How Do Staff And Families Perceive The Effects Of After School Programs On The Overall School Experience?, Selena Alonzo

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Simulated Qualitative Study Exploring Higher Education Faculty's Perceptions Of Factors That Influence Dynamic Decision-Making When Choosing Opportunities For Student Engagement In Asynchronous Online Courses, Leticia De La Garza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore higher education faculty’s perceptions of factors that influence dynamic decision-making when choosing opportunities for student engagement in asynchronous online courses. More specifically, this study sought to understand how faculty in higher education perceived these factors to prevent and facilitate dynamic decision-making when designing instructor presence, student-to-student collaboration, and student-to-academic content engagement opportunities in asynchronous online courses, as Garrison et al. (1999) suggest, for a community of inquiry. There has not been much focus on the dynamic decision-making of online instructors in higher education and a call to continue exploring factors that influence …

Examining The Increasing Prevalence Of Academic Dishonesty: An Investigation Of Students’ Perceptions Of Academic Integrity In Higher Education, Luis Angel Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

A primary concern in academic institutions is the high frequency of academic dishonesty among students. Concerns surrounding this issue negatively affect the institution’s reputation and the acquisition of external funding. The purpose of this research was to explore the increasing prevalence of academic dishonesty at higher education institutions. Furthermore, the aim of the study is to investigate the frequency of students engaging in academic dishonesty, reasons for academic dishonesty, and awareness of academic dishonesty. Increasing awareness, prevention, and education regarding academic dishonesty can bring a positive environment to students in higher education. The participants were students enrolled in The University …

Higher Education Students And Digital Literacies: A Systematic Literature Review, Filipe Malafaia Cerqueira

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is a systematic literature review of digital literacies and students in higher education. It sought to identify the state of knowledge on digital literacies in higher education including what studies have been conducted in this nexus and what remains to be known. The deductive themes drew on two prominent concepts of digital literacies: the Seven Elements of Digital Literacies (Jisc, 2014), and the Charter for 21st Century Literacies (Burnett & Merchant, 2018). The review’s methodology identified 23 studies published in the last five years across 21 countries. The findings suggest that researchers demonstrated interest in discussing how students …

A Mindful Search For Basic Writing Identities: Constellating Contemplative Classroom Pedagogies, Classroom Community Circles, And Critical Discourse Analysis In A Cultural Rhetorics Ecology, Elizabeth Edwards Weems

English Theses & Dissertations

Many Basic Writing students have stories which are informed by traumas, othering, and marginalization. Finding pedagogies which address students’ stories, in addition to meeting academic goals, is crucial. Sometimes, students question how improving their reading and writing skills can help them navigate other areas of their education and experiences, especially their lives outside of academia. I have worked to create a kairotic pedagogy which invites students to read and write ‘the word and the world’ (Freire, 1970; 1988). Using Contemplative Classroom Pedagogies, I attempted to follow Freire’s (1992) call to make “teaching a creative act, a critical act, and not …

Afl Students’ Perception Of Using Mnemonics As A Strategy To Enhance Their Vocabulary Acquisition And Retention, Elsayed Elsisi

Theses and Dissertations

Research in the field of language teaching and learning reveals that mnemonics is one of the most effective language learning strategies for vocabulary. Researchers like Rasiban, et al. (2019); Levin (1993); Zulfa (2019); Kayaaltu (2018) suggest that using mnemonics to learn new vocabulary has a positive effect on vocabulary retention and retrieval. Research also shows however that students’ perceptions may encourage or inhibit the usage of any learning strategy depending on their perceptions of its effectiveness. Hence the importance of detecting learner perception about any learning or teaching device. Despite the above there is limited research about students’ perceptions about …

About Dying And Death: Thanatology's Place In Medical Curriculum, Jill Dombroski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study explored how healthcare providers engage in advance care planning and end-of-life care conversations. The research explored what shapes their understanding and the extent to which concepts from thanatology they intuitively bring in, explicitly bring in, and maybe fail to recognize. To achieve this, constructivist grounded theory (CGT) methodology guided the design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the findings, which allowed for iteration across interviews and analysis with existing theories and data in the literature. The CGT design encouraged further engagement with the literature in an ongoing iterative fashion as well as with the analysis of the data. …

