Education Commons^™

The Compass, Summer 2024

The Compass, 2018-

The Compass is an annual orientation guide for VCU students produced by the Student Media Collective in the VCU Student Media Centered. The guide is distributed physically during summer orientation sessions for new and transfer students. The publication includes short articles, illustrations, letters of welcome from students and administrators, comics, and advertisements from VCU and Richmond organizations.

Understanding Engineering Design Fixation For K-12 Education, Sopheak Seng, William S. Walker Iii

Indiana STEM Education Conference

Design fixation is a distinct and established research topic at a post-secondary level which has shown that practitioners of engineering in any capacity (e.g., K-12 students, engineering students, college professors, or professional engineers) can experience fixation. Some research has shown that elementary and secondary students exhibit signs of design fixation while working on engineering design challenges (Luo, 2017; Mentzer et al., 2015). This research brief provides a definition of design fixation, describe fixation in the K-12 classroom, and suggest additional needed research.

Does Stem Integration In High School Mathematics Classes In Underserved Schools Benefit Students' Standardized Testing Outcomes?, Steve Heinold

Indiana STEM Education Conference

STEM education in Indiana has become increasingly popular with, among many other factors, the recent focus by the Indiana Department of Education on the STEM workforce pipeline and school STEM certification (IDoE, 2023b). Some previous research has shown that integrating STEM into science classes and afterschool spaces has helped students from low-income communities catch up to their higher-income peers on assessments like high-stakes standardized testing (Bartell et al., 2008; Hurley, 2001; Weissglass, 2011). However, regarding STEM integration into mathematics classes, it can be more challenging than integration into other classes like science (Walker, 2016) and large gaps remain in the …

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 42.3.

From Fixed To Growth: How A Mindset Transforms Student Learning, Andrew Fabo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Placing labels onto young learners, such as “smart” and “gifted,” impacts their brain growth and mental health tremendously; rarely in a positive manner. This way of thinking, formed by separating students into “accelerated” and “normal” categories, can instill what is known as a fixed mindset of learning. Believing that there is no room to grow, or being afraid to make mistakes, largely due to the impact of these labels, learners quickly become less likely to attempt more challenging tasks; as well as persevere through difficult obstacles. Through extensive research within the Akron-Summit County Public Library, The University of Akron’s Bierce …

Needs Assessment – National Repository For Nsf Agep Deliverables, Christie Sahley, Megan Sapp-Nelson, Donna Ferullo, Linda Mason, Hanzi Xie

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This white paper proposes the establishment of a National Repository for NSF Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Deliverables to address the critical need for preserving and sharing a wide array of materials generated from the AGEP program. Recognizing the challenges of ephemeral storage solutions and the absence of a unified collection mechanism, the paper underscores the repository's role in promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) research. It emphasizes the importance of accommodating diverse data types, enhancing discoverability, and ensuring long-term access to educational materials, policy documents, and research outcomes. Through a comprehensive approach, the proposed repository …

Integrated Stem Education And Students' 21st Century Skills, Jung Han, Yunjin Lim, Woongbin Park, Kyongson Park

Indiana STEM Education Conference

This research investigates the impact of integrated STEM education on students' 21st century competencies, aiming to enhance science and engineering design teaching within a local design-based context. Specifically, the project targets high school students in a rural area and utilizes local contexts, including local rural knowledge and indigenous science knowledge, to facilitate STEM learning. The collaborative effort involves partnering high school environmental science and Technology and Engineering Educators, leveraging their diverse content expertise to teach students collaboratively as a science-technology and engineering teacher pair. Furthermore, university faculty members and industry partners provided support to create a STEM community of practice. …

Implementing Integrated Stem Forensic And Soil Sciences Lab Activities To Promote Interest In Stem Careers, Mariah K. Stollar Awan, Caroline J. Rakowski

Indiana STEM Education Conference

We implemented forensic and soil science integrated STEM lab activities with 11 middle school youth at a 4-H day camp at Purdue University. STEM perceived knowledge increased overall for participants. However, the pre- and post-assessments did not show a statistically significant difference. More students also indicated STEM career interest after participating. Because this study was exploratory and had a small sample size, more research on these integrated STEM lab activities should be conducted with larger samples.

