Education Commons^™

Instrumental Music Participation And The Differences In Academic Performances For Students In Poverty, Shawn A. Oban

Theses and Dissertations

Because of the emphasis on No Child Left Behind and high stakes testing, school districts and administrators have been limiting or eliminating fine arts courses from an already shrinking curriculum, focusing on the subjects being tested. Students living in poverty are often entering formal schooling behind academically.

The researcher examined longitudinal test data from 2010-2015 from middle school aged students in a large Midwest school district. The researcher focused on test scores from the sixth grade when instrumental music was offered, examined test data from tenth grade, and studied academic growth. All student scores were included, but the independent variables …

Digital Game-Based Learning: Still Restless, After All These Years, Richard Van Eck

Teaching, Leadership & Professional Practice Faculty Publications

We have the evidence and the design tools to demonstrate that digital games are powerful learning tools. Whether we choose to take advantage of the opportunity before us is a completely different question.

What Can We Learn From Violent Videogames?, Richard Van Eck

Teaching, Leadership & Professional Practice Faculty Publications

Fears that violent videogames will cause people to be more violent are understandable, but unsupported by current research — social and developmental factors are better predictors of violent behavior. In fact, some violent videogames may actually lead to the development of empathy, understanding, and even moral behavior.

Integrated Reading And Writing: A Case Of Korean English Language Learners, Hyonsuk Cho, Janina Brutt-Griffler

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This study reports Korean English language learners’ perceived needs concerning their learning of reading and writing and how the integrated reading and writing instruction impacts their reading comprehension and summary-writing abilities. The study also delineates teacher’s challenges faced during the instruction. A total of 93 students in a middle school in Korea participated in a needs survey, and 69 students at three proficiency levels received the integrated instruction. The study found that students desired extra help on their writing to gain balanced English competence; also they wanted to learn reading and writing together. After the intervention, students at intermediate and …

Giving Literacy, Learning Literacy: Service Learning And School Book Drives, Anne Walker

Education, Health & Behavior Studies Faculty Publications

Service‐learning can provide a range of literacy learning experiences for children as they work to solve real world problems and engage in inquiry, collaboration and reflection. Rather than being an extracurricular activity, service‐learning projects are designed to meet standards and align with existing curriculum. This article explores how teachers can engage their students in literacy‐based service learning using the example of a book drive that supported literacy and children's libraries in Ethiopia. The article draws on both scholarly research and personal experience and provides practical information and resources.

Digital Games For 21st–Century Learning: Teacher Librarians' Beliefs And Practices, Amanda S. Hovious, Richard Van Eck

Teaching, Leadership & Professional Practice Faculty Publications

Video games as tools for learning in K-12 have been a topic of intense discussion over the past fifteen years. One area of focus has been on the integration of commercial off-the-shelf games in lesson plans. A predictive factor for the adoption and diffusion of this innovation is the attitudes or readiness of teachers. Yet while many studies have examined this with teachers themselves, teacher librarians (TLs) have largely been ignored, despite their key role in education and technology adoption in schools. This study examines the beliefs and practices of TLs concerning digital games as learning tools to determine if …

Use Of C-Map As A Cognitive Tool In Collaborative And Individual Concept Mapping For Enhancing Ell Students' Reading Comprehension, Enaz Yousef Rasheed Mahmoud

Theses and Dissertations

Among those who teach English to English Language Learners (ELL), reading comprehension is considered an essential language skill critical for knowledge acquisition and information exchange. However, in various parts of the world, including Jordan, reading comprehension has been reported as a difficult area for ELL students to master.

The purpose of this study was to investigate in-depth the impact of the use of the reading software C-map as a cognitive tool in collaborative and individual concept mapping to promote reading comprehension among ELL readers. The independent variable of this study was concept mapping, which functioned on three levels: collaborative, individual, …

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury In A Large Online Sample Of Transgender Adults, Lore M. Dickey, Sari L. Reisner, Cindy L. Juntunen

Education, Health & Behavior Studies Faculty Publications

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has been increasing in clinical as well as nonclinical populations in recent years. There are few published reports examining lifetime occurrence of this behavior in transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people. An online survey was conducted with self-identified TGNC adults (n = 773) in the United States over the course of 6 months in 2009. The mean age for the sample was 40.4 years (SD = 13.9). Most participants identified on the trans masculine spectrum (female-to-male or FTM; 52.0%), 33.9% identified on the trans feminine spectrum (male-to-female or MTF), and 8.0% identified as genderqueer. Participants completed the …

Gender Differences In College Students’ Perceptions Of Technology-Related Jobs In Computer Science, Joseph Appianing, Richard Van Eck

Teaching, Leadership & Professional Practice Faculty Publications

Demand for computer technology (CT) professionals continues to rise, yet the supply of related majors is insufficient to meet demand. As with science, engineering, and mathematics (technology’s STEM field siblings), women’s participation in CT fields is abysmally low. While there are many junctures in the “leaky pipeline” for women and STEM careers, college is one of the important pathways to recruit women into CT fields. Wigfield and Eccles’ (2000) expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation provides a valuable framework for examining factors that impact women’s decisions to pursue CT majors, but no validated survey instruments exist for doing so. A questionnaire …

Saps And Digital Games: Improving Mathematics Transfer And Attitudes In Schools, Richard Van Eck

Teaching, Leadership & Professional Practice Faculty Publications

Many suggest that digital games are a way to address problems with schools, yet research on their ability to promote problem solving, critical thinking, and twenty-first century skill sets appears to be mixed. In this chapter, I suggest that the problem lies not with digital games, but with our conceptualization of what it means to promote problem solving and critical thinking, and how transfer of such skills works in general and, specifically, with games. The power of digital games lies not in some magical power of the medium, but from embedded theories (e.g., situated learning and problem-centered instruction) and from …