Mental Health Education In Higher Education, Chelsea J. Farley

Culminating Experience Projects

This project dives into the current mental health status of college students and what institutions are doing to address students steady and continuous decline of mental health. Mental Health 101: A Comprehensive Guide for Faculty incorporates suggestions from literature and theory to provide resources to faculty members when educating students. Mental Health 101 was created with the social-ecological model in mind (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) by connecting the individual student to their environment, or in this case, the college classroom. The guide consists of information about mental health such as risk factors and warning signs, coping strategies, activities, and assignments faculty members …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Finding A Balance Between Assessment And Learning In Competency-Based Education In Canadian Health Care, Scott Murray

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Due to its emphasis on skill development and alignment with workforce demands, competency-based education (CBE) has garnered considerable attention in recent years. My organizational improvement plan (OIP) focuses on the potential benefits of incorporating learners’ voices into CBE in Canadian medical education and proposes a corresponding implementation framework. The traditional CBE model often lacks a critical component: the learner’s voice. My OIP reviews the literature and outlines its theoretical underpinnings (e.g., systems theory, adult education theory) within the scope of authentic leadership. The findings suggest incorporating learners’ voices into CBE to boost engagement, motivation, and agency. In response to such …

Do-It-Together: Informal Transformative Sustainability Education, Derek Brannon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Climate Crisis is an urgent and inescapable reality students are thrust into. Learners must be prepared adequately for their futures, not only for their sakes but also because collective and transformative change is required. Transformative sustainability education provides one pathway to this transformation and focuses on radically altering students’ perceptions about the world and their agency in effecting change on ecological issues. The field of transformative sustainability education is emergent and thus is still fragmented, leaving gaps in the literature. Little research has been conducted on how informal and nonformal university spaces can be used to create transformative experiences …

Vamos A Pláticar: The Sense-Making Process Of Career Services Practitioners At California Community Colleges In A Guided Pathways Epoch, Claudia Estrada-Howell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The California Community College system and its vision for success, which includes a focus on increasing students' degree and certificate completion, as well as increasing the percentage of existing Career and Technical Education students who report being employed in their field of study is highlighted. To help support these goals, the California Community College System has adopted the Guided Pathways framework. This framework requires all campuses to fundamentally redesign their programs and support services to ensure they are clear, more educationally coherent pathways to credentials that in turn prepare students for success in the workforce and further education. To do …

Systemic, Institutional, And Teaching Factors In The Delivery Of Interprofessional Education Curriculum In Canada, Mohammad B. Azzam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Canadian federal and several provincial governments are currently collaborating to establish ‘team-based’ primary healthcare—or interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP), which can be effectively accomplished when interprofessional education (IPE) is sustainably delivered by health and social care (HASC) professional education programs. Indeed, achieving the intended patient/client-oriented outcomes of IPE and subsequent IPCP requires deliberate and purposeful considerations of several systemic, institutional, and teaching factors. Regrettably, the analyses of the extent to which these factors have influenced effective IPCP is currently under-researched. In this integrated-article dissertation, we took a purposeful and systematic approach to explore the extent to which these multi-tiered factors …

Preparing The Future, Healing The Past, & Being In The Moment With Teachers As They Indigenize The Way They Teach, Ramona Halcomb

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

This research study will interview participants from the first cohort of the Indigenizing Pedagogy Institute at the University of Washington Tacoma. The current educational system is failing to adequately serve American Indian/Alaska Native Students' Educational needs. Education creates knowledge, develops our political and civic goals, and systemically influences socialization and how we see ourselves and others; it determines our economic future and well-being. We must modify our pedagogy if we are to meet the needs of American Indian/Alaska Native Students.

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

We Are Stronger Together: Faculty Reflections On Competency-Based High School Completion For Adults In Washington State, Elizabeth J. Flanagan

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

Situated in Washington State during the height of the global Covid-19 pandemic, this qualitative, insider-practitioner study examined the instructional context of four instructors engaged in a competency-based, high school completion for adults faculty praxis on community and technical college campuses through a state-supported program called High School+ (HS+). Guided by three areas of inquiry, this research sought to (1) explore how HS+ faculty describe their instructional praxis in the context of personal identity; (2) probe the cultural, structural, and administrative challenges HS+ faculty face when enacting competency-based instruction on community and technical college campuses oriented toward seat-time models of instruction; …

Student Proficiency On High School Math Assessments And Their Relation To College And University Math Readiness, Tiffany Robinson