The Future Of Future City: A Stem Program, Jeffrey A. Nowak, Shelby Werling

Indiana STEM Education Conference

The idea of integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is still an enigma for many educators (Dare et al, 2021). Recent academic standards favor curricula that interweave the principles of integrated STEM into all content areas. Finding a “one size fits all” curriculum is challenging, perhaps even impossible. Future City is a national program that specializes in hands-on cross-curricular STEM education. Students work collaboratively using an engineering and design process to showcase their solutions to citywide sustainability issues. This research brief examines how educators can utilize the Future City program as the cornerstone of their STEM curriculum.

The Impact Of Geospatial Contexts And Out-Of-School Experiences On Students' Stem Identity Formation, Hillary Ongoyo Omoze, Abigail Erskine, Asenath Odondi

Indiana STEM Education Conference

STEM teaching faces challenges in varied geospatial contexts (Mulvey et al., 2023), where place and space factors play a significant role. This research brief explores the influence of place and space in shaping students' STEM identities throughout their educational journey, with a specific emphasis on the role of out-of-school experiences in fostering student learning and interest in STEM careers, particularly among middle school students.

Asynchronous Class For Algebra I Preparation, Hunter Garretson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Algebra I is the first high school mathematics class students take making it an important building block in the student’s growing mathematical foundation. Mitigating any losses in knowledge over the summer by using educational review tools has been proven helpful in previous studies. Every student comes from a different background, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, culture, etc., allowing each student to have a different summer experience. A meta-analysis looking into the concern of Summer Learning Loss (SLL) found that while some of its sample size would make summer knowledge gains, more than half of the sample size was projected to suffer from …

Teachers’ Reactions To The Bans And Biblioclasm Of Mexico’S National Free Textbooks In 2023: A Descriptive Qualitative Study, Eric Silberberg, Armida Liliana Patrón Reyes, Pedro Chagoyán García, Eric Manuel Benjamín Sánchez Barragán

Publications and Research

The rollout of Mexico’s new national free textbooks (LTG) at the outset of the 2023-2024 school year sparked a political crisis. Several states sued to prohibit their distribution and segments of civil society protested that they were designed to “indoctrinate” children in leftist ideology and sexual and gender diversity. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the bans and controversy on the classrooms of elementary, middle, and telesecundaria teachers. An ethnographic methodology was employed with semi-structured interviews and field notes collected at three schools each in Guanajuato and Puebla. Findings reveal that physical resources are incredibly important to teachers, …

Survivor-Shaped Specters And Gaps, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

...survivors are disappearing from academia. Our schools, our syllabi, our classrooms, our bibliographies, our campuses, our research labs, our thesis committees, our libraries, our conference panels, our departments, our programs, and our monographs are riddled through and through with survivor-shaped gaps. Each gap is a place in academia where someone has gone missing due to bullying, harassment, retaliation, predation, sexual assault, mobbing, and/or other abuses of power. Some of these gaps are shaped like allies who have left academia due to moral injury. Not every gap, moreover, is shaped like a survivor. Not every victim survives.

Exploring Simulations In Mathematics Teacher Education, Madelyn W. Colonnese, Bima Sapkota, Carrie Lee, Liza Bondurant, Gregory Benoit, Grace Pai, Heather Howell, Erin Barno

Publications and Research

This article originally appeared in Connections, available at https://www.amte.net/connections/2024/12/exploring-simulations-mathematics-teacher-education

Understanding Needs: Facilitating Faculty Support For Formal Assessment Processes In Higher Education, Terrance Cao

Theses and Dissertations

Prior literature discusses how conflicting beliefs regarding assessment, competing workloads, and a lack of formal assessment resources may contribute to faculty reluctance to engage with formal assessment processes. There is a gap in research on exploring assessment leader-faculty relationships through the lens of Leader-Member Exchange Theory and how that may affect participation in formal assessment processes. To address this gap, the researcher implemented a qualitative, phenomenological study to interview faculty about their lived experiences in working with formal assessment processes and interacting with assessment leaders. The goal was to discover emerging thematic categories regarding faculty perceptions of formal assessment processes …

Teaching First-Generation Newcomers In Charter High Schools: Teachers’ Perceptions Of Students’ Barriers, Teaching Practices And Strategies, And Teaching Supports, Daniel Loh

Theses and Dissertations

Teachers in the United States are experiencing challenges linked to the increasing number of immigrant students entering schools. Los Angeles County Charter schools are among the country's most diverse, with many immigrant students. Although first-generation and immigrant students’ education barriers and teacher challenges are documented, little is known about teachers' experiences with newcomer students, a particularly vulnerable group. This phenomenological study explored charter high school teachers’ lived experiences concerning their teaching challenges and perspectives on the barriers for first-generation/newcomer immigrant students, their descriptions of the strategies and practices used, and their perceptions of the support they receive. Twelve teachers from …

