Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

To Choose Or Not To Choose: Establishing A Correlation Between Choice, Collaboration, And Classroom Engagement, Krisandra Johnson

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Not all 8th-grade students have an outspoken passion for reading; however, most of them do like choices. This action research study establishes a correlation between offering choices in the English Language Arts classroom and increased affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. The participants for this research were an 8th-grade class at a Midwest, urban public school. Providing students with reading choices, assignment options, opportunities to collaborate with peers, and multiple assessment forms to choose from demonstrated an increase of not only effective engagement but also cognitive and behavioral. From observations and student data, collaboration, the researcher determines that collaboration is a …

Leveraging Student Voice And Technology Within An 8th-Grade Literacy Community, Shavonne M. Jacobson

Michigan Reading Journal

Rochester Community Schools Middle School Language Arts Curriculum Consultant Shavonne (Shevy) Jacobson shares the collective experience of literacy leaders and student researchers as they piloted the new Michigan Middle School Reading and Writing Information unit. In this unit, learners address the essential question: “How can we contribute to the sustainability of our planet?” While centering on student learning and intentionally focusing on the teaching of deep learning, these 8th-grade literacy communities engaged in a comprehensive reading and writing workshop experience to create a podcast to share with their peers and beyond. Jacobson delineates the foundational research-based practices and frameworks that …

Together Everyone Achieves More (Team) Approach To Building A High Performance School Culture, Deadra M. Faulkner, David Zimbler

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

How do you build a school-wide culture that supports students and motivates staff on a social/emotional and instructional level? This workshop will include strategies on Leadership, Culture/Social Emotional State, and Data/Results that will assist in obtaining this achievable goal! Work with a Director of Guidance and Principal that have accomplished this important goal.

Redesigning Field Experiences To Support Rural Schools: A Praxis Reflection, Vicki S. Sherbert

Educational Considerations

The on-going social and political climate, with polarizing stances on everything from issues of social justice to mandates for mask-wearing and vaccination, brings non-normative stressors into the lived experiences of students, families, and educators everywhere. These stressors are often magnified in rural communities and schools. Yet, in spite of these challenges, many schools in rural areas have embraced opportunities for creative collaborations which foster connections and celebrate the unique richness of their communities.

This Praxis Reflection describes one such collaboration between a teacher educator at a midwestern university and a rural junior high/senior high school 300 miles west of the …

Collaborative Teaching And Inclusion In Northeast, Tn, Sherianne Pigeon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

Collaborative teaching is a commonly used, research-based method to support inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education classroom. However, there is a lack of research describing current teachers’ experiences with and perceptions of collaborative teaching and inclusion. Results from a survey disseminated to teachers in Northeast TN school systems revealed that 64.3% of respondents have either never co-taught a class or have co-taught only one or two classes. Additionally, respondents agree that collaborative teaching is beneficial to support inclusion, enhance delivery of instruction, improve teacher relations and improve classroom management. However, teachers expressed collaborative teaching is more …

Overcoming Barriers Of Plcs At The High School Level: A Case Study Of The First-Year Implementation Of The Plc+ Framework, Jessica Mcabee

Doctor of Education Dissertations

This study was prompted by a desire to understand the perceptions of teachers on the characteristics of effective professional learning communities (PLCs) at the high school level. Data were collected via survey and focus group interviews to answer questions regarding barriers high school PLCs face as well as what effective PLCs look like at the high school level. The survey population included 122 high school teachers currently involved in PLCs in one school district in the upstate of South Carolina. Survey questions were on a Likert scale that assessed three areas regarding the effectiveness of PLCs: critical elements, human resources, …

Vocational Education: Cna Students’ Perspectives Of Soft Skills In Training And The Workplace, Kimberly S. Mcclendon-Payton

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify CNAs’ perceptions about the most important soft skills used by CNAs in training and the workplace.

Methodology: This quantitative research study identified CNAs’ perceptions of the most important soft skills they used based on the composite model for soft skills. CNAs were selected based on purposeful sampling. Likert scores were collected from the survey responses.

Findings: Examination of the quantitative data from the 35 CNAs revealed that brainstorming is the most important collaboration soft skill in CNA training and the workplace.

