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Full-Text Articles in Education

Supporting Kindergarten Multilingual Learners During Morning Meeting, Tamara Tripp Oct 2022

Supporting Kindergarten Multilingual Learners During Morning Meeting, Tamara Tripp

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The guiding question of this capstone project is: “How can kindergarten classroom teachers support Multilingual Learners during Morning Meeting to improve their ability to engage and communicate with classmates?” Morning Meeting is a daily classroom time that supports the building of a shared classroom community. Students are seen and heard as they share about themselves and learn about their peers. Research has demonstrated the need for students to make connections with their classmates in order to feel safe taking academic risks. Multilingual learners in kindergarten classrooms can struggle to make social connections and actively engage in learning when they are …


The Role Of The Native-Speaker Listener In English As A Lingua Franca Interactions, Leah Fruechte Oct 2022

The Role Of The Native-Speaker Listener In English As A Lingua Franca Interactions, Leah Fruechte

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research agrees that monolingualism, through a lack of linguistic and metalinguistic awareness and general linguistic reflexivity, is the source of a widely observed listening problem where monolingual native-speakers (NSs) of English fail to correctly perceive the meaning of spoken English that diverges from their own in phonological forms or contextual norms. On the other hand, research has also shown multilingual communities, such as those which use English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), to display the intuitive use of collaborative, pragmatic listening strategies that keep them from misunderstanding each other, despite their differences in forms and norms. As a result, this …


Effective Teacher-Parent Communication Tools To Empower Families To Be Active In Their Children’S Learning, Ellis Richardson Oct 2022

Effective Teacher-Parent Communication Tools To Empower Families To Be Active In Their Children’S Learning, Ellis Richardson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Creating an environment that is conducive for learning is an essential component of education. In search of ways to achieve this goal through family engagement the question was posed, How can educators effectively communicate with families to empower them to take an active role in their child’s learning? Research has demonstrated that there is a link between student success and teacher-parent partnerships through one way and two way communication methods. The project involved creating a set of resources for educators to foster and maintain teacher-parent partnerships with the goal being student success. The resources are accompanied by a professional development …


A Podcast And Website For Informal Educators And How It Can Disseminate Best Teaching Practices, Graham Charles Oct 2022

A Podcast And Website For Informal Educators And How It Can Disseminate Best Teaching Practices, Graham Charles

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Informal educators face barriers in delivering high-quality educational experiences. As they are not formally connected with teacher training programs, they frequently receive more content-area knowledge than pedagogical instruction. Thus, informal educators are challenged to discover and master best practices in their field on their own. Economic and learning theorists indicate that professionals share best practices through various socially mediated structures, such as peer learning, culminating in a spontaneous intragroup support structure which Wegner termed a community of practice. Many informal educators, however, cannot participate in such communities because they are physically located in different sites from colleagues performing similar work. …


How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Children In School And What Protective Factors Can Teachers Provide For These Students, Michelle Moorer Jul 2022

How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Children In School And What Protective Factors Can Teachers Provide For These Students, Michelle Moorer

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question addressed in this Capstone Project is: How do adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affect children in school and what protective factors can teachers provide for these students? I will start by giving an overview of ACEs, ACEs impact on adulthood, trauma and toxic stress, trauma informed practices, and finally discuss protective factors for children with ACEs. Research shows that having exposure to childhood adversity is connected to negative health and life outcomes. Protective factors against ACEs can be a buffer against the negative effects of ACEs. These factors can be provided in different contexts, for example in relationships, …


Using An Ecojustice Education Framework To Address Conservation In The Upstate, Rebecca Bolich-Wade Jul 2022

Using An Ecojustice Education Framework To Address Conservation In The Upstate, Rebecca Bolich-Wade

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In an era of complex and overlapping issues, it is critical to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative interdisciplinary methodology within the fields of justice and environmental conservation. One such method is encapsulated in an ecojustice education framework. This capstone project sought to analyze the effectiveness of an ecojustice education framework to address conservation in the Upstate of South Carolina. In the process of this study’s literature review, it is evident that isolating social justice from environmental conservation is ineffective and unresponsive to the needs that historically underserved communities today face in terms of the mitigation of environmental burdens and enhancement …