Examining Women’S Persistence In Stem: A Mixed Methods Study Of Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, And Sociocultural Influences On Women In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics, Heather Midori Saigo

Theses and Dissertations

Several decades of effort have improved the participation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but the gender gap remains. Researchers have found diverse reasons for women’s underrepresentation in STEM, but less is understood about factors supporting persistence. This study’s purpose was to understand how women persist in STEM, through the lens of self-determination theory. Self-determination theory posits that persistence improves when one’s needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are satisfied. This embedded mixed methods study provides evidence of how autonomy, competence, relatedness, and sociocultural factors influence women’s persistence in STEM. Using network and snowball sampling, the researcher …

Learning Technology Professors’ Experiences With National Science Foundation (Nsf) External Grant Funding In Higher Education, Mitchell Gurick

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated the experiences of learning technology professors with National Science Foundation (NSF) external grant funding focused on education. The study investigated stories related to using NSF grants by learning technology professors across the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. It enumerated the need for collaboration between industry, government, and higher education institutions (HEIs). The study aimed to establish how more grants lead to increased opportunities for learning technology professors to pursue academic research and impact society. The research questions were: What outlier stories emerge from learning technology professors by securing NSF grant funding? How …

Exploring The Perceived Effects Of Online And Hybrid Learning On The Experiences Of Students In Nigerian Universities, Amaechi Ugwu

Theses and Dissertations

Recent years have seen an apparent increase in the popularity and acceptance of online and hybrid learning as alternative models of learning at universities and other institutions of higher education in Nigeria. However, there is doubt whether the increase in popularity and acceptance of online and hybrid learning has translated to better learning conditions or satisfaction for students and graduates of higher education. These issues among others have made online and hybrid learning models to represent an area of growing academic interest by scholars. The main purpose of this study was to explore the perceived effects of online and hybrid …

Not At The Expense Of Me: Best Practices For Black Women Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, And Social Justice Practitioners In Higher Education, Brittney Michelle Elese Fink

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research paper investigated the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and the year 2020 in sparking a phenomenon of hiring chief diversity officers (CDOs) in higher education. By exploring the interplay between the pandemic, racial justice movements, evolving higher education landscape, and institutional accountability, this study aimed to understand the motivations behind the increased hiring of CDOs during this transformative period. Additionally, this research examined the specific effects of this phenomenon on Black women diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice (DEI&J) professionals in higher education. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by …

Impact Of Supervisors’ Person-Centered Listening On Sense Of Belonging Among Occupationally Minoritized Healthcare Professionals, Nelu Nedelea

Theses and Dissertations

Significant gender and racial disparities are evident when comparing the composition of the U.S. healthcare workforce to the general U.S. population. Latinx individuals are underrepresented across all professions, while non-White individuals and women are occupational minorities in executive roles and in physician, surgeon, and advanced practitioner roles. Lack of diversity poses problems for underrepresented healthcare professionals, their organizations, and their patients. While diverse professionals experience various forms of microaggression, discrimination, prejudice, and diminished sense of belonging in their fields, these conditions can compromise communication among the various healthcare professionals involved with a patient, in turn, potentially threatening patient safety and …

Educators’ Experiences And Perspectives On Teaching Sexuality Education To High School Students In Vietnam, Tram Van

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored experiences of teaching sex education and identified challenges to sexuality education among 10 Vietnamese high school educators. Sexuality education high-school teachers in Vietnam participated in in-depth interviews focused on (a) experiences associated with teaching sex education in Vietnamese high schools and (b) how high school educators’ experiences with professional training related to sex education influenced their teaching practices. This research explored teacher characteristics, curricula, professional development, and environmental factors. Study data were collected via Zoom interviews, enabling the researcher to engage participants in their subjective viewpoints and overcome the hurdles of long-distance travel and health …

Quantitative Study On The Efficacy Of Online And Hybrid Learning Formats As Related To The Success Indicators Of Equity, Ali Kowsari

Theses and Dissertations

This research involved a quantitative secondary analysis using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to investigate factors leading to disparities in academic success. Focusing on the role of course modality, the research aimed to address the need to enhance equity in academic achievement, considering age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Special attention was given to online and hybrid modalities from 2017 to 2021, encompassing both pre- and post-pandemic data to observe shifts in higher education to more online and hybrid practices. The research was rooted in Astin’s student involvement theory and Rawls’ theory of justice, and it sought to …