Dissertations

Data indicate that a significant number of first-year college students were inadequately prepared in high school to complete university-level mathematics courses. The purpose of this study is to evaluate student proficiency on high school mathematics assessments and their relation to student preparedness for university-level mathematics courses. The context of my study is a cohort of diverse, high school senior students in one state in the United States who have shown proficiency on mathematics assessments. The methodology I used was a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data, comprised of student and faculty index surveys at the high school and university level …

Narratives Of Perseverance By Latina Women Paving Their Way To Success In Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, And Math (Steam) Higher Education, Toni Carmichael

Dissertations

The purpose of this narrative study was to understand the experiences of successful Latina women attaining higher education in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) and the challenges they have overcome along the way. Additionally, I sought to examine ways in which these students challenged the stigma of invisibility often attached to Latino communities. Representatives from Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Mexico, the participants of this study were seven women employed in various areas of STEAM with higher education degrees.

Cultural Capital and Feminist Cultural Studies provided the theoretical framework for this study. The three-dimensional narrative design was applied …

Audacious Corazón: A Nuanced Art Of Care, Dianne Bermudez Torres

Dissertations

Historically, the concept of care in higher education has focused on academic achievements, neglecting the significance of building meaningful relationships between faculty and students that engage both affective and cognitive dimensions (Noddings, 1994). Teaching with the heart, or corazón, embodies care in teaching. Employed in this study was a mixed-methods, exploratory case study approach that explored the intricate art of care and how faculty foster bilingual authorization credential teacher candidates to evolve into culturally responsive educators. Pearson et al.’s (2021) cariño pedagogy serves as a model that empowers faculty’s humanizing agency. Additionally, the study also reflected on the concept of …

Novice Teacher Perceptions Of Induction Supports Provided During The First Year, Keri James Tawater

Theses and Dissertations

This descriptive case study examined the perceptions of 6 beginning teachers regarding the supports offered to them during their 1st year of teaching. Based on purposeful and convenience sampling through administrative recommendations, the participants included 4 middle school 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teachers in their 2nd year of teaching. I collected data from documents and multiple interviews to understand the needs of beginning teachers and how to best support them. Utilizing the social cognitive learning framework, I analyzed the results in terms of which supports provided vicarious reinforcements, self-reinforcements, and ultimately self-efficacy. These perceptions and understandings were then compared …

How Doctoral Students In A Formal Leadership Program Conceptualize Followership: A Mixed-Methods Study, Katy J. Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

The purpose of this exploratory mixed-methods study was to determine how doctoral students in a formal leadership program conceptualize followership. The methods used to conduct this analysis included distributing a Qualtrics (released in August 2022) survey and conducting one-on-one interviews with a sample of degree-seeking doctoral students within a formal leadership program. The researcher collected quantitative and qualitative data addressing students’ followership style, leadership attitudes and beliefs, and perceptions of followership. These data were analyzed concurrently using a triangulation design. A total of 67 students completed the survey, and seven students were interviewed. The findings revealed that the participants employ …

Reevaluating Student Engagement: Exploring And Applying Alternative Assignments In Higher Education Undergraduate Applied Saxophone, Anthony S. Cincotta Ii

Dissertations, 2020-current

Undergraduate applied saxophone study revolves around the conservatory model. This inflexible model, often referred to as a master-apprentice relationship, can create an instructor-centric power dynamic which does not address the needs of the modern student. A classroom where the power lies so heavily with the instructor can stifle student engagement and can create a sense of disenfranchisement. In this setting, students have limited input on their assignment selections. While curricula have evolved with regards to being more culturally diverse, relevant, and inclusive, the approach that educators use to deliver the material has remained largely unchanged. There is limited research on …

From Training To Adoption: A Study Of Technology Adoption After Video-Editing Training In Higher Education, Michelle Loo

<strong> Theses and Dissertations </strong>

Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis et al., 1989), this research examines the variables of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use as predictors of video creation usage after software training. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the technology adoption process, the study also employed the Learning Adoption Trajectory Model (LATM) (Sherry et al., 2000), to explore how faculty and staff progress through different stages of technology adoption. Furthermore, the study examined whether the barrier of time, value to the department, and priority played a role in predicting the technology's usage.