Facilitating The Success Of Students Transitioning Between Different Methods Of Instruction, Amanda Froberg Jul 2022

Facilitating The Success Of Students Transitioning Between Different Methods Of Instruction, Amanda Froberg

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question being addressed in this project is, how do teachers successfully facilitate the movement back and forth between different methods of instruction for students? This question is answered in the paper and then the project. The project consists of a professional development workshop that is five 120 minute sessions. The first chapter introduces the topic with discussing teaching experiences before the pandemic, COVID-19 and distance learning, and teaching experiences after the pandemic. The second chapter is the literature review that looks at defining student success (academic, social, and mental/emotional), distance learning and COVID-19, and transitions in method of …


Preparing Trauma Informed Teachers And Utilizing Trauma Responsive Systems To Increase Educational Success For Elementary Age Students, Kate Jordal Jul 2022

Preparing Trauma Informed Teachers And Utilizing Trauma Responsive Systems To Increase Educational Success For Elementary Age Students, Kate Jordal

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research suggests that trauma informed teaching practices benefit all students, regardless of whether or not they have experienced trauma. The professional development created for this project is informed by the work of Danielle Theis’ Teach to Heal and Performing Tracking System (2022), Nicholas Long’s Life Space Crisis Intervention (2021), the scholarship of Ross Greene (2014), and the educational framework Universal Design for Learning (2022). Trauma informed teaching practices include at its core: role definition for adults, common language, and explicit teaching of social emotional skills. The professional development will help teachers create a trauma responsive classroom which will be beneficial …


Unlocking Math Minds: Using Inquiry-Based Instruction To Increase Student Engagement And Learning In A Third Grade Classroom, Eric Swendseid Jul 2022

Unlocking Math Minds: Using Inquiry-Based Instruction To Increase Student Engagement And Learning In A Third Grade Classroom, Eric Swendseid

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This paper and supporting website include research and strategies to answer the research question, How can the implementation of inquiry-based math instruction increase student engagement and learning success in a third grade classroom? Inquiry-based learning is a process where the students are involved in their learning. The classroom is student-centered, not teacher-centered. Using the student-centered or inquiry-based approach, students do not learn through transmission. Instead, they collect information and synthesize the information they find through critical thinking skills. The learning process is considered to be higher-order learning. The research presented in this paper focuses on guided inquiry within a mathematics …


Food Justice And Urban Agriculture: Using City Spaces To Foster Equity, Jessica Giese Jul 2022

Food Justice And Urban Agriculture: Using City Spaces To Foster Equity, Jessica Giese

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

In an increasingly urban society, urban agriculture creates opportunities to address inequalities in access to healthy foods and bridge gaps in our food systems. While solving the problems of food and environmental injustice demands large-scale changes at a systemic level, urban agriculture can promote community engagement, education, and sovereignty, empowering city residents to gain control over their resources and access to nutritious foods. This research seeks to explain how two very different urban agricultural projects are impacting their communities through access, engagement, and education. Intersections Food Forest is a neighborhood project that utilizes an empty city lot to cultivate perennial …


Place-Based Education And Nature Journaling Curriculum Development, Emaline Kelley Jul 2022

Place-Based Education And Nature Journaling Curriculum Development, Emaline Kelley

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

nature. Educators must find ways to bring nature to the classroom. Nature journaling uses unique geographies of places as a basis for teaching natural science and other subjects. The nature journaling curriculum development project here, dedicated to natural science and environmental education asks, in what ways could nature study and place-based education be taught to students who live in the urban environment? Goals, learning benefits, and results of nature study and place-based education will be discussed in the literature review. Nature journaling as a tool of learning, along with its benefits, will be discoursed to better understand why the project …


Employing Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices In English Language Arts Classrooms, Austin Niederkorn Jul 2022

