Education Commons^™

Journalism Through Learning Design, Geoff Decker

Capstones

Abstract

At its core, journalism is a civic enterprise with a mission to help citizens better understand their world and communities. Fulfilling this lofty mission in today’s digital media landscape poses new and evolving challenges, but it also presents a unique opportunity to reexamine the relationship between storytellers and their audiences. Advancements in the learning sciences in recent decades offer important insights into how the mind works. In teaching and learning, pedagogical experts and practitioners increasingly utilize these insights to refine and implement instructional strategies that increase student engagement, motivation, and learning. This capstone project aims to establish a framework …

Aprendizaje Remota: Cómo Dos Madres De Hijos Con Necesidades Especiales Están Lidiando Durante La Pandemia, Lisa Salinas, Arlyn Sorto

Capstones

Escuelas en todo el país cerraron sus puertas este año debido a la pandemia de coronavirus. Estudiantes, padres y maestros están viviendo una nueva realidad de clases a través de una pantalla. Para los estudiantes más vulnerables, incluyendo estudiantes con necesidades especiales, la aprendizaje remota ha sido especialmente difícil. Dos madres en la ciudad de Nueva York nos cuenta cómo están lidiando con sus hijos de necesidades especiales en medio de la pandemia, los obstáculos que están enfrentando, y cómo el departamento de educación ha fallado ha sus familias.

A Learning Nightmare For An Immigrant Family, Arlyn J. Sorto

Capstones

Just two years after settling in Texas, a Honduran mother and her two kids must grapple with the hardships of remote learning due to limited access to the internet and a language barrier during a global pandemic.

Federation Divided, Max M. Balton

Capstones

At the start of the 2020 school year, a lack of covid safety plans led teachers like Rosy Clark to protest, urging her union the United Federation of Teachers to act. She and other progressives in the dissident caucus, Movement of Rank and File Educators, were willing to strike to ensure their safety. Union leadership hesitated largely because public union strikes are illegal under the state’s Taylor Law.

This four-part audio documentary looks at the history of the UFT and this contentious state law. The union began striking under more onerous strike prohibition legislation. Its roots are steeped in radical …

The Long Return, Diane Bezucha

Capstones

When COVID-19 hit New York in March 2020, the city’s 1,800 public schools were forced to make a sudden pivot to remote instruction. The scramble to transition 1.1 million students to online learning brought unprecedented challenges for principals, teachers, students and families, leaving everyone eager for a return to “normal.”

For schools in low-income neighborhoods, and those serving students with disabilities, this disruption has been especially difficult. But as the months passed, it became clear that the pandemic was not ending anytime soon. Without clear guidance from the city, schools grappled with the uncertainty of how to safely reopen, and …

"Revolution", Noelle Lilley

Capstones

When faced with gun violence in 1990s Canarsie, one 17-year-old carried his community on his back. “Revolution” chronicles the rise and fall of the Canarsie arts youth-led movement, Team Revolution, and the man at the center of it all: Divine Bradley.

Early Prison Releases And Hotel Placements Produce Unexpected Outcomes During The Pandemic, Buzz Von Ornsteiner

Capstones

The transition from prison to the harsh realities of New York City is seldom easy. Finding employment and housing is always a huge challenge but in 2020 COVID-19 has shadowed the incarcerated. As returning New Yorkers, their stories are unique. Ironically, the added obstacles they face have also brought them benefits in the form of the housing they need to survive during a deadly pandemic.

Early Prison Releases And Hotel Placements Produce Unexpected Outcomes During The Pandemic, Buzz Von Ornsteiner

Capstones

The transition from prison to the harsh realities of New York City is seldom easy. Finding employment and housing is always a huge challenge but in 2020 COVID-19 has shadowed the incarcerated. As returning New Yorkers, their stories are unique. Ironically, the added obstacles they face have also brought them benefits in the form of the housing they need to survive during a deadly pandemic.

Thrown Off Course: School Suspension And Its Consequences For Students’ Educational Trajectories And Outcomes, Celina Cuevas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose: The literature on exclusionary school discipline has repeatedly documented disparities in its use and its relationship to various negative outcomes, causing the use of suspensions to become a pressing concern in the United States. The goal of this dissertation is to add this body of literature by being the first to examine the educational trajectories youth take after first being suspended, and how the effect of school punishment on trajectories may be more severe for subgroups of students disproportionately affected by school discipline and often underserved in school settings.

