Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Preparing Aspiring School Principals: One Field-Based Approach, Maria De Lourdes Viloria, Lori Leyendecker, Graciela Brondo, Michael Salinas

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

In the United States, principals play a vital role in leading educational institutions. School principals are responsible for creating safe and supportive learning environments for all students. Previous studies have emphasized that all principals share one challenge, which is to identify effective instructional strategies that help decrease student achievement gaps. Studies of novice school principals are well-documented; it is also well-acknowledged that the acclimatization process for novice school principals is characterized with a high level of stress related to the organizational structures that influence the school’s culture and climate and student achievement. This study addresses the implementation of a field-based …

The Leadership Of The Marginalized: A Literature Review, Bertrand Tchoumi

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

This article presents a comprehensive literature review of relevant literature examining the position of minority school leaders on the educational landscape. The point of departure is the underrepresentation and invisibility of Black immigrants in school leadership. The review examines the advocacy discourse addressing the minority leadership gap and advocating for their equitable representation in school leadership. The literature that discusses how minority leaders interpret their roles and purposes as well as the meaning they assign to them was also reviewed. The review then moves into the written discourse about the professional boundaries that minority educators cross to become school leaders …

Why Principals Hire Recent Graduates From A Teacher Preparation Program, Laurie James, Joy Mahaiko, Jonathan Schwartz

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

Principals want to hire the most qualified teacher when positions are open at their schools. Oftentimes a preservice teacher, who recently earned their teaching certificate is their first choice. The purpose of this research was to look at the satisfaction level of elementary, middle-level, and high school principals who hired graduates from a local teacher preparation program at a nationally accredited 4-year baccalaureate-granting university in Leeward O‘ahu. The methodology utilized in the study includes four individual face-to-face interviews. Questions were asked to determine 1) desired qualities principals look for when hiring a new teacher and 2) what a local teacher …

Pass Or Fail: Recent Graduates Sound Off On The Edtpa, Darryn Diuguid, Karee Nasser

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

Many states now require education students to pass the edTPA, a national performance assessment created by Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) and scored by Pearson Education Services, before becoming licensed to teach. One key component of the edTPA is the desire for the assessment to become an educative tool for candidates (SCALE, 2015). For this study, a survey instrument was completed by 148 new graduates to gather their perceptions of this unique assessment. Results suggest that students were able to plan instructional supports, link learners’ prior learning to new learning, and provide more thorough feedback to students. …

Section 504 Support And Implementation Of Services: School Administrators’ Perceived Strengths And Challenges, Dora Rodriguez, George Padilla, Velma Menchaca

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendment Act strengthens social justice ensuring students with disabilities are provided proper support and services through Section 504. School staff who implement Section 504 must successfully utilize available program supports and services. A mixed-methods study was completed in two large and three small school districts in south Texas to identify the support and services most utilized by elementary and secondary schools. Statistical differences between elementary and secondary schools were analyzed. School staff working with Section 504 were asked to what support and services they utilized more to assist students. The study findings include the two …

Co-Teaching Botany And History: An Interdisciplinary Model For A More Inclusive Curriculum, Frederica Bowcutt, Tamara Caulkins

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

This essay offers numerous ideas on how to integrate science and history into classroom pedagogy in a way that acknowledges the contributions of women and other groups underrepresented in science by highlighting the cultural and political contexts in which science developed rather than by adding token individuals to a history of science still largely defined by the achievements of a few great men. It details how students in a General Education class co-taught by a botanist and a historian of science at the Evergreen State College not only gained skills in field botany and vegetation analysis but also became more …

Culturally Responsive Teaching And Learning For Success, Fred A. Hunter

Dissertations

The enduring gap between White and Black student achievement has challenged our educational systems for decades. This study evaluates an instructional pedagogy that values and embraces students’ culture and experiences. Participants in this study include one teacher trained to implement culturally relevant instruction, her middle school students, and teacher leaders at the school where I served as principal during the time of the study.