Blogging Mastery: Analyzing The Key Strategies Behind Successful Blogs, Michael Llamas

Theses and Dissertations

Bloggers in the digital landscape have the power to shape consumer behavior and influence their peers. However, successfully running a blog demands time and commitment, similar to operating a small business. Yet, there is scant literature regarding successful practices and strategies that bloggers use to build their blogs and remain successful. This study explores bloggers' most effective methods and strategies to establish themselves in their respective niches. The qualitative research study uses transcendental phenomenology to examine the lived experiences of successful bloggers, aiming to provide insights into their successful strategies, best practices, challenges, and insights for new bloggers. Twelve bloggers …

Resilience In The Face Of Sexism: Attracting, Retaining, And Promoting Women And Girls In Stem, Karin Karakhanian Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Women in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) occupations comprise 27% of employees in STEM fields (Martinez & Christnacht, 2021). Their participation continues to drop even when they reach the highest levels of leadership in STEM industries (Chrisler et al., 2012; R. A. Miller et al., 2021; Worthen, 2021). There have been calls by universities and governments to bring women’s thought leadership to STEM fields given the massive impact STEM industries have on the economy and innovation (Beede et al., 2011; Fayer et al., 2017). A review of the literature shows that girls and women experience various levels of discrimination …

Changing The Narrative: A Phenomenological Study On The Support And Practices Black Males Received For The Successful Completion Of Urban Area High Schools In Los Angeles County, Victoria Lynn Waters

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe the support and practices Black Males received to graduate high school successfully. This study is important because it details the challenges and experiences that young Black males who reside in urban areas and attend school in Los Angeles County describes the factors needed to meet academic success and graduate high school and understanding why graduation rates for Black males are low, to learn what can be done to increase the graduation rates for Black Males. The study produced four conclusions:

1. Black Role Models and mentors on campus elevated student’s …

Breathing: A Story Of Lifelong Learners’ Relationship To The Changing World, Cristina D. González

Theses and Dissertations

Holistic learning is recognized as an effective learning practice. It acknowledges the interconnections between the individual, other people, and the environment, it describes learning as an active process that transforms consciousness. This transformation in consciousness occurs through the facilitation of learning, experiences, and reflection, which lead to acts that nurture oneself, others, and the environment. Teachers face the challenge of noneducators setting unrealistic expectations, providing limited resources, and generating a culture of competition, preventing holistic learning from developing. If students are to learn, this process needs to be honored, which requires pedagogical strategies and practices that can be replicated to …

Faculty Exodus From Africa: Exploring The Experiences Of African Academic Diasporic Faculty In The United States Of America, André Crenshaw

Theses and Dissertations

African higher education institutions are experiencing a faculty shortage influenced by globalization, internationalization, and brain drain. Prior literature on immigrant African and diaspora faculty exodus from Africa focuses on the brain drain in African higher education. Still, there is a need for further exploration of faculty teaching experiences virtually from the U.S. to Africa using educational technology with multiple academic appointments. This study aimed to assist stakeholders in gaining insight into how African Diasporic faculty adopt educational technology for virtual teaching, faculty development, cross-culture university-to-university collaborations, and exchanges. This research explored the experiences of higher education faculty, Black African academic …

Best Practices Of Secondary Grades 6-12 Educators Teaching Physical Computing With Microcontrollers, David E. Platt

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative, phenomenological research study explores the best practices that secondary Grades 6-12 educators employ when using microcontrollers in the classroom. Governmental and private organizations have investigated and promoted the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) and computer science in education (Code Advocacy Coalition [CODE], n.d.-a; Fayer et al., 2017; National Science Board [NSB], 2010b, 2018, 2020b, 2022; President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology [PCAST], 2010, 2012). Computer science occupations are a leading field and will have strong growth through 2029 compared to STEM occupations (Zilberman & Ice, 2021). Organizations such as CODE, Computer Science Teachers Association …

Revitalizing Online Learning: Teachers’ Perceptions On Boosting Online Engagement For K-12 Education, Alice Pak

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the transformative evolution of online learning, focusing on its role in K-12 online education and the critical issue of student engagement. Tracing its origins from early correspondence courses to today's dynamic, technology-driven platforms, this research examines how online learning has revolutionized educational access, flexibility, and engagement. The study highlights the significant milestones in the evolution of online education, noting the substantial impact of technological advancements that have made learning more interactive, engaging, and personalized (Haleem et al., 2022). Focusing on K-12 education, the dissertation examines how online learning has enabled personalized instruction, self-paced learning, and broader access …