Conclusions: Results based on the findings of this study …

Listening To High School Students: Purposefully Designed Spaces And The Impact On Students’ Engagement In Learning, Yanira Oliveras-Ortiz, Dalane E. Bouillion, Lizzy Asbury

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Scholars have generally accepted the notion that context and students’ response to the environment influence their engagement in learning. Hence, a qualitative study was conducted to explore the impact purposefully designed learning spaces have on student engagement in a career-inspired high school. Focus groups were conducted before and after the move to a new high school. Through the group interviews, students engaged in discourse about the impact purposefully designed learning spaces have on their engagement in learning. The findings indicate that the students recognized the instructional importance and the impact of their new spaces. The student voices provide educators and …

Teaching And Assessing The General Capabilities In A Secondary School Context, Loren Clarke, Melissa Hughes

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Education researchers, policymakers and private enterprise agree that, in addition to content knowledge, students in the 21st century need to acquire particular skills to equip them for active citizenship in the modern world. This is a real challenge for teachers today: how do they teach and assess the skills needed to live and work in the 21st century? This paper will explore the development of Eltham High School’s focus on teaching and assessment of collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking over the past seven years. It will explore the development of the assessment program, its connection to the school and state …

How Does The High School Redesigned Learning Space Influence Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, And Critical Thinking, P. Erik Gundersen

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This study examined the affect that redesigned learning spaces might have on student engagement levels, specifically the extent to which redesigned learning spaces facilitate the 21^st Century Learning and Innovation Skills known as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Using David Ross’s work with the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills, the study observes the efforts of a suburban high school that has redesigned traditional classrooms into progressive and innovative learning spaces. This qualitative study utilized seventeen, face-to-face interviews with teachers who are teaching in redesigned classrooms to collect their impressions of how such learning spaces influenced engagement. The …

Video Composition, Creative Discourse, And Facilitated Freedom: A Teacher's Journey To Reveal Student Potential, Michael A. Brinkmeyer

MSU Graduate Theses

This research project was conducted in response to students’ lack of engagement in traditional modes of instruction and composition in a high school English Language Arts course. In order to better understand students as creative composers of knowledge, this research project asked students to engage in the video production process in collaborative groups. The research was conducted over the course of eight class periods in three different sections of Junior-level English Language Arts courses. Analysis of the data from this study reveals three important findings: 1) students respond well to creative and relevant performance assessments; 2) students’ collaborative conversations, or …

Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy.

The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & …

Using Extremophile Bacteriophage Discovery In A Stem Education Professional Development Partnership To Explore Model Classroom Research Experiences Integrating The Three Dimentions Of The Next Generation Science Standards, Carrie L. Boudreau Ms

All Student Scholarship

The National Research Council’s (NRC) A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas describes a vision of what it means to be proficient in science. The project discussed in this thesis was developed with a NIH SEPA Grant 8R25OD010937 to the Virology and Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the University of Southern Maine (USM) under the direction of Dr. S. Monroe Duboise. The goal of the project was to explore using discovery of extreme environment bacteria and their bacteriophages as a model for using the three dimensions of learning to teach Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Specifically, …

Voices At The Table: Collaboration And Intertextuality, Sue C. Kimmel, Kathryn Kennedy (Ed.), Lucy Santos Green (Ed.)

STEMPS Faculty Publications

While we often associate reading aloud with children and particularly younger children, the practice of reading aloud has historically been a way for a community to share texts for information and enjoyment. Findings from a year-long study of a school librarian collaborating with a team of second grade teachers demonstrates the value of reading aloud in building background knowledge and vocabulary, modeling, understanding curriculum, creating common texts, and reading for enjoyment. Reading aloud brought other voices to the table in a clear example of intertextuality. Implications are shared for school librarians interested in similar practices as well as future research …

Relationships Among Classroom Technology Utilization, Professional Development, And Knowledge About Technology For Secondary Teachers, Stacy L. King

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of technology professional development for secondary teachers toward the usage of that technology in the classroom to assist with the teaching/learning process. This research also examined the effects of knowledge about technology for secondary teachers on the utilization of technology in the classroom. Data were gathered from the Technology Proficiency Self Assessment Instrument issued by the Louisiana State Department of Education. The target population consisted of secondary school teachers in Louisiana from 202 secondary schools in twenty-eight parishes. From the 202 secondary schools in Louisiana, a sample of teachers (n …