Education Commons^™

Implementing A Qep That Encompasses All Campuses In A Varied Focused Distributed University, Kelly Whealan George, Aaron Clevenger

Publications

No abstract provided.

"I'M Not Allowed To Write About That In School But At Home I Can": Examining Elementary School Students' Attitudes Toward Writing Instruction, Anna H. Hall, Ysaaca Axelrod

Publications

Research on writing indicates that children’s attitudes about writing have an impact on their writing achievement (Knudson, 1995; Graham, Berninger & Fan, 2007). At the same time, we see the narrowing of curricular practices, especially in literacy, giving children less input into their educational experience and fewer choices about how and what they are learning (Genishi & Dyson, 2012). The purpose of this study was to examine children’s attitudes towards writing and the experiences that have shaped these attitudes and their identities as writers. We conducted grade level focus group interviews with children in an elementary school to learn more …

Examining Elementary School Students' Attitudes Toward Writing, Anna H. Hall, Ysaaca D. Axelrod

Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine elementary students' attitudes towards writing and experiences that have shaped their identities as writers. Through grade level focus group interviews, we learned more about how children’s writing attitudes develop over time and how these factors can be used to improve instructional practices.

Physics Portfolios: A Picture Of Student Understanding, Brooke A. Whitworth, Randy L. Bell

Publications

Traditionally, teachers assess students' physics understanding through lab activities, responses to open-ended word problems, and tests. But there's another way to measure student understanding, one in which students apply their learning to the world around them. This article shows how to implement student portfolios, which allow students to set goals they can monitor throughout the year and actively participate in assessment. When students build portfolios, they can evaluate and reflect on their own work, promoting engagement with the course and content (Danielson and Abrutyn 1997), and teachers can better assess students' goal movement and see growth in students' conceptual understanding. …

Take Creative Action With Data! Two Pilot Programs Lead The Way, Kenyae L. Reese, Jane Clark Lindle, Hans Klar, Rob Knoeppel

Publications

Assessments! Standards! Formative Feedback! Value-added! Such jargon creates swarms of "EduSpeak" related to school data. Common Core Standards (CCS) along with the recently adopted South Carolina Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waivers add yet more jargon to the list. Do any of these terms lead to better teaching and learning?

Report On Consultation Carried Out By The Gda Leading To A Draft Strategic Plan, Grangegorman Development Agency

Publications

This Consultation Report outlines all consultation which has taken place up to this point in the development of the draft Strategic Plan and will be a document in constant development as the project progresses. It has been completed in order to clearly demonstrate the GDA’s commitment to involving all stakeholders in the project and to allow everyone to understand how this is carried out following best practice procedures. It is our intention to continue in this manner until the full completion of the Grangegorman project.

The four reports are:

*Draft Strategic Plan Consultation Report

*Sample Information Poster

*Report on Autumn …

Consultation Workshops, Grangegorman Development Agency

Publications

During May 2008 a consultation afternoon was held at which there was a discussion about the issues raised in Autumn of 2007. A response document to the consultation afternoon was prepared and is now available.

A series of Consultation Workshops was run during the latter half of 2007 and a report on the findings from these workshops has been produced .

Includes Five Workshops:

*Response on Issues Raised in Autumn 2007 Workshops

*Final Report

*Staff Report

*Students Union Report

*Students Report

Strategic Development Zone Reference Documentation, Grangegorman Development Agency

Publications

Reports :

*Tree Survey

*Waste Management Strategy

*Wet Services Assessment – Technical Note

*Flood Risk Assessment

*DIT student response report

*GDA Briefing Paper for submissions

*Consideration by the GDA following calls for submissions in respect of preparing a draft Strategic Plan

Environmental Agency In Read-Alouds, Alandeom W. Oliveira, Patterson Rogers, Cassie F. Quigley, Denis Samburskiy, Kimberly Barss, Seema Rivera

Publications

Despite growing interest in helping students become agents of environmental change who can, through informed decision-making and action-taking, transform environmentally detrimental forms of human activity, science educators have reduced agency to rationality by overlooking sociocultural influences such as norms and values. We tackle this issue by examining how elementary teachers and students negotiate and attribute responsibility, credit, or blame for environmental events during three environmental read-alouds. Our verbal analysis and visual representation of meta-agentive discourse revealed varied patterns of agential attribution. First, humans were simultaneously attributed negative agentive roles (agents of endangerment and imbalance) and positive agentive roles (agents of …

Research Is A Partner In Forward Focused Time, Mary Kathleen Gorman, Rita I. Herron