Methods: New York City Department of Education data is used …

Overcoming Challenges In The Assessment And Treatment Of Problem Behavior In Adults With Autism, Julia A. Iannaccone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Problematic behaviors, such as self-injurious behavior or aggression, demonstrated by adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), create many significant life complications, some life-threatening. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is established as an evidence-based approach to treat problem behavior for children with ASD and shows promise as an effective treatment for adults, yet little research has been conducted within the adult population. Assessment and treatment of problem behavior with adults is often challenging due to funding limitations, increased severity and complexity of problem behavior, and underqualified staff. The purpose of the present study was to overcome these challenges by (1) identifying a …

“The Little Seed And The Wind”: Digital Intervention Tool For Geography And Empathy, Maritha Pocorni-Humphries

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Educational researchers agree that there is an absence of student engagement in our primary education institutions. They also acknowledge that learner engagement could enhance their overall behavior. What could be done to promote learning, involve students and sustain their motivation? Why should we admit that students tend to show more involvement and engagement during digital interactivity? This paper describes my motivation behind my designed digital geographical educational intervention tool which in a playful way introduces and teaches 4- and 5-years old children the seven continents and the seven oceans. Drawing on the underpinning concept of game-based learning theory my framework …

Understanding Gender Differences In Traditional And Cyberbullying: An Evaluation Of Construct Validity Of The 2013 School Crime Supplement To The National Crime Victimization Survey, Anthony Betancourt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Few measures assess cyberbullying and traditional bullying simultaneously while also reporting standards of reliability and validity. As a result, it remains unclear whether cyberbullying should be considered a separate type of bullying. This dissertation advances the literature by examining data from the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS-SCS) to provide psychometric information about the factor structure of the 2013 NCVS-SCS traditional and cyberbullying scales. Furthermore, the dissertation uses that information to evaluate if cyberbullying emerges as a unique factor. Finally, measurement invariance will determine if bullying holds the same meaning for boys and girls (e.g. …

Doing Discipline Different: Evaluating The Implementation Of Restorative Justice As An Alternative To Punitive Discipline In New York City Public Schools, Virginia Diaz-Mendoza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given that punitive discipline practices have disproportionately impacted its poor students of color, New York City is committed to transforming school discipline and improving school climate by implementing restorative justice as an alternative. This study is an evaluation of the restorative justice pilot program funded by the New York City Council and managed by the New York City Department of Education where key stakeholders including officials at the Department of Education, school administrators, educators, school staff, and community organizations are involved in the implementation of restorative justice in schools with high suspension rates. Data was collected through interviews, observations of …

Reflections On The Eating Of Bologna Sandwiches: A Memoir, Benjamin M. Raphael

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reflections on the Eating of Bologna Sandwiches is a memoir project intended to give light to my experiences teaching in a small public school located in the South Bronx. These experiences are directed to a general “second” person who takes the form of “you” and is intended to act as a general stand-in for the student population of this school, similar to the “you” used by James Baldwin in his seminal work “My Dungeon Shook”. This “you” is meant to breakdown the wall between the reader and the student population, allowing one to occupy another and in the process develop …

A Plan For Democratic Public Schooling, Diana Concepcion

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses concerns within inner-city public schools while restructuring how we facilitate learning in our school buildings. It provides an overview of continued research on challenges faced in public schools including reform policy (testing and curricular changes), privatization, day-to-day structures and how they impact the academic and social-emotional development of our students. By examining our current designs and policies, we are able to identify why and how these systems have not been beneficial to our students, and we are able to find basic solutions in supporting the holistic needs of our students. This project proposes a school plan which …

How Should Context-Dependent Words Be Taught To Beginning Readers?, Abigail M. Turner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined three different instructional methods for teaching beginners to read context-dependent words. Two types of context-dependent words were taught: irregular past tense verbs and function words. The words were embedded either in scrambled contexts or in meaningful sentence contexts. Three different instructional conditions to teach the words were compared. In the Meaningful Context condition, students studied the target words embedded in meaningful sentences. In the Scrambled condition, students studied target words placed in scrambled word sequences. In the Combination condition, students studied target words in both types of contexts that were alternated across learning trials. Participants were 53 …

