Education Commons^™

The Combined Effects Of Parent And Teacher Involvement On The Development Of Adolescents' Academic Engagement, Nicolette Paige Rickert

Dissertations and Theses

The current dissertation includes two related studies designed to examine the combined effects of parent and teacher involvement on the development of adolescents' academic engagement as they transition to middle school. Previous studies have demonstrated the positive, individual effects of parent and teacher warm involvement on adolescents' engagement in school. However, this research is limited in its focus on only one social partner. Adolescent development is embedded within multiple, dynamic systems, necessitating the examination of both parent and teacher influences. The few studies that have examined parents and teachers together suggest that their combined effects are both cumulative (additive) and …

Middle East, North Africa, South Asia Initiative Report, Portland State University. Cultural Resource Centers, Wafaa Almaktari, Bo Koering, Kevin Thomas, Shanice Clark, Stacie Taniguchi, Cynthia Carmina Gómez

Cultural Resource Centers Reports and Resources

The Middle East, North Africa, South Asia (MENASA) Initiative was created to address a lack of resources and services to support the MENASA student population at Portland State University (PSU). Formed by a group of undergraduate and graduate MENASA students, and supported administratively by the Cultural Resource Centers, the MENASA Initiative is a student-centered effort with the goal of creating a MENASA Student Center to match the other five Cultural Resource Centers (La Casa Latina Student Center, the Multicultural Student Center, the Native American Student and Community Center, the Pacific Islander, Asian, and Asian American Student Center, and the Pan-African …

What Is A Learning Ecosystem?, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

During the past year, we've come to realize that the term learning ecosystem is widely used, but not usually defined or widely understood. Rather than taking the term for granted, we crafted this blog post to

• explore the origins of the term,

• discuss what it has come to mean, and its limitations

• explain how and why we are using the term in our study despite its limitations.

Family, School, And Forms Of Capital, Sonja Taylor

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation contains three separate but related papers, each with a different focus. In the three papers, I sought to gain a deeper understanding of how different forms of cultural and social capital appeared in the relationship between families and schools. The first paper covers an interview study exploring how teachers in elementary school understood and used email to facilitate partnership with parents, a form of social capital that has the potential to benefit families from all class backgrounds. The second paper investigates the relationship between socioeconomic status, bonding social capital and cultural capital; I tested whether social capital affected …

Barriers To Learning, Part 2, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

In this post we write about the dispositional barriers adult learners face, as well as how important perseverance and a positive mindset are when learning and changing one's career trajectory.

Do Corporate Owned Adaptive Learning Platforms Perpetuate Banking Style Learning? Integrating Technology For Activism Into Transformational Sustainability Education, Tina M. Garner

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

We live in a world that tends to be controlled by corporations. The public school system should be wary of the problems that corporate control has on education. Even though public schools should not have corporate influence, the fact remains that they do, and this perpetuates Freire's banking style learning. Through time, the corporate influence in education was through educational materials such as book sales. Since the decline of the use of books and the growth of the use of technologies, corporations have followed suit through the sales of Adaptive Learning Platforms. Through leveraging the technology which students enjoy using, …

The Relationship Between Undergraduate Research Training Programs And Motivational Resources For Underrepresented Minority Students In Stem: Program Participation, Self-Efficacy, A Sense Of Belonging, And Academic Performance, Jennifer Lindwall

Dissertations and Theses

Although calls for a more diverse workforce in biomedical fields have been widespread, racial and ethnic gaps in biomedical degree attainment persist. In order to succeed, URM STEM students must persevere despite numerous challenges and stay continuously motivated on the long road to degree attainment in biomedical disciplines. Past higher education research has identified two key self-appraisals, a sense of belonging and self-efficacy, as crucial for student success. These beliefs, which can serve as motivational resources for students, include students' convictions about whether they are a valued member of their academic community and whether they have what it takes to …

Masculinity In Fraternities: Impact On Campus Sexual Violence, Alisha K. Ram

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

The literature on fraternities and sexual violence has suggested that some fraternity members are more likely to adopt and maintain the values found in hegemonic masculinity (Sanday, 2007). This is significant as it can aid our understanding of how fraternities and hegemonic masculinity play a part in promoting and engaging in sexual violence. This paper investigates existing literature on masculinity and how hegemonic masculinity is enforced through fraternity participation. The literature review explores condoned behaviors and beliefs that endorse negative masculine values, which are fostered in the social fraternity lifestyle between brothers. Those values paired with the strong male social …

Barriers To Learning, Part L, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

This blog post is the first in a two-part series that focuses on barriers to learner participation and persistence in employersupported educational opportunities. In this framing of past research and reports, the 21 CLEO Research team draws on Margaret Patterson's categories of learning and persistence barriers as an analytic lens to situate literature reviewed in our landscape scan.