The study employed a mixed-design approach, with …

Immersive Learning Environments For Computer Science Education, Dillon Buchanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis explores the effectiveness of an educational intervention using an interactive notebook to support and supplement instruction in a foundational-level programming course. A quantitative, quasi-experimental group comparison method was employed, where students were placed into either a control or a treatment group. Data was collected from assignment and final grades, as well as self-reported time spent using the notebook. Independent t-tests and correlation were used for data analysis. Results were inconclusive but did indicate that the intervention had a possible effect. Further studies may explore better efficacy, implementation, and satisfaction of interactive notebooks across a larger population and …

A Leadership Laboratory: Exploring The Use Of Case-In-Point Pedagogy To Develop Complex Thinking In Leaders, Erica Corley Jackson

Dissertations

Leadership scholars have identified a growing gap between the complexity of 21^st century organizations and the capabilities of individuals in positions of leadership to adequately address these challenges. This gap has contributed to a so-called complexity crisis—a situation in which the demands placed on those in leadership positions increases “at a rate that significantly outstrips the rate at which” leaders are cognitively developing (Rich-Tolsma & Oliver, 2016, p. 1). One way to respond to this growing need for complex adult thinking is through metacognitive development initiatives. However, finding educational methods to promote metacognitive development has proven to be …

Reflecting On Cross-Cultural Creativity In The College Classroom: An Investigation Into Gned 113 “Creative Genius”, Renee Sgroi

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This Master’s project uses Greenberger’s (2020) Guide to Reflective Practice to reflect on the design and delivery of the college-level creativity course, GNED 113, “Creative Genius” taught at Centennial College in Toronto, Canada, in order to examine possibilities for the inclusion of cross-cultural creativity approaches that meet the needs of a social justice and equity theoretical framework. A proposed heuristic for postsecondary creativity educators is also offered.

Academy-Based Learning: The High School Education You Wish You Had, Desiree Gomez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project focuses on the impact of high school academies on student success. This is important because high school academies provide students with cross-curricular experiences related to a specific pathway or field they are interested. An evidence-based argument is offered that high school academies provide specialized programs catering to students' interests and career aspirations. These academies provide students with a comprehensive and challenging curriculum that enhances their academic performance and prepares them for college and career readiness. By focusing on a particular subject or field, students receive a high-quality education that fosters their skills and knowledge in a specific …

Academy-Based Learning: The High School Education You Wish You Had, Marion Ramos

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project focuses on the impact of high school academies on student success. This is important because high school academies provide students with cross-curricular experiences related to a specific pathway or field they are interested in. An evidence-based argument is offered that high school academies provide specialized programs catering to students' interests and career aspirations. These academies provide students with a comprehensive and challenging curriculum that enhances their academic performance and prepares them for college and career readiness. By focusing on a particular subject or field, students receive a high-quality education that fosters their skills and knowledge in a …

Promoting Teacher Wellbeing: A Book Study, Katy Cooper

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project is to present a professional development curriculum that promotes teacher wellbeing through a book study. The curriculum was developed considering the following research question: How can a book study be used to support strategies for teacher wellbeing? The frameworks used to answer the research question and create the curriculum were PLC Book Study Guide (FLDOE, n.d.) and Professional Book Study (UFT Teacher Center, n.d.). The proposed book study is planned to take place over a six-month period and includes four meetings. A list of pre-selected books that promote teacher wellbeing, a sample book study invitation, …

Using Controversial Or Difficult Topics In The Classroom As A Means For Civil Discourse: Are Pre-Service Teachers In Tennessee And Three Of Its Neighboring States Prepared And Confident?, Stacie Shanks

Ed.D. Dissertations

Sixty percent of college freshmen entering American colleges and universities were unprepared for college level discussion and analytical skills. Though the many researchers I detailed in the literature review showed how effective the use of controversial or difficult topics in the classroom as a means for civil discourse was for imparting the missing skills, they also found teachers largely avoided them. The purpose of this basic interpretive qualitative study was to investigate if pre-service teachers training at public colleges in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and North Carolina were given the opportunity to learn the pedagogy of and practice using controversial or …

Unlocking The Doors To Engagement And Accessibility: A Curriculum Development For Second Grade Learners In Social Studies, Jeanette Mcnair

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

The goal of this project is to create a second-grade Social Studies curriculum that increases engagement and provides accessibility to all students. The intent is to pull from the instructional frameworks of Universal Design for Learning developed by CAST, Project-Based Learning by The Buck Institute and differentiation by Carol Ann Tomlinson. The following research question was used to propel forward the goal of this project: How can a second grade Social Studies unit unlock student engagement and universal accessibility by applying three educational frameworks? This question was answered by literature research on the topics of engagement and accessibility followed by …