Education Commons^™

Formal Teacher Evaluation And Self-Determination Theory: The Role Of The Principal, Christine Trendel

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores how early research in self-efficacy, teacher stress, and teacher job satisfaction directly relate to self-determination theory. Specifically, the role of the elementary school principal can directly impact teacher motivation when meeting teacher basic psychological needs outlined in self-determination theory; connectedness, competence and autonomy. Furthermore, principals can build teacher connectedness, competence and autonomy with interactions and feedback both inside and outside of the formal teacher evaluation process. When principals interact with teachers frequently, visit classrooms weekly, and provide specific and timely feedback, teachers experience higher levels of motivation through increased feelings of connectedness, competency, and autonomy.

Secondary School Gifted Students’ Attitude Toward The Classera Learning Management System In Saudi Arabia, Mansour Alamri

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The present study examined secondary students’ attitude toward the Classera learning management system (LMS) within the context of gifted education in Saudi Arabia. The theoretical framework that guided this study was the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data were collected using the TAM survey, which consisted three subscales: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude. The data were collected from 306 gifted students in a secondary school in Saudi Arabia.Results indicated that gifted students’ attitude toward the Classera LMS is positive and showed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were statistically significant predictors of gifted students’ attitude toward …

The Relationship Between The Diversity Of Illinois Community College Staff And Graduates: An Exploratory Quantitative Study, Rachel Boldman

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The present study sought to answer the research question, to what extent is the staff racial demographic profile, as a numeric representation of staff diversity, related to the diversity of graduating cohorts from public community colleges in Illinois? The exploratory quantitative study used five years of Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) survey data for both the staff and graduate populations. The years connected to staff represented the years the graduating cohorts entered college, and the years connected to graduates represent 150% of the normal time to their degree following the year of entry (cohort year). The sample was comprised …

Leadership Styles Of Doctor Of Physical Therapy Program Directors, Dawn Sunshine Brown

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The Commission on Accreditation of Physical Therapy Education requires Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program directors to have the necessary academic and professional qualifications to lead their programs, but many directors lack awareness of their leadership styles. The purpose of this quantitative descriptive correlational study was to examine the leadership styles of current DPT program directors within the United States, analyze the relationship between DPT program directors’ self-perceptions of their leadership style and effectiveness, and understand a relationship between leadership styles with race and ethnicity.Methods: Data were collected using the 45-item Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X Short Leader Form developed by …

Instructors’ And Students’ Attitudes And Practices Towards Using Critical Pedagogy In Taiwan, Chiaping Jennifer Chang

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to investigate instructors’ and students’ attitudes and practices towards using critical pedagogy (CP) in Taiwan. This study integrates critical theory and emphasizes the necessity of examining the historical, political, social, and language education contexts. Respondents included 68 instructors and 265 college EFL students in Taiwan. This study used mixed-methods, which combined quantitative and qualitative data collection. The quantitative data used two instruments developed by the researcher: 1) the critical pedagogy inventory for instructors and, 2) the critical pedagogy inventory for students. The qualitative data were collected through interviews with six instructors and six student-focus …

An Exploratory Case Study On The Perspectives Of African American Men Pursuing A Career And Technical Education (Cte) Pathway At An Urban Community College In Illinois, Kimberly Kay Hollingsworth

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative case study explores the motivating factors that influence CTE pathway selection for African American men students and will investigate the interplay between two components of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), self-efficacy and outcome expectations, and their role in the career decision-making process. Drawing upon SCCT, this case study seeks to understand the decision-making process of African American men pursuing CTE programs at an urban community college in Illinois. This study further explored whether culture/race shapes the perspectives of African American men students and their decision to pursue a CTE pathway. Lastly, the study will investigate the types of …

Parental Smartphone Use And Parent-Child Interactions During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Giana G. Lagioia

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study explored parental smartphone usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as examined parents’ perceptions of technology interference in interactions with their young children, ages 0-5. The COVD-19 pandemic brought on far-reaching consequences for many children and families across the United States. Technology quickly began to play an important role during the pandemic to obtain public health information, promote coping, and provide social support. However, parents using a mobile device can cause them to become less responsive while in the presence of their child. Current studies have not adequately addressed parental smartphone usage and parent-child interactions during the pandemic. …

How Principals Influence, Facilitate, And Support Instructional Coaching Programs, Nadine Y. Norris