Relationship Between Empathy And Language Proficiency In Adult Language Learners, Mika Sakai

Dissertations and Theses

This study reviews concepts and the mechanism of empathy, and the relationship between empathy and language proficiency, focusing on the aspect of cognitive empathy. It also discusses whether empathy levels could be developed by learning language to a highly proficient level. I compared the empathy levels between high and low proficiency second-language learners to determine if there was correlation between empathy and other factors such as gender, studying abroad, education background, and usage of a second language. I found that there was no relationship between empathy level and language proficiency level; however, there was one between empathy and gender. For …

Engaging In A Rural Deaf Community Of Practice, Kara Gournaris

Dissertations and Theses

The number of students taking American Sign Language (ASL) at the post-secondary level continues to increase as more Deaf-related graduate programs and employment settings require fluent ASL skills. Western Oregon University (WOU) is one of the few existing programs in the United States that offers four years of ASL instruction; however, as a rural university it has limited access to a Deaf community. The problem of practice is that students often have little exposure to rich language models who are fluent in ASL, which impacts their legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) in the local Deaf communities of practice (CoPs) and reduces …

Cultivating A Community Of Resilience For Transgender Collegians Through The Practice Of Sustainable Leadership, Beau Gilbert

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

Transgender students have always existed in communities of higher education yet are just now beginning to be acknowledged and included within the context of academia. This has primarily led to the development of campus resource centers intended to protect these students and provide safe spaces on campus. While this is a crucial support system for universities to provide, the framework described herein envisions a future where transgender students can practice resilience and feel a sense of belonging anywhere within their college community. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, this paper highlights the need for a sustainable and campus-wide approach …

Simultaneous Bilingual Middle School Students Becoming Biliterate: What Do Students Think About Their Biliteracy As Taught Through The "Bridge" Strategy In A Humanities Dual Language/Immersion Class?, Alma Lucinda Diaz-Philipp

Dissertations and Theses

In response to the increasing number of United States school students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds at all grade levels, often called "simultaneous bilinguals," the U.S. school districts are opening schools that offer bilingual instruction. One instructional strategy that seems promising is the "Bridge," where students contrast and connect the literacy skills learned in one language to the literacy skills in their other language. An underlying component of learning a language is student attitude and motivation to learn. Research also seems to indicate that student attitude and motivation toward biliteracy can affect their achievement. There seems to be a …

Defining Employer Supported Learning Opportunities, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

The 21st Century Learning Ecosystem Opportunities (21Cleo) research team has been hard at work! In our last two blog posts, we reported on a field review of learning opportunities from a process perspective (how we chose the literature we reviewed) and from a product perspective (what we are learning from this literature).

Learning Opportunities Available To Frontline Workers, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

In our efforts to better understand the characteristics of learning opportunities available to frontline service workers, we've undertaken a comprehensive review of the work that has been published and distributed in the field. In our last post, we shared that we've collected and reviewed over 50 reports and publications from a variety of sources. This post focuses on our initial findings and insights from this review.

Gentrification And Student Achievement: A Quantitative Analysis Of Student Performance On Standardized Tests In Portland's Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Justin Joseph Ward

Dissertations and Theses

Across the United States one would be hard pressed to find an urban center that has been unaffected by the phenomenon known as gentrification. From substantial economic growth to the displacement of long-term residents, the benefits and criticisms of the process of gentrification are wide ranging and extend over a thorough body of literature. Commonly associated with increasing levels of education and higher resident incomes, gentrification should be a boon to struggling public schools that are continually plagued by generational poverty. Unfortunately, the continued widening of the education gap and increasing racial segregation in our public schools suggest that any …

What Works In Education In Emergencies: Co-Researching And Co-Authoring, Staci B. Martin, Vestine L. Umubyeyi

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of our paper is to explore how innovative community-based action approaches such as co-researching, co-authoring, and co-presenting with participants-as-researchers, can deepen our understanding of ‘what works’ in education in emergencies (EiE). Our paper will offer insight into how co-researching supports participants in their self-determination, agency and creates space for them to speak for themselves, something that is often missing in research.

Data Needs For Children With Special Needs In Refugee Populations, Serra Acar, Ozden Pinar-Irmak, Staci B. Martin

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the challenges that affect the identification and assessment of refugee children with special needs in Turkey and provides recommendations related to data collection and assessment of these learners that is broadly relevant in refugee settings.