Translanguaging About, With, And Through Code And Computing: Emergent Bi/Multilingual Middle Schoolers Forging Computational Literacies, Sara Vogel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As computing pervades more aspects of life, and as Computer Science for All (CS for All) initiatives roll out across the U.S., the field must understand the experiences and language practices of emergent bi/multilingual K-12 students and use that knowledge to drive equitable pedagogical and programmatic approaches. But little is known about how emergent bi/multilingual students — a growing population that school systems have often viewed with deficit-based lenses and have thus struggled to educate equitably — use language in the context of CS education. This dissertation addresses this gap by (1) qualitatively documenting and using asset-based frames to analyze …

Misuse Of Social Behavior In Down Syndrome: Caregiver Conducted Functional Analysis, Sally M. Izquierdo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Young children with Down syndrome often engage in charming non-contextual social behaviors. The developmental literature suggests that non-contextual social behaviors may function to escape from difficult activities to preferred social interactions. Caregivers may reinforce the behavior, perceiving it as evidence of the child’s social strength, when in fact, the pattern of behavior may also contribute to missed learning opportunities and a developmental gap between children with Down syndrome and their typically developing peers. We investigated the pattern by subjecting it for the first time to functional analyses. We identified non-contextual social behavior, confirmed function(s) of escape to attention, and compared …

Being And Becoming: Voice And The Performance Of Self By Black And Brown Women Members Of An Educational Space Organized In Whiteness, Anamaria Correa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation joins the voices of experiences of Black and Brown individuals in elite white spaces of independent schools. As a qualitative research project this study utilizes narrative, I Poems, and art-ifacts to create an ecology of experiences illustrating the past and the resiliency of the present. This research disrupts status quo narratives of lauded diversity efforts of excellent private school education and is a call to action for accountability in anti-racist owning up and restructuring of independent school spaces, leadership, governance and cultural practices. Undergirded by Critical Race Feminist Theory as the theoretical framework this dissertation presents the intersectional, …

Grassroots Tales: Journeys Of Inward Healing And Outward Movement Building – “A Story Of Youth Development And Healing”, Andrew Cory Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rooted in Liberation Psychology epistemology, this dissertation was engaged to liberate myself as well as psychology. Positing Healing Justice and Sociopolitical Development as theoretical guides, this dissertation explored a community specific approach of radical healing to develop urban youth’s abilities to sustain (build) spirit and collective hope for grassroot movement building. This dissertation asks, what are the possibilities of bringing urban youth (n=9) together who shared similar realities, dared to dream together (i.e., think tank), and turn those dreams into a Grassroot Movement Building?

The methodological praxis of this dissertation project was politically and theoretically situated to study learnings at …

Examining The Effects Of Reflection On Professional Identity Development In Community College Preservice Teachers, Delia Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Grounded in the constructivist theories of Dewey (1963) with learning situated as reflective practice, the study explored the impact of guided written reflection on levels of reflection, commitment to teaching and professional identity for community college preservice teachers enrolled in their first fieldwork course in a teacher education program.

Participants in the treatment group received instruction on levels of reflection using Nickel’s (2013) Levels of Deep and Surface Learning. Pre/posttest results were collected using three measures: Reflection Questionnaire (Kember & Leung, 2000), Professional Identity Status Questionnaire - PISQ-5d (Mancini, 2015), and Commitment to Teaching Scale (Van Huizen, 2000). Researcher-designed …

Black Parental Involvement In A Suburban School District, Walter L. Fields

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the historic decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Black parents in the United States have been in a continual search for public school districts in which their children would receive an education that would allow them to be productive citizens and economically self-sufficient. From the period of the Great Migration to present day, the movement of Blacks in America has been driven by a quest for opportunity. Black parents have made tremendous sacrifices in the hope of securing a good education for their children, including movement away from families, longtime …

The Reproductive Health And Academic Impact Of The New York City School-Based Health Center Reproductive Health Project For Adolescents, Michelle Silverio

Dissertations and Theses

Background: Gaining an understanding of how school reproductive health policies impact adolescent sexual health and academic outcomes is a public health priority in the United States (U.S.) since it has the highest rates of adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections among developed nations. Adolescence is a critical developmental period and influences in this period affect reproductive health and social well-being over a person’s entire lifespan. Almost all adolescents spend the majority of their time in school settings; therefore local school reproductive health policies may have substantial lifetime impacts. Policies such as providing comprehensive sexual health education and contraceptive access in …

Measuring Preschool Parents’ Attitudes Towards Science: Development And Psychometric Evaluation Of A Parent Version Of The Dimension Of Attitudes Towards Science Instrument., Alexandra E. Adair

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Presently, no measure or theoretical framework exists for preschool parents’ attitudes towards science. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a measure of preschool parents’ attitudes towards science with a corresponding theoretical framework, as well as explore related constructs. To develop the measure, I adapted Wendt and Rockinson-Szapkiw’s (2017) English translation of van Aalderen-Smeets & Walma van der Molen’s (2013) Dimensions of Science (DAS) scale by making it appropriate for use with preschool parents.

