Territorial Games: Honors, Outreach, And Collaboration, Andrew Martino

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay explores and expands the boundaries by which honors is defined and defines itself. By opening a path toward a more expansive and public perception of honors, the author argues for emphasis on the public good as a key element in honors discourse and the broader dissemination of its theories and practices. Drawing from characteristics of the public intellectual, the author encourages honors practitioners to resist hyper-professionalization and insularity in favor of more open and collaborative practices.

Discomfort And Other Factors That Influence The Effectiveness Of Graduate Student Peer Consultations, Mark W. Pleiss, Krisztina Erzsebet Dearborn

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The following study reports the findings of two surveys given to graduate teacher consultants (n = 30) and graduate student teachers (n = 59) who completed video-teacher consultations at a public, R1 university. The surveys assessed the overall effectiveness of peer consultation for both sides and identified the factors that influenced those assessments. We found that the level of comfort expressed by consultants and graduate teachers during their first consultations had the greatest impact on their perceived level of effectiveness. The time between consultants’ training and their first consultation also affected their assessments. Other factors that did and did not …

Focus On Outcomes: Fostering Systemic Departmental Improvements, Daniel L. Reinholz, Mary E. Pilgrim, Amelia Stone-Johnson, Karen Falkenburg, Christopher Geanious, Courtney Ngai, Joel Christopher Corbo, Sarah B. Wise

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article describes how a focus on outcomes can be a tool for guiding systemic change. By focusing on positive outcomes to be achieved, a group can guide its collective efforts toward an ideal future rather than becoming fixated on individual problems to solve. While there is support for an outcome-guided approach in the literature on individual and organizational change, this approach has not been used extensively to support department-level changes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

Implementation Plans For Course Redesigns: An Exploration Of Identified Strategies, Rebecca Campbell, Benjamin Blankenship

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Institutions are redesigning gateway courses—lower-division courses known to create student success bottlenecks—to influence persistence and completion goals. These initiatives, student success course redesigns (SSCR), are specialized versions of course design institutes (CDIs). This investigation into SSCRs uses content analysis to examine the implementation plans created during a SSCR. Results demonstrated that the majority of the strategies planned focused on the Learning key performance indicator (KPI), and the minority of the planned-for strategies focused on the Monitoring Student Performance KPI. A more granular analysis of the Learning strategies revealed five themes: Content, Assessment, Pedagogy, Syllabus, and Student Success. Additional results indicated …

Finding Our Voice: Highly Flexible Ed For The Hyflex World, Kristine Larsen, Cristina Robinson, Jason A. Melnyk, Jennifer Nicoletti, Amy Gagnon, Kelly Mclaughlin, Mina Hussaini

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about unprecedented changes in our approach to delivering educational development (ED) programming. In this article we discuss how our dual ED centers pivoted during the sudden switch to online learning, highlighting how we overcame challenges such as a small staff, tight timelines, and faculty anxieties. Particularly, we explore how we adapted to the university’s investment in technologically advanced Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) classroom spaces and utilized a multi-pronged team approach to provide effective and timely ED to faculty. By identifying key faculty leaders, identifying multiple sources of data, and using multiple modalities, we supported the faculty in their …

Constellations Of Support: A Community Development Model, Tracy Smith, Melba Spooner

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article describes the rationale, development process, and initial artifacts and outcomes of a faculty support (a.k.a. mentoring) model developed for a specific academic context: a College of Education at a Southeastern comprehensive public university. The purposes of this article are to (1) describe the research and theoretical models that guided the development of the program; (2) provide a research-based rationale for a context-based community development model of faculty support; (3) propose a set of principles for a context-based developmental community model of faculty support; (4) describe the process for developing a community development mentoring model for faculty at all …

Motivation To “Keep Pushin’”: Insights Into Faculty Development Facilitating Inclusive Pedagogy, Kelly Erby, Melanie Burdick, Sandra Winn Tutwiler, Dan Petersen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This study focuses on the lived experiences of nine university faculty who were attempting to implement inclusive teaching practices following university-sponsored faculty development. While the participants were each successful in their respective implementations, they all expressed anxiety at the beginning of the semester as well as at the end when they reflected upon the changes they made. This occurred despite deeply held motivations to change their teaching and make a difference for their students. The participants encountered barriers that centered on feelings related to self-confidence, student perception, and peer approval. Findings include descriptions of these anxieties and the supports that …

Beyond Instructional Development: An Exploration Of Using Formal Pedagogy Training To Benefit Perceived Quality Of Life And Sense Of Community In Graduate Students, Matthew Mahavongtrakul, Ashley Hooper, Daniel Mann, Brian Sato