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative, multicase study examined how principals perceived the role of instructional coaches and how they facilitated, influenced, and supported teachers’ professional learning through the instructional coaching program. Including the researcher as a participant, 16 participants from three suburban school districts—including district-level administrators, principals, instructional coaches, and teachers—engaged in semistructured interviews. This study was framed by Desimone’s core conceptual framework for professional development and Spillane’s distributed leadership model. Data analysis revealed principals viewed instructional coaches as their partners in instructional leadership and professional learning facilitators. Principals facilitated and influenced the instructional coaching program by empowering teachers, promoting collaboration, and establishing …

Engagement Detection Using Prosodic Cues: An Approach For Measuring Child Emotional Engagement Level In Child-Robot Interaction Scenario, Mustafa Oztoprak

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The ultimate goal of advanced child-robot interaction is to develop a high-level intelligencecommunication channel in a closed-loop configuration with the child as the focal point of the instructional scenario. This goal can be met by establishing efficient sensing mechanisms on the robot’s side, such as automatic engagement measuring, which will allow the robot to alter its behavior or even the instructional scenario’s execution.Recent researches, regarding engagement recognition systems mostly based on facial or multi-modal features.We would like to investigate this topic using prosodic cues only. We believe speech characteristics are more likely to be related to child speaker engagement level.This …

Cadet Perceptions Of Learning Using Police Video Simulators, Stephen Francis Miko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The topic for this study was police cadet perceptions of learning using video simulators. The main research question for this project was: “How are video simulators perceived by police cadets as a learning method at the police academy?” The participants for this qualitative study were 16 recently graduated police cadets from an anonymous midwestern suburban police academy. They were chosen using purposive sampling based on their relevance as recently graduated cadets. The cadets were interviewed and the results in the study show the perceptions towards the use of simulators as a learning strategy were generally positive and the cadets thought …

Evidence-Based Decision Making In Elementary Schools: A Case Study Of How Districts Make Decisions When Implementing Foreign Language Programs, Danielle Elizabeth Moran

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Learning another language is considered a key 21st century subject, something that all students should begin in elementary school. However, most school districts in Illinois do not offer students the opportunity to learn another language in elementary school. There are effective and high quality programs available to learn another language that are also mutually beneficial to English learners (ELs). District leaders in charge of planning curricular programs have choices about which programs are offered and are tasked with considering the many needs of the districts they serve. The purpose of this study was to learn about the decision making of …

Case Study Of Elementary Teacher Perceptions Regarding Technology Integration In The Writing Curriculum, Dana Marie Robinson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative study focused on the perceptions three elementary school teachers had regarding their ability to integrate technology into the writing curriculum as well as their understanding of how technology and multimodalities can actually be integrated. The three teachers were asked to reflect on their technology use in teaching writing for a 12-week period. Each was selected based on their self-reported Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) as measured by a screening survey. In addition to these reflections, they were interviewed at the beginning, middle, and end of the study period. Data collection methods also included weekly lesson plan reflections …

“There Was Me Before Prp, And Then There Was Me After I Participated In Prp”: A Mixed-Methods Program Evaluation Of A Pharmacy Summer Pipeline Program, Cynthia Schaefer

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Nationwide, there has been a decline in the number of applicants to PharmD programs.

Additionally, there is a lack of diversity in the healthcare workforce that leads to inequitable healthcare for diverse populations of patients. As a result, various recruitment tactics, including pipeline programs, have been used to develop a larger, more diverse applicant pool to the College of Pharmacy at a regional satellite campus in the Midwest. The purpose of this mixed methods summative program evaluation was to examine the experiences of participants of a pipeline program hosted at a regional satellite campus for a pharmacy program to determine …

Perceptions Of Oppression, Emancipation, Empathy, And Participation In The Workforce, Matthew Smith

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Human resource development (HRD) is no longer about simply acquiring the skills needed to perform a task and is now a tool which can shape society and the ways in which we interact with one another. At the forefront of this transition are new ways of imagining HRD, including critical human resource development (CHRD) and critical management studies (CMS). This article examines the preconceptions learners bring with them into critical HRD programs. The study presented is an exploratory case study at an international organization with offices in the United States and Canada. Semi-structured interviews with six participants and a document …

Postsecondary Course-Taking And Academic Performance Of Transitional Math Completers: A Quantitative Study Of Students In Illinois, Gina Caronna

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This quantitative study investigated the academic outcomes of high school students from one community college district in Illinois who took a high school transitional math course designed to give them direct placement into a college-level math course. The goal of successful completion of a transitional math course is to allow students direct placement into college-level math courses. This study provides a correlational analysis of specific academic success metrics between students who took transitional math and those who did not at one Illinois community college. The sample for this study included 100 students who completed a transitional math course and 525 …

Preservice Teacher Socialization For Social Justice: Exploring Stances And Enactments Of Social Justice Pedagogies, Eric R. Junco