The Preschool Parents Dimensions of Science Scale (PP-DAS) was pilot tested and revised before being administered to 330 preschool parents in the United …

Positioning And Repositioning: Transnational Identity (Re) Construction And (Re) Negotiation By American-Senegalese Children, Aminata Diop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The main aim of this dissertation is to study the ways American-Senegalese children position and reposition themselves as they (re) construct and (re) negotiate their transnational identity upon returning to the U.S. from Senegal. This project explores the following questions: 1) why do US-residing Senegalese parents send their children back to their homeland to be raised by relatives? 2) how do these American-Senegalese children (re) construct and (re) negotiate their multiple layers of identities upon returning home after being raised by extended family members for more than a decade?3) and how do the American-Senegalese children (re) story their racial, class, …

Economics Of Higher Education Productivity, Uchenna K. Oparah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How does spending affect academic outcomes in higher education institutions? Postsecondary schools incur costs to provide services to its student body. In this study, I introduce multiple outcome variables, a two-stage production function, and current-year expenditures on core services to evaluate how school spending affects academic outcomes.

The empirical analysis includes 28 group sample parameter estimates from four outcome variables, the pooled sample, and group samples for each of six sectors. The fixed effects/instrumental variable (FE-IV) instructional expenditure parameter estimates were positive for 20 of the 28 group samples. The sign and size of the estimated academic output effects varied …

Parental Shared Reading Intervention: Examining The Effects Of Structured Parental Reading Training On Vocabulary Acquisition In Children Undergoing Treatment For Leukemia, Sabina Bragg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children diagnosed with leukemia often fail to progress academically, even falling behind due to hospitalizations and prolonged treatment protocols. Naturally, their medical challenges take priority over all other issues, though eventually absences from school place them at risk for academic deficits after the completion of treatment (Tsimicalis et al., 2018). As well, the neurotoxicity associated with chemotherapy damages their central nervous systems, exacerbating school related problems (Lewis et al., 2010). Since the survival rate for children with leukemia has improved dramatically in recent years, intervention aimed at ameliorating these problems has potent benefits. The current study compared structured and unstructured …

The Objectives Of Public Higher Education In New York City Through The Lens Of Language, John-Nicholas Parker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper displays the objectives of public higher education in New York City and their relation to changes in the city. Public higher education in New York City relies on the support of the public. This paper details adjustments to the lexicon of the school in response to changing demographics and historical events by examining statements provided by the school during different periods. Changes to the lexicon relating to class, gender, race, ethnicity, and military service are examined in relation to their historical context. Sources examined in this paper include commission reports, student newspapers, and mission statements. The paper finds …

Learning To Fail? Student Experiences In Remedial Mathematics In Community Colleges, Margaret P. Fay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Referral to remedial coursework in mathematics is a significant barrier to degree attainment for community college students, which in turn has serious consequences for their employment and earning prospects. Students are placed into remediation when they are deemed unprepared to engage in college-level coursework, most often based on a score on a placement test. Nationally, 59% of community college students are placed into remedial math courses. Of these, only 49% complete remediation and gain access to college-level coursework. Because a college-level math course is often a degree requirement, many students who fail to complete remedial math courses are forced to …

Teaching Children To Decode Words: Connected Versus Segmented Phonation, Selenid M. Gonzalez-Frey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two methods of decoding instruction were compared. Kindergartners who could not decode nonwords participated in the study, N = 38, M = 5.6 years. Segmented phonation, frequently used in synthetic phonics programs, taught students to convert graphemes to phonemes by breaking the speech stream (“sss – aaa – nnn”) before blending. Connected phonation taught students to pronounce phonemes without breaking the speech stream (“sssaaannn”) before blending. Kindergartners were matched and randomly assigned to the two conditions. Both groups were taught to decode the same set of CVC nonwords consisting of continuant consonants and vowels that could be stretched and connected …