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The Association of American Colleges and Universities calls for improvements in teaching preparation in graduate programs as a transferable skill for future faculty. However, the amount of institutional and faculty support for these programs is limited. For the relatively few programs that exist, rarely do they have their outcomes assessed in a data-driven manner. This is disconcerting considering that participation in professional development can improve work-life balance, and graduate students often work long hours, suffer from mental health issues, and face increasing career competition. In this case study, we explore how two teaching development programs impacted pedagogical knowledge, perceived quality …

Honors In Practice, Volume 17 (2021)

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Contents

Editorial Policy, Deadline, and Submission Guidelines

Dedication to Elaine Torda

Editor’s Introduction • Ada Long

Founders Award Acceptance Speech (18 December 2020) • Jeffrey A. Portnoy

Coordinating Multi-Campus Honors Programs and Colleges • Larry R. Andrews

From Program to College: The Vision and Curriculum Evolution of the Virginia Tech Honors College • Stephanie N. Lewis, Anne-Lise K. Velez, Desen S. Ozkan, Raymond C. Thomas, and Kimberly A. Carlson

The Role of Admissions Practices in Diversifying Honors Populations: A Case Study • Andrea Radasanu and Gregory Barker

A View of Health as a Human Right: A Snapshot from an Honors …

Dedication: Elaine Torda

Honors in Practice Online Archive

For all her contributions to the NCHC and to honors and also for steering the Ship of Honors in the Year of Covid, we gratefully dedicate this volume of Honors in Practice to Elaine Torda.

Learning In Teams During A Pandemic, Aaron D. Cobb

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As the COVID-19 crisis disrupts students’ sense of community and appreciation for in-person instruction, the author presents a pedagogical experiment involving several collaborative, team-based learning strategies to engage all learners, regardless of location. Students in a sophomore-level required seminar are tasked with various team-based assignments, including notetaking, critical essays, interviews, and reflective writing exercises. Outcomes suggest a framework for the creative use of teams and out-of-classroom collaboration, even in challenging contexts where disruption and displacement complicate both teaching and learning. Curricular objectives are described, and student feedback is summarized.

Creativity In The Age Of Covid: Honors Comes “Home”, Ilene D. Lieberman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay explores the conceptual and practical implications of an honors forum relating to artful expression and the phenomenon of sequester in place (SIP). As monthly general education offerings for first-year students, Honors Forums feature an array of thematic events associated with the freshman cohort. Noting challenges relating to remote instruction, social distancing, and general anxiety as well as the consequent effects on the typical first-year experience, the author, an art historian, presents a novel response to COVID constraints through communal, creative expression. A visual and textual curriculum helps bring students together, mitigate pandemic-related anxieties, and introduce the honors living-learning …

Developing And Encouraging The First-Year Undergraduate Researcher, Stacia Kock, Jennifer F. Nyland

Honors in Practice Online Archive

A simulated conference in first-year curriculum reinforces undergraduate research as beneficial to both honors and campus communities while fostering scholarly development and campus engagement among honors freshmen during the coronavirus crisis.

Forming Oral History Researchers: Diversifying And Innovating Honors Experiential Learning Across Campus, Myrriah Gómez, Anna M. Nogar

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This article presents a transdisciplinary, cross-campus collaboration among honors and non-honors students in the field of humanities. Trained in oral history methodologies and integrated as IRB-certified researchers into an ongoing (2018–present) project, a cohort of students (n = 34) participate in place-based, community-engaged learning and research involving Hispanic New Mexicans, known as Nuevomexicanas/os. Drawing on the tenets of experiential learning as a mode of honors discourse, the authors describe how this challenging ethnographic project serves to bring a diverse group of learners together while deepening interpersonal, intercultural, and interdisciplinary connections. Results indicate that students benefit from working with more diverse …

Modeling Vulnerabilities In The Research Process, Rebecca Summer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

When honors faculty share experiences from their own research, students learn that making mistakes and trying again is an important part of the learning process.

For all our emphasis on independent student inquiry in honors curricula, students get limited examples of the inevitable bumps in the road of advanced research. In our courses, we typically assign published works, which means that the research students read about is complete, polished, and deemed successful by the broader scholarly community. What students do not encounter in these models of successful research are the many uncertainties, missteps, and revisions along the way. Students are …

Putting Community Voice And Knowledge At The Center, Lynn Sondag

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Service-learning curriculum is grounded in a critical, asset-based framework of community engagement to guide honors students beyond a mere acquisition of skills toward understanding how participatory and democratic processes increase social equity and justice. An innovative, collaborative community arts program is described.

Colby College Catalogue 2021-2022, Colby College

Colby Catalogues

No abstract provided.

(Re)Defining Writing Instruction: Implementing An Anti-Racist Approach To Writing Instruction And Assessment In The Secondary English Classroom, Emily Wisniewski

West Chester University Master’s Theses

The traditional writing workshop model and assessment practices commonly used in secondary classrooms are systematically racist and harmful to the development of young writers. To counter the damaging effects of racially discriminatory practices in secondary writing classrooms, educators must review and redefine their pedagogical approaches to create a safe, anti-racist environment for all students. By centering the scholarship of Felicia Rose Chavez and Asao Inoue, this thesis establishes a model of anti-racist pedagogy in the secondary classroom to help educators dismantle white supremacy in writing instruction and assessment so that students are empowered to find their voices without the fear …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Reading Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for reading literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire reading literacy and is …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Mathematical Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for mathematical literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire mathematical literacy and problem-solving …

Understanding Competency Based Learning For Scientific Literacy, Sri Aurobindo Society, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

ACER India

Competency-based learning, unlike curriculum-based learning, emphasizes a student-centred approach to education. It is heavily driven by experience and discovery rather than lecture and memorization. The focus of competency-based learning is on what students understand and how they apply what they learn in real-life situations rather than what they remember. This learning framework for scientific literacy is an effort to introduce competency-based learning to classroom teaching and learning in India to prepare Indian students for the rapidly changing future. It provides resources that can be used by schools and teachers for supporting secondary school students to acquire scientific literacy and problem-solving …

A Mixed Methods Examination Of Elementary Teachers’ Conceptions Of Benchmark Reading Assessments, Marie N. Derby Ed. D.

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

Abstract

This study examined the case of 22 mid-Atlantic K-5 public school teachers’ conceptions of the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Reading Assessment Systems 1-3. The Namaste School District delivers ELA curriculum through reader’s and writer’s workshop. Triangulated data showed that participants held varying conceptions of the F&P. Specifically, they shared similar conceptions regarding the importance of one-on-one time with students, the amount of time it takes to administer the assessment, and the subjectivity of the F&P results. Results of this study provided similar results to other studies of teachers’ conceptions of assessment and adds to the literature debate regarding …

The Potential Role Of Trauma-Informed Positive Education In The Secondary Mathematics Classroom In Disrupting The Preschool-To-Prison Pipeline, Jessica Michele Doering

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This mixed-methods study considered the potential for trauma-informed mathematics education to disrupt the preschool-to-prison (or school-to-prison) pipeline. Phenomenological qualitative interviews were conducted in conjunction with the use of the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC; Baker et al., 2016) scale to determine teacher perceptions of trauma-informed care practices, their thoughts regarding challenging classroom behaviors and the connection of these behaviors with trauma and the pipeline, and their ideas about how much of an impact teachers can have on students who present with challenging behaviors that might be symptoms of trauma or that might be an indicator of future incarceration. This …

Third Grade Students' Occupational Aspirations And Perceptions Of Parents' Career Satisfaction, Tiffany Corum

Ed.D. Dissertations

At the time of this writing, little research had been completed on the occupational aspirations of students and students’ perceptions of their parents’ career satisfaction. I completed a qualitative study in which I compared the occupational aspirations of 14 third-grade students, 7 girls and 7 boys, from a low socio-economic school and 14 third-grade students, 7 girls and 7 boys, from a high socio-economic school within the southeastern region of the United States. I also compared these students’ perceptions of their parents’ career satisfaction. I conducted one-on-one interviews with students in which they answered questions about their occupational aspirations and …

Perceptions Of Factors Leading To Forensics-Drama Coaching Efficacy, Anthony Wooley

Ed.D. Dissertations

Participation in nonacademic activities that focus on creative skill improvement, like forensics‑drama, can increase high school students’ intrinsic desire to learn. Intrinsic motivation to learn resulted in academic success at the secondary and collegiate levels and career success at the professional level because the students felt confident in their abilities. Because the forensics-drama coach was the primary factor affecting students’ forensics-drama abilities, a greater understanding of the sources of forensics-drama coaching efficacy was required to discover how to better serve the students. Ten forensics-drama coaches in the state of Tennessee participated in this qualitative interpretive study in which they were …

The Role Paradox Of Middle School Assistant Principals In Tennessee: Self-Perception Versus Teacher Perception, Jarrod Pendergraft

Ed.D. Dissertations

Research was limited when it came to the roles and responsibilities of middle school assistant principals. Even less research was dedicated to how middle school teachers perceived the roles and responsibilities of their assistant principals. Due to the overall lack of research regarding both facets, further research was necessary to form a better understanding of middle school assistant principals’ roles and responsibilities as compared to teachers’ perceptions. Middle school assistant principals and teachers from one Tennessee county responded to questionnaires to explore the relationship between middle school assistant principals’ perceptions of their roles and responsibilities and the teachers’ perceptions of …

Stakeholder Perceptions Of Student Opportunity In Consolidated Rural High Schools, Bradley Smith

Ed.D. Dissertations

Since the early 1900s, educational leaders and policymakers looked to consolidation as a way for rural schools and school systems to overcome financial challenges and improve the educational experiences for students. Stakeholders were met with conflicting claims about the effects of school and system consolidation. Proponents of consolidation claimed a consolidation would provide students with more curricular and extracurricular options by way of financial