Publications

"The complexities of modern society and the dynamic forces of progress necessitate that professionals in every discipline be forward-focused, which is believed to come from gaining higher education. This is becoming standard within the fire and emergency services professions and is commonly a factor regarding upward mobility. With that in mind, the U.S. Fire Administration/National Fire Academy (NFA) developed the Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE) recognition certificate…"

A Hearty Handshake: Improving Collaboration Between Admissions Officers And Registrars, Robert Boggs, Linda Dammer, Edward Trombley, Melanie Winter

Publications

It is revolutionary for many admissions directors and registrars to consider that they might work together as allies. At the risk of oversimplifying, admissions department staff often are considered the "quantity" people, trying to seat as many applicants as possible and so putting the need for student numbers over the need to find the best applicants whose education-related goals "fit" the particular institution. By contrast, registrar's office staff often are cast as the "quality" people-those who spend their days combing through arcane university policy manuals seeking reasons to disqualify the applicants admissions staff have advanced.

Product Review: Goodreader Or Pdf Reader Pro: Which Is Better For Reading And Annotating?, Laura Pope Robbins

Publications

Laura Pope Robbins is an advisor for The Charleston Advisor, and the comparative review below is included in Scholarly Commons with the permission of the publisher.

Today’s researchers are extremely mobile and are looking for ways to read and annotate documents when not in their offices. GoodReader and PDF Reader Pro are two apps that provide that capability for iPad users. Both apps can read multiple file formats and provide file management tools like rename, move, and delete. As well, they can both be linked to multiple cloud services to upload and download files. Neither app is integrated with an …

Exploring Interactive Writing As An Effective Practice For Increasing Head Start Students' Alphabet Knowledge Skills, Anna H. Hall, Michael D. Toland, Jennifer Grisham-Brown, Steve Graham

Publications

The current study used a pretest–posttest randomized control group design with 73 Head Start students, ages 3–5 years. The researcher served as the interactive writing teacher for the treatment group, rotating to five different classrooms in one Head Start center 3–4 days a week for 13 weeks. Children in the treatment group received a 10–15 min interactive writing lesson each day in small groups within their own classroom settings. Children in the control group received standard literacy instruction in small groups with their own classroom teachers. Child outcome data on upper case, lower case, and letter sound identification were collected …

Gaise In Discipline-Specific Courses, Beverly Wood

Publications

While acknowledging the diverse setting, audience, and purpose of introductory courses, existing research assumes that courses offered by different disciplines share the same goals and teaching practices. The purpose of this study is to examine the objectives for student outcomes and pedagogical delivery of introductory statistics courses designed for students in a specific major, providing explicit evidence for this assumption.

The American Statistical Association’s Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) are meant to apply to all introductory courses. The College Report’s Goals for Students and Recommendations for Teaching are used as a framework for a qualitative study …

Taxation And Education: Using Educational Research To Inform Coherent Policy For The Public Good, Robert Knoeppel, David A. Pitts, Jane Clark Lindle

Publications

In 2006, following a 30-year trend among the US states to remove the property tax from the revenue for public schools, the South Carolina General Assembly enacted Act 388 which replaced the property tax with a one-cent sales tax. The law decreased the budget capacity of school districts thus impacting educational equity and adequacy. This paper describes key policy makers’ and stakeholders’ interpretations of the pressure for property tax relief and highlight the importance of policy coherence in education finance, taxation, and accountability.

Connecting To Our Community: Utilizing Photovoice As A Pedagogical Tool To Connect College Students To Science, Kristin Cook, Cassie F. Quigley

Publications

In this study, we investigated the ways in which university students connected with science through the use of photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1994) as a pedagogical tool. Results indicated that students came to appreciate their connections to the science that operates in their lives as they reflected on and became empowered with regard to the science content behind environmental issues of interest to them on campus. Photovoice allowed students to authentically inquire about local science, as well as the potential to generate change in their own community. This understanding is significant to science educators because first, it empowers learners to …

“Can You Hear Me Now?” Technology As A Problem-Solving Tool, C. C. Bates

Publications

No abstract provided.

Confronting Persistent Challenges Through Research-Based Programming For Experienced School Leaders, Jane Clark Lindle, Kenyae L. Reese, Matthew Della Sala, Hans W. Klar, Robert C. Knoeppel

Publications

This paper’s thesis of human agency derived from the South Carolina Successful School Principalship Project’s (SCSSPP) findings. In these schools, principals had leveraged a variety of schoolwide initiatives to enact the vision that all students would be successful despite their rurality and poverty. These findings were the underlying design for two regional cross-district pilot programs. Known as Leadership 2.0 and Leadership 3.0, the development of agency was constructed through cognitive coaching and based on principals of adult learning. Initial evaluation of participants' first year reactions show consistently high perceptions of all aspects of the principals used for their professional learning.

