Education Commons^™

Meaning And Spirituality In Adolescence : Practices And Perspectives Of School Counselors, Jill Elizabeth Schwarz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Adolescence is a crucial life stage involving aspects of identity development and decision-making that have potential life-long consequences. Researchers have found that a sense of meaning and purpose is related to a number of beneficial factors during adolescence, including resilience, healthy self-esteem, academic engagement, and overall well-being. Spirituality is a main avenue through which many individuals find a sense of meaning and purpose and may be one of the mediating factors between adolescent meaning-making and well-being. Despite this knowledge, there is a lack of research involving the use of meaning-based counseling in the schools. There is also evidence that students …

The Best Practices For Teaching Writing To Postsecondary Students With Acquired Brain Injuries, Julianne Candio Sekel

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Because the writing abilities of postsecondary students with acquired brain injuries (ABI) are often determined by the student’s age when the injury was acquired, the severity of the injury, the amount of time that has passed since the injury, and the quality of the student’s writing education before the injury, it is impossible to generalize the best strategies to assist students with ABI in writing. However, through a review of existing literature on teaching writing to students with ABI, the relationship between oral and written discourse, expressive writing, educational intervention, and assistive technologies, this study presents a list of recommendations …

Nuturing Global Citizenship Identity And Practice In Middle School Youth Through Development Of A Global Citizenship Community, Mark Bennett Hyman

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study explored the pedagogical lessons I learned as a global citizenship teacher-facilitator while attempting to cultivate global citizenship identity and practice among middle school youth within the context of a “global citizenship community” and its “action-learning initiative” to educate their local community and raise funds to sponsor construction of a high school in Ethiopia. As necessary background to this study, I introduce my conception of global citizenship and its practice, provide an extensive elaboration of those “global citizenship dispositions” that constitute my global ethic, and critique traditional service-learning methodology and terminology as a means of introducing my reconception of …

Stem(Ming) From Where? A Philosophical Analysis Of U.S. Mathematics Education Policies, Nataly Z. Chesky

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Much attention has been placed on mathematics education in U.S. education policy reform discourses. Most recently, the emphasis has been on connecting mathematics with science, technology, and engineering, termed The STEM Initiative. Although a great deal of research has been conducted to understand how to meet the objectives of STEM, studies are limited in their focus and rarely question the philosophical assumptions inherent in policies. This is a mistake since mathematics is a field of knowledge deeply entrenched in historical, cultural, and philosophical perspectives.

A content analysis study of mathematics education policy, this dissertation employs a philosophical perspective, influenced by …

Inquiry Based Dialogue In The Visual Art Classroom : Educating The Whole Child, Edward Charles Ruggieri

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

There are a number of problems in our current educational system, and as a society we realize that our educational system has to adapt in order to meet the needs of its people. In order to help the United States stay at the head of the class, language arts, mathematics have been stressed in schools, seen as the keys to a skilled, productive workforce. But with this emphasis, came an abundance of standardized testing and competition. Assessing students is vital to a quality education, but a problem arises when too much emphasis is placed on these two subjects that other …

Teaching Social Justice Mathematics In A Privileged Setting, Rick Mcnamee

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This practitioner action research using qualitative techniques of gathering data looks at the experiences of students in a mostly white, upper-middle class suburb who enrolled in a class that integrated mathematics with social justice issues. The researcher designed the curriculum and co-taught the one semester course. The data were collected from pre-interviews, beginning and end of class questionnaires, quick writes, field notes, and end of class focus group interviews with all the students. The author chose a practitioner action research design because he wanted to be an integral part of the study. The cyclical nature of action research allowed him …

Students' Meaning Of Power In Democratic Education, Mor Yorshansky

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

We live in an inequitable society. Despite our democratic governments and liberal democratic states, citizens do not enjoy their rights and do not carry their duties equally. This ought to not be so. Scholars of democracy claim that power mechanisms which allow privileged groups to prevail must be eradicated and participatory democracy, as it was envisioned, must be restored. Our public spheres should be replenished with active citizens arguing and shaping our common world. For many this important role can be only carried out through education and more particularly through democratic education. Proponents of democratic education claim that we must …

The Relationship Between Aspects Of Supervision And School Counselor Self-Efficacy, Daniel Cinotti

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The purpose of this study of school counselors was to examine the relationship between aspects of supervision and self-efficacy. Satisfaction with supervision, the presence of noncounseling supervisors, role conflict, and role ambiguity were examined in relation to school counselors’ feelings of self-efficacy. The study also included previously established individual factors related to school counselor self-efficacy including gender, years of experience, teaching experience, and training and use of the ASCA National Model. A multiple regression was used to create a predictor model for school counselor self-efficacy using these supervisory and individual factors. Supplemental analysis examined factors that predicted use of the …

Education For Democracy : Case Study On The Partnership Between Montclair State University And Kirovograd State Pedagogical University, Irina Viktor Koroleva

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The number of international collaborative projects between schools of higher education has grown dramatically during the past ten years (Knight, 2004). Collaboration helps teachers to grow professionally, increase personal confidence, and accordingly, improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning (Meadows & Saltzman, 2002). This finding, and my past experiences as a school teacher in Ukraine encouraged me to inquire into the area of Ukrainian school collaborations with the foreign schools during the times of post-Soviet transition.

This dissertation is a qualitative interpretive case study examining the achievements, perceptions, and challenges of the 1999-2002 partnership between Montclair State University (MSU) and …

Adult Sibling Grief In The Eleven Years After September 11, 2001, Vincent S. Vigilione

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This is a qualitative study probing the lived experience of 11 individuals (Siblings of 9/11) who lost their siblings in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The study is grief-oriented with a focus on 1) the journey of 11 years from the initial tragedy and loss; 2) the grief process relative to such a publicized and memorialized event; 3) the ambiguous nature of the loss as it pertains to the Siblings of 9/11 and 4) the mean-making these individuals have established over their 11 year journeys.

Main findings: 1) Ambiguity in the grief process was quite common in the …

Differences Between Concrete And Virtual Manipulatives In Preparing Tenth Grade Math Students For Standardized Tests, John G. Pappas

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Research has suggested that the use of manipulatives may enhance students’ grasp of mathematical concepts. Manipulatives may be concrete (physical) objects or virtual computer-based images of objects similar to their three-dimensional counterparts. Studies with elementary and middle-school students generally have found virtual manipulatives to outperform concrete manipulatives in enhancing students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics. However, very little research on manipulative use has been conducted with secondary school students. Furthermore, few studies have investigated instruction using virtual or concrete manipulatives across more than one content area.

This study assessed the impact of virtual and concrete manipulatives in a group of 164 …

Using The Clinical Interview As A Complementary Assessment For Minority Elementary Students To Determine Their In-Depth Understanding Of Mathematical Concepts, Nicola Elinor Crisp

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

While some African American students perform as well as or better than their White peers on standardized tests, African Americans as a group attain lower scores on standardized tests than their White peers. This phenomenon has been addressed extensively in educational research. However, not much empirical research has been conducted to investigate whether a complementary assessment, such as the clinical interview, would provide more information about African American students’ mathematical knowledge than a standardized test.

Qualitative clinical interview methodology was used to explore the performance of the student participants on the clinical interviews and on the standardized test as well …