The results of this study reveal the positive impact that a culturally relevant teacher yields for students and teacher. Students receiving an affirming instructional pedagogy benefit from improved academic outcomes. Teachers embracing this method of teaching …

Gather Us In: Building Meaningful Relationships In Catholic Schools Amid A Covid-19 Context, Ronald D. Fussell Edd

Journal of Catholic Education

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Catholic schools in the United States pivoted from traditional learning to a remote learning model to maintain continuity of instruction for students. This pivot has served as a catalyst for academic innovation in many Catholic schools. As Catholic schools turn their attention to the possibility of remote learning in the fall of 2020, it is important now to consider how remote learning impacts interpersonal relationships within the school community. This reflective essay examines implications of relationship building in a remote learning context using Cook and Simonds's (2011) framework for relationships for Catholic schools as a lens. …

Theories - A Powerful Tool For Science, Lawrence C. Scharmann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Scientific theories are often mischaracterized by non-scientists, journalists, etc., as being merely someone’s guesses; guesses that would be more appropriately labeled as conjecture or speculation. Others mistakenly equate theory and hypothesis. Still others incorrectly assert that scientific laws (which refer to a limited set of remarkably repeatable observational data) are ‘stronger’ than theories. In the practice of science, however, laws are narrowly confined and limited in application, whereas theories are broad in scope and widely applied. Simply stated, theories are scientists’ most powerful tools.

Student Preclass Preparation By Both Reading The Textbook And Watching Videos Online Improves Exam Performance In A Partially Flipped Course, Kaleb Bassett, Gayla R. Olbricht, Katie Shannon

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The flipped classroom has the potential to improve student performance. Because flipping involves both preclass preparation and problem solving in the classroom, the means by which increased learning occurs and whether the method of delivering content matters is of interest. In a partially flipped cell biology course, students were assigned online videos before the flipped class and textbook reading before lectures. Low-stakes assessments were used to incentivize both types of preclass preparation. We hypothesized that more students would watch the videos than read the textbook and that both types of preparation would positively affect exam performance. A multiple linear regression …

Impact Of Humanities And Social Sciences Curriculum In An Undergraduate Medical Education Programme, Kulsoom Ghias, Kausar S. Khan, Rukhsana Ali, Shireen Azfar, Rashida Ahmed

Department of Biological & Biomedical Sciences

Objective: To evaluate the impact of humanities and social sciences curriculum in an undergraduate medical education programme.
Methods: The qualitative study was conducted from May 2016 to May 2017 at a private medical college in Karachi where humanities and social sciences subject is an art of the undergraduate curriculum as a 6-week module at the start of Year 1 of the five-year programme. Focus group discussions were held with students from all the five years as well as with faculty related to humanities and social sciences, basic sciences and their clinical counterparts. The views of alumni of the undergraduate programme …

The Year Of Covid-19: Personal Reflections On How Traditional Pedagogy Can Be Informed By Online Teaching Methods (Aka How I Changed My Mind About Online Teaching), Ee-Ing Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Reflections on lessons learnt during online teaching during COVID-19. Despite the difficulties of the term, I realized that online teaching had certain strengths that traditional face-to-face teaching formats lacked. This started me on the path to adapting online teaching practices to improve our current modes of teaching, such as using online tools to improve interactivity, and reduce bias in interacting with students. I also started reconsidering whether our traditional classroom structures are indeed the best way to teach. While my experiences are based on teaching law, I believe that these points are also applicable to teaching in other disciplines.

The Year Of Covid-19: Personal Reflections On How Traditional Pedagogy Can Be Informed By Online Teaching Methods (Aka How I Changed My Mind About Online Teaching), Ee-Ing Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Reflections on lessons learnt during online teaching during COVID-19. Despite the difficulties of the term, I realized that online teaching had certain strengths that traditional face-to-face teaching formats lacked. This started me on the path to adapting online teaching practices to improve our current modes of teaching, such as using online tools to improve interactivity, and reduce bias in interacting with students. I also started reconsidering whether our traditional classroom structures are indeed the best way to teach. While my experiences are based on teaching law, I believe that these points are also applicable to teaching in other disciplines.