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This multicase study examined the socialization experiences of four preservice high school English teachers from four different Midwestern teacher education programs to understand how their acculturative and professional socialization experiences influenced their social justice beliefs. This study also examined how participants’ most salient social justice beliefs took shape within their social justice stances, mission-oriented approaches to enact social justice pedagogies like culturally responsive teaching, antiracist pedagogy, and culturally sustaining pedagogy within their classrooms. This study was framed by occupational socialization theory and critical race theory. Data were collected from the Learning to Teach for Social Justice Belief Scale, interviews, and …

Coming Off Mute: A Case Study Of Elementary Students' Perceptions Of Remote Learning During The Height Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Karen L. Ladendorf

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to understand how elementary students perceived their learning and engagement in a remote learning environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Five students elected to join the study with parental permission, ranging in grades 3rd – 5th. Interviews were conducted on Zoom with the students as well as their teachers and the students were observed during synchronous learning times.Data analysis identified three areas of themes: the remote learning experience, control and power struggles, and preferences for or against remote learning. Within the first area, the remote learning experience, students identified ways to personalize their …

Perspectives Of Power: Phenomenological Inquiry Exploring The Manifestation Of Power In Doctoral Programs, Sharazazi Dyson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The research questions guiding this study include: How do doctoral-level students or recent graduates of color within counselor education and supervision programs describe the manifestations of power in the context of their program and university? What experiences with power do counselor educators in training (CEITs) cite as memorable in their counseling program? A phenomenological-based approach was chosen to understand the experiences with power. Using purposive and criterion sampling methods, three participants were recruited and selected. Rich descriptions of participants’ experiences with power were obtained by conducting semi-structured interviews composed of open-ended questions. Using the modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method as described by …

“Not A Typical Adjunct”: Qualitative Case Studies Of Adjuncts Serving A Teacher Preparation Program, Rachel Lee Warren

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The teacher shortage in Illinois drives a need for robust teacher education programs. Simultaneously, changes in higher education have forced a dependence on adjunct instructors. While this provides an opportunity to have teacher candidates instructed by talented, accomplished current practitioners, adjuncting is a low-paid, exhausting job with little security. As adjuncts are predominantly women, this suggests the issue is gendered. In a descriptive case study of five adjuncts serving a teacher preparation program, findings show that adjuncts experiences gendered organizational practices through invisible and emotional labor as well as through interaction with the ideal worker norm.

“It Takes A Village”: Student Mothers’ Experiences With Barriers And Support While Navigating Community College, Jeanine Mcmillen

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Student parents may feel invisible on college campuses, especially student mothers, who often feel ignored and overlooked when institutional policies and practices are not tailored to their needs and challenges. These students are especially vulnerable to withdrawing from college, even in institutional contexts that boast a positive and welcoming climate for underrepresented students. Using validation theory with a critical lens as the guiding theoretical framework, this qualitative case study examined how student mothers at one community college navigate barriers and supports within and outside of the institution. Findings revealed three themes, indicating that student mothers must cobble together a village …

A Narrative Inquiry On The Leadership Of Latina Women Practitioners In Community Colleges, Cynthia Padilla-Gaytan

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation of practice explored the experiences of Latina women student affairs practitioners as they engage in leadership at community colleges. Guided by LatCrit, this study combined a narrative inquiry approach with the use of pláticas. Data was collected via interviews with five Latina women student affairs professionals. Through the use of pláticas, the findings narrates participants’ reflections on their experiences of navigating white, masculine leadership norms. Specifically, white, masculine norms of leadership led to Latina women not seeing themselves as leaders growing up and early in their careers. white, masculine norms of leadership also created barriers for when Latina …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Factors Contributing To Adult Education Students’ Transition To Credit Courses, Heather Martin

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Adult education programs serve students with low literacy and numeracy skills. They provide instructional services below the postsecondary level for students who have limited English proficiency and students who are working towards obtaining their high school equivalency. Once adult education students complete their programs, they may choose to transition to college credit courses or enroll in a job training program. This study examined student factors that impact the likelihood of adult education students transitioning to college credit courses. Stepwise regression was used to analyze five years of adult education data from over 3,000 students in an adult education program in …

Stories Of Teaching On A Conceal And Carry Stage: A Dramaturgical Narrative Inquiry, Christopher J. Miller

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The story of a mass shooting occurring on the place of school seems to be a common one in contemporary American cultural narrative. One of the more controversial solutions offered within this narrative is allowing citizens to protect themselves through the practice of conceal and carry. The practice of legally allowing individuals to conceal and carry a firearm while at the place of school and in the place of class is at the cornerstone of this research inquiry.