21cleo Research Team Introduces Early Work At Coabe, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

21CLEO Research Blog Post No.05

21cleo Field Literature Review Process, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

The 21st Century Learning Ecosystems Opportunities (21 CLEO) project has embarked on a review of research that describes educational opportunities offered to frontline workers. Throughout the course of this review process, the project has been creating a list and description of the different types of opportunities offered. This field review will help us get a clearer picture of types of learning available and the range as well as their educational reach.

21cleo Research: Paving The Way Forward, Gloria Jacobs, Jill Castek

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

The exciting research into the 21st Century Learning Ecosystems Opportunities (21CLEO) project has begun. We have developed our initial set of data collection tools and protocols to examine front-line service workers' perspectives and experiences with employer provided education.

Building A Culture Of Inquiry: 1st Century Learningecosystem Opportunities Project, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

21CLEO Research Blog Post No.02

Introducing The 21cleo Project, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

21CLEO Research Blog Post No.01

The Role Of Teacher Autonomy Support Across The Transition To Middle School: Its Components, Reach, And Developmental Effects, Julia Sara Dancis

Dissertations and Theses

Building upon self-determination theory, this study sought to ascertain the reach of teacher autonomy support beyond its well-documented impact on student autonomy and engagement to include student competence and relatedness, as well as to parse apart specific teacher behaviors that comprise autonomy support (i.e., respect, choice, relevance, coercion) and their unique influences on the multiple motivational outcomes, surrounding the transition to middle school. These questions were examined using information from 224 fifth graders, 339 sixth graders, and 345 seventh graders attending elementary and middle schools in a predominantly Caucasian working and middle class school district.

Regression analyses, predicting change in …

Community-Engaged Teaching: Lessons From A Participatory History Project, Amie Thurber, Sarah V. Suiter

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

How can we create opportunities for students to gain experience in community-engaged scholarship that truly benefits the community given the constraints of the academic calendar, students’ varied capacity to develop reciprocal and responsive community relationships, and the tendency for community-engaged research to instrumentalize community partners in service to academic deliverables? This paper explores one attempt to meet this challenge: an experimental graduate course in community development that linked course content to a participatory history project. Designed as a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study, instructors studied the instructional process as well as outcomes for students and community partners. We …

Building The Case For Culturally Specific P-3 Strategies In Oregon: Listening To Voices From The Field, Callie H. Lambarth, Amanda Cross-Hemmer, Lorelei Mitchell, Beth L. Green, Kate Normand

Early Childhood

Oregon’s early learning and K-12 systems require transformative changes to address racial disparities in school readiness and success. Prenatal-through-Grade-3 (P-3) initiatives are an innovative way to align, strengthen and expand supports for this goal.

Culturally specific organizations (CSOs) are uniquely poised and expertly prepared to meet the needs of communities of color while helping Oregon achieve its goals for reducing disparities in kinder­garten readiness and other educational outcomes.

The proposed Early Childhood Equity Fund, which is included in the governor’s recommended 2019 budget, would move Oregon closer to eliminating the opportunity gap in kindergarten readiness and school success by investing …

How Much Do Emotional, Behavioral, And Cognitive Factors Actually Impact College Student Attitudes Towards English Language Learning? A Quantitative And Qualitative Study, Xin Zuo, Regina D. Weaver, Julia Macrae, Limin Wang

Intensive English Language Program Faculty Publications and Presentations

Researchers have proposed many multidimensional frameworks to identify significant and potential factors, e.g., educational background, positive feelings and career aspirations, that impact English learning attitude in second language acquisition. Yet, there is still very little research to graphically describe the interactions between these factors and how these factors directly or indirectly impact learning attitude. To this end, a questionnaire survey was conducted in Changchun University of Technology. Statistical measures and Bayesian network analysis were introduced to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the collected data. Furthermore, the significant attitudinal differences between students majoring in the Liberal Arts or Sciences were investigated for …

The Eloquent Letter, Daneen Bergland

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” The Eloquent Letter is an authentic, adaptable assignment for acquiring critical skills: identifying and researching social problems, examining value systems and diverse perspectives, communicating effectively, and proposing solutions based on common ground. Moving beyond traditional argumentation essays and debates, this project situates activism and writing “in its native habitat.”

Students identify and research a social problem or issue and write and send a persuasive letter, asking for specific action toward addressing the issue. This assignment is meant to assess DQP proficiencies in Broad and Integrative Knowledge, Intellectual skills, …