Test Review: J. L. Wiederholt & B. R. Bryant. (2012). Gray Oral Reading Tests—Fifth Edition (Gort-5). Austin, Tx: Pro-Ed., Anna H. Hall, Rory P. Tannebaum

Publications

The first edition of the Gray Oral Reading Tests (GORT, 1963) was written by Dr. William S. Gray, a founding member and the first president of the International Reading Association. The GORT was designed to measure oral reading abilities (i.e., Rate, Accuracy, Fluency, and Comprehension) of students in Grades 2 through 12 due to the noteworthy advantages this type of assessment has over silent reading assessments (e.g., ability for the examiner to analyze miscues and identify an individual’s ability to make letter–sound correspondences). Through the years, revisions of the GORT were published in 1986 (GORT-R), 1992 (GORT-3), and 2001 (GORT-4). …

Involving Families In The Assessment Process, Julie Rutland, Anna H. Hall

Publications

Although grounded in theory and philosophy, and mandated by federal legislation, there is often a gap in research to practice when it comes to involving families in the assessment process. As family involvement through the continuum of early childhood education is recognized as “best practice”in the field, the assessment process must not be excluded. However, teachers in early childhood programs may need additional strategies to invite families to join in the process. Strategies for parent participation as consumers,informants, team members, and advocates are discussed as well as outcomes for children and families.

Obstacles To Developing Digital Literacy On The Internet In Middle School Science Instruction, Jamie Colwell, Sarah Hunt-Barron, David Reinking

Publications

Obstacles, and instructional responses to them, that emerged in two middle school science classes during a formative experiment investigating Internet Reciprocal Teaching (IRT), an instructional intervention aimed at increasing digital literacy on the Internet, are reported in this manuscript. Analysis of qualitative data revealed that IRT enabled students to explain and demonstrate appropriate strategies for locating and evaluating information on the Internet when they were asked to do so. However, students did not use these strategies or they quickly abandoned them when working independently or in small groups during inquiry projects. Data revealed three obstacles that inhibited efforts to promote …

Design Of A Professional Practice Simulator For Educating And Motivating First-Year Engineering Students, Naomi C. Chesler, Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, Cynthia M. D'Angelo, Elizabeth A. Bagley, David Williamson Shaffer

Publications

Increasingly, first-year engineering curricula incorporate design projects. However, the faculty and staff effort and physical resources required for the number of students enrolled can be daunting and affect the quality of instruction. To reduce these costs, ensure a high quality educational experience, and reduce variability in student outcomes that occur with individual design projects, we developed a simulation of engineering professional practice, NephroTex, in which teams of students are guided through multiple design-build-test cycles by a mentor in a virtual internship. Here we report on the design process for the virtual internship and results of testing with first-year engineering students …

Teacher's Toolkit: Differentiating Inquiry, Brooke A. Whitworth, Jennifer L. Maeng, Randy L. Bell

Publications

Differentiated instruction and teaching science as inquiry are two pedagogical approaches frequently discussed among science teachers. Teachers know these approaches are important but often have difficulty translating them into their classroom science instruction. This article describes how to differentiate a density investigation for variations in student readiness by varying the level of inquiry using an approach that is easily translated to experiments in any science content area.

Students' Perceptions Of Student Evaluation Of Teaching (Set) Process, Ale J. Hejase, Rana S. Al Kaakour, Leila A. Halawi, Hussin J. Hejase

Publications

Researchers have mixed views about Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) as means to evaluate teaching where some agreed and others viewed SET as being biased. This study aims to measure students’ perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of the evaluation process in Lebanon. A survey questionnaire was administered to students from five Lebanese universities. Findings revealed that students were positive and perceived the evaluation process as effective and appropriate to evaluate teaching. Students identified students’ perceptions, instructors’ behavior, and course characteristics as variables that may impact the process. Results and implications were discussed for future research.

Evolving: Using Science Fiction To Engage Students In Evolutionary Theory, Chad Rohrbacher

Publications

Evolutionary biology is not well-understood by a majority of the population. Many misperceptions and misconceptions exist as well as outright resistance to the theory. Various teaching and learning strategies have been tried in an attempt to involve students in exploring the theory, with mixed results. The use of science fiction to engage students in this area has been sparse, and virtually no quantitative assessment of learning with the method has been done. Using Origins, an anthology based on evolution, we created an interdisciplinary teacher’s resource manual that will be offered free to teachers. This paper examines some of the difficulties …