This qualitative research study employs a dramaturgical narrative approach to explore the daily lives of full-time community college faculty members. In figuratively …

Administrator Knowledge Of The First Amendment Rights In A School And How To Improve Legal Literacy Through Self-Efficacy, Stuart E. Wrzesinski

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the legal literacy of school administrators and the lack of mandated training regarding school law, specific to the First Amendment. With continual changes in education school administrators can function as the change agent for schools through the lens of self-efficacy. This dissertation is organized into three bodies of work. Paper 1 is a review of literature specific to legal literacy and First Amendment rights in schools. Additional research on self-efficacy theory is presented as a potential catalyst for increasing legal literacy in schools. Paper 2 documents data based on survey questions specific to legal literacy within the …

Parent-Oriented Perspectives Of Early Childhood Art Education: The Challenges And Strengths Of Out-Of-School Art Programs In Taiwan And The United States, Meng-Jung Yang

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Parents’ intentions and actions are crucial factors that influence young children’s early art learning experiences. By learning about parents’ perspectives and experiences related to art educators, art education, and placing their children in an out-of-school art program, researchers can gain an in-depth understanding of parents’ values about art education. Further, analysis of the parents’ attitude and resourcefulness about early childhood art education helps art educators develop positive communication with parents. The purpose of this research is to probe the contexts and experiences of parents in Taiwan and the United States when they place their children in an out-of-school art program. …

Promoting Personal And Social Responsibility In Higher Education, Karisa L. Kuipers

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation utilizes a three-paper approach to explore the topic of promoting personal and social responsibility (PSR) in higher education. Paper one is a conceptual piece that examines the alignment between the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model and PSR in higher education. The paper proposed a kinesiology-based framework (i.e., the TPSR model) to assist in defining, implementing, and evaluating PSR education with post-secondary students. The paper offered a general overview of the higher education landscape and then presented its alignment with the TPSR model. Recommendations for implementing the framework into higher education were shared, and challenges with integrating …

Student Perceptions Of Racial-Ethnic Socialization And Outcomes Across Race And Gender, Megan Gilbertson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In an increasingly diverse nation, calls for education that is culturally relevant has become salient, and student perceptions of school-based racial-ethnic socialization (SRE socialization) provides insight toward how cultural messages are being interpreted by students. Schools and educators that adopt culturally relevant pedagogy have been shown to benefit students, by increasing positive outcomes, such as grades, school attendance, and school belonging, while decreasing negative outcomes, such as school dropout. Culturally relevant practices have been increasingly included in teacher competencies and codified into law, though less is understood about how outcomes may be differential across racial groups and genders. The current …

Changing The Narrative Of Disengagement: Exploring Academic Identity Formation For Non-Ethno-European Students, Luis E. Lopez

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic and the changing demographics of the American identity have drawn attention to the necessity of reforming the Ethno-European education system to meet the needs of a diverse student population. If the educational landscape is to be transformed to meet the needs of a growing non-Ethno-European student population, more research is needed to explore factors that increase non-Ethno-European students’ academic engagement. This research attempted to identify individual and systemic factors contributing to non-Ethno-European students’ academic engagement during secondary education. This exploration began by outlining the role a cohesive identity continuum has on education engagement for non-Ethno-European students. Antecedent …

Administrator Impact: A Survey Of The Relationship Between Self-Efficacy, Mckinney-Vento Legal Literacy, And Program Effectiveness In Ensuring The Educational Stability Of Homeless Youth., Anthony J. Marinello

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The idea that K-12 building leaders should be legally literate in the elements which encapsulate their professional obligations is widely accepted. The degree, however, in which this concept holds true in contemporary systems of education represents an opportunity for further research. While a concrete definition of legal literacy remains up for debate, it has been conceptualized for the better part of half a century when discussions began on its fundamental need (Dunklee & Shoop, 1986). This need has been exacerbated in recent years as we continue to live in an increasingly litigious society. This dissertation examines legal literacy K-12 building …

Facilitating Equal Access For Disabled Students Who Are Incarcerated: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study Of Community Colleges' Disability Services In For-Credit Correctional Education Programs, Jenifer K. Montag

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Issues regarding the provision of accommodations for students with disabilities exist in both traditional college environments and nonstandard settings such as medical and legal education settings. While the situation is less than optimal for disabled students seeking degrees in the general population, who are unfettered in their academic pursuits, little is known about accommodations for disabled students who are incarcerated and enrolled in for-credit courses through community colleges that have partnerships with local prisons. This mixed methods study is focused on exploring the current state of accommodation service provision by public community college disability service providers for disabled students’ who …