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 …

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 …

How Does Student Self-Efficacy Affect Achievement?, Meghan E. Taylor

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

How does student self-efficacy affect achievement?

Special Education Inquiry Research

This presentation highlights the systematic integration of teacher inquiry within the undergraduate special education program at the University of North Florida. Inquiry is embedded across courses each semester and put into practice in a variety of ways in our PDS network. In all, inquiry serves as a tool for capturing student learning as candidates collaborate with mentor teachers to intervene and meet the needs of diverse learners. During the Fall 2019 semester, I implemented high leverage practices, collected and analyzed data of my students’ learning, and presented outcomes to my …

Provost’S Learning Innovation Grant (Plig) For 2019, Esa M. Rantanen

Articles

This grant allowed for a redesign of the PSYC 714 “Graduate Engineering Psychology” course, offered by the Department of Psychology about every two years since 2013, for online delivery. The grant was awarded on March 29, 2019. Full Project Plan report was submitted on Aug. 16, 2019. The majority of the course redesign work was completed during the fall semester 2019 (2191), including creation of several software programs to support the lab exercises designed for the course. The Preliminary Findings report was submitted on Jan. 10, 2020, and the PSYC 714 course was offered online in the spring semester of …

Ell Teachers Guide To Pronunciation: A Contrastive Analysis Of S'Gaw Karen And American English Phonetics And Phonology, Shana Lee

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Lee, S. ELLTeachers Guide to Pronunciation: A Contrastive Analysis of S’gaw Karen and American English Phonetics and Phonology (2020)

The purpose of this study (Lee, 2020) was to determine the phonological features of English that provide the largest challenge to the pronunciation of S’gaw Karen speaking ELL students in order to inform the development of a curricular resource meant to help educators increase the comprehensible speech output in English. A review of literature revealed a gap of academic work around the S’gaw language especially pertaining to instructional methodologies for language teachers. To guide the development of this resource, the author …

Video Games In The Secondary Language Arts Classroom: Opportunities For Deeper Learning And Worldly Discussions, Karissa Thomson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Video games are often neglected or forgotten by educators, even though they can provide an excellent, multi-faceted learning tool for students of all backgrounds and skill levels. This capstone project examines the use of video games in secondary language arts classrooms following Minnesota state standards to help students understand literary concepts, increase language skills, and allow for meaningful worldly discussions. Using the research question “How can video games be used in educational settings to support student curriculum and foster worldly discussions?” as a guiding question, this capstone explores societal conversations surrounding video game usage as a learning tool, including the …

How Can Middle School Science Teachers Differentiate Instruction To Support All Learners In An Inclusive Classroom?, Jacqueline Barker

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Barker, J. How Can Middle School Science Teachers Differentiate Instruction To Support All Learners In An Inclusive Classroom? (2020)

The research question addressed in this capstone was, how can middle school science teachers differentiate instruction to support all learners in an inclusive classroom? Research was compiled in regards to the composition of an inclusive classroom, the mindset of teachers, differentiation as a philosophy, and differentiation as a means to modifying instruction. The information obtained was utilized for a culminating project in the form of curriculum for an eighth grade science classroom. The curriculum was envisioned for use in a public …

The Implementation Of The 5e Learning Cycle In Stem Freedom School Curriculum, Natasha Semanko

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The project titled “Implementation of the 5E Learning Cycle in STEM Freedom School Curriculum” was completed by Natasha Semanko in the summer of 2020. For this project, two weeks of new curriculum was created for STEM Freedom School. Each lesson followed the 5E inquiry cycle and focused on topics within the theme of Environmental Studies and Sustainability. Lesson topics included the water cycle, groundwater contamination, pollution in lakes/rivers/oceans, overfishing, and the food chain. In this curriculum, students create a presentation or poster of the material to share with families and visitors at the End of Year Showcase. The key influences …