Employing Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices In English Language Arts Classrooms, Austin Niederkorn

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is a well renowned approach to teaching that connects students’ cultures, languages, and personal experiences to the curriculum they learn in school. CRT helps students access higher level learning while also promoting increased student achievement, a positive classroom environment, meaningful teacher-student relationships, and impactful connections with communities and families. All teachers can benefit from using CRT in their classrooms, yet English Language Arts (ELA) teachers have unique opportunities to use students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds to shape their reading and writing instruction. Despite being widely praised, culturally responsive teaching is not often the focus of professional …


Students Writing Restorative Justice, Rebekah Rentzel Jul 2022

Students Writing Restorative Justice, Rebekah Rentzel

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The need for systemic change has never been stronger. Schools are at a breaking point. In the wake of the uncertainties of COVID and the injustice seen in the racial uprisings after the police murder of George Floyd of 2020, students are dealing with trauma that needs to be addressed in schools. The practices of restorative justice, when applied with a cultural shift within the schools, are powerful ways to support students in their healing (Morgan, 2021). Studies find that when students are at the center of creating a restorative system, it is more effective because it directly reflects the …


Empathy For Self And Others: An Sel Curriculum For A Catholic Middle School, Isabel Heins Jul 2022

Empathy For Self And Others: An Sel Curriculum For A Catholic Middle School, Isabel Heins

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project explores the importance of an easy to use social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum that can be implemented immediately. While it is aimed specifically at a middle school audience in a Catholic school setting, it is intended for use in any advisory, homeroom, or unstructured time when teachers want to easily incorporate SEL activities. Focused on mental health and empathy, activities such as Role Playing, Naming Emotions, and many others are designed to be implemented with students right away. The goal of the curriculum is to serve as a resource for teachers as they begin teaching SEL skills …


A Sense Of Place In Environmental Education: A Forest Ecology Curriculum, Samantha Selter Jul 2022

A Sense Of Place In Environmental Education: A Forest Ecology Curriculum, Samantha Selter

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project discusses the definition of a sense of place as it pertains to environmental education to present the influence of people-to-place relationships in developing environmental stewardship and pro-environmental behavior. Researchers across the fields of geography, environmentalism, and psychology have long identified places as being important to how people see the world and how they act in different places. Fostering place attachment and place meaning within environmental curricula can advance environmental understanding and responsibility through the use of local ecology and problem solving of environmental issues. The curriculum unit within this project focuses on invasive species and uses this environmental …


Fo(U)R Friends: The Social, Emotional, And Academic Effects Of An Extracurricular Program For Secondary Newcomer Students, Emma Johnson Apr 2022

Fo(U)R Friends: The Social, Emotional, And Academic Effects Of An Extracurricular Program For Secondary Newcomer Students, Emma Johnson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research has highlighted a variety of lived experiences, special assets, and unique needs that newcomer students and English Learners (ELs) bring to our schools and communities. The United States K-12 public education system largely focuses on academic needs, failing to honor students’ strengths or address their social-emotional learning and identity development. This project is an extracurricular program model for secondary newcomer students and their peers who want to engage in community and multicultural learning, encouraging positive social, emotional, and academic growth. The project is presented in the form of a handbook. In the handbook, program leaders can find introductory lesson …


Fostering Students’ Sense Of Belonging And Inclusion Through Community Involvement, Rebecca Batchelder Apr 2022

Fostering Students’ Sense Of Belonging And Inclusion Through Community Involvement, Rebecca Batchelder

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This paper examines resource availability and allocation within schools and, through its investigation, identifies the greater community system as an underutilized source of talent. To better understand and use the greater community as a resource, this paper will consider the impact on students’ social-emotional growth. More specifically, how does community involvement in the classroom, specifically through the use of community-based learning practices, impact a student’s sense of belonging and inclusion? Community-based learning practices are rooted in authentic learning experiences where students collaborate with community partners to address community needs and objectives. Students, educators, and members of the greater community all …