & Onghena, 2003a). By using the MLM framework, researchers can not only model dependency in the errors but also model a variety of level-1error structures.

The effect of misspecification in the level-1 error structure has been well studied for MLM analyses. Generally, it was found that the estimates of the fixed effects were unbiased but the estimates …

Facilitating A Transdisciplinary Approach In Teacher Education Through Multimodal Literacy And Cognitive Neuroscience, Margaret Billings Krause

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a compilation of research and theoretical papers based on the affordances of multimodal literacies for marginalized learners and for pre-service teachers’ developing conceptualizations of literacy. Through a transdisciplinary lens, the author considers complex issues presented in traditional, print-based learning environments that potentially marginalize learners in their developing abilities to become successful participants in the multiple literacies in the real world.

Three studies focus on pre-service teachers and their developing understanding of effective literacy-related classroom practices. Chapter Three explores potential affordances of a multimodal learning environment for pre-service teachers with self-identified reading difficulties. The phenomenological study highlights differing …

Validity Testing Of A Preschool Reading Screening Device For Pediatricians, Erika Elaine Blue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite efforts to improve access to early literacy intervention in the United States, there are still children entering kindergarten that are not adequately prepared for school and are unlikely to catch up to their peers (National Education Association, 2014). Preschool programs are actively involved in screening their students for potential literacy difficulties; however, there are children who do not attend preschool and may not have their literacy development assessed. One solution to this problem is to involve other individuals who routinely see preschool age children. Pediatricians are one such group as children come to them for their wellness visits and …

The Role Of The Interruption In Young Adult Epistolary Novels, Betty J. Herzhauser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within the genre of young adult literature, a growing trend is the use of epistolary messages through electronic methods between characters. These messages are set apart from the formal text of the narrative of the novel creating a break in the text features and layout of the page. Epistolary texts require a more sophisticated reading method and level of interpretation because the epistolary style blends multiple voices and points of view into the plot, creating complicated narration. The reader must navigate the narrator’s path in order to extract meaning from the text. In this hermeneutic study, I examined the text …