Writing And Reading Partnership: A Focused First Grade Writing Curriculum That Benefits Ell Readers, Margaret Gorrilla

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Gorrilla, M. (2020). Writing and Reading Partnership: A Focused First Grade Writing Curriculum that Benefits ELL Readers

Research indicates that there is a strong relationship between English Language Learners’ (ELLs) reading and writing skills. Yet, there is a lack of writing curriculum and instruction in many schools. It is evident that reading curriculum and instruction takes precedent. My capstone project research revolved around the following question: How might a first grade writing curriculum benefit English Language Learners’ (ELLs) reading comprehension skills? The curriculum follows the Thematic-Based learning model, and incorporates explicit reading comprehension and writing instruction. The first grade writing …

Comprehensible And Engaging: A Study Of The Effects Of Engaging Aural Input On Written Output In Second–Language Acquisition, Tracey Valbuena

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Valbuena, T. (2020). Comprehensible and Engaging: A Study of the Effects of Engaging Aural Input on Written Output in Second–language Acquisition

Modern World Language teachers are moving toward a more communicative approach to teaching. Because this style of teaching requires the students to receive the majority of language instruction in the foreign language, teachers have to be creative in order to maintain the students’ attention. This study takes a look at the research done on student engagement and second–language acquisition. The research on these two topics strongly suggests that student interest is a major factor in student engagement and that …

Introducing Flexible Seating In A First-Grade Classroom, Tanya Teske

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Teske, T. (2020). Introducing Flexible Seating in a First-Grade Classroom. The research question addressed in the capstone was: If elementary school classrooms are provided environmental flexibility, how can teachers effectively implement the flexibility to enhance student attention and work habits? The topics covered in the literature review include traditional and flexible seating, student-centered learning, first-grade education, and the need for flexible seating unit plan. The information gleaned from the literature review was used to create a teaching tool for the implementation of flexible seating for first-grade educators and students. The curriculum created with a student-centered learning model for the purpose …

Prerequisite Course Recommendation Based On Course Description And Students’ Grades, Haozhe Zhou

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Needs Of Speech-Language Pathologists And Special Education Teachers In Public Schools, Hannah Dulski

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Engineering Technology Students: Comparing Recent Survey Responses, Liza Russell

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Exploring Cold War Religious Persecution Using The Rank-Order Approach, Jeffrey M. Byford, Brian K. Horn, John Grant, Cort Casey, Sherrie Hopper

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This lesson explores religious persecution in East Germany. Students must decide plausible actions to take against the Protestant Church to diminish power. Acting as a member of The East German Secret Police, students, evaluate, rank, and justify decisions to minimalize Christianity in an atheist society.

Facilitating Experiential Learning Experiences Through A Class Pioneer Day, Ronald Vaughan Morris

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Students experience a reenactment of life on the frontier created by the interaction of their teachers and community volunteers. Students in elementary social studies learn content, skills, values, and dispositions through engaging in experiential learning. The classroom environment is described through a case study of one classroom of fourth grade students with an experienced teacher with deep roots in the community. Teachers develop skills in negotiation with volunteers to accomplish tasks that support student learning. Descriptions of student and teacher preparations in addition to budgetary constraints describe how to replicate the experience. Examples and assessments are provided as well as …

The Economics Of Artificial Intelligence: A Primer For Social Studies Educators, Scott Wolla

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This paper provides a framework for understanding the economic effects of automation and artificial intelligence (AI). First, it reviews how physical capital interacts with labor in the context of automation and AI. Next, it discusses recent advances in AI and potential economic outcomes such as job market polarization and income inequality. It then describes the role education has played in previous economic transitions and the role it will likely play as technology advances. Finally, the paper identifies key economic concepts and teaching resources that social studies educators can integrate into their instruction to help students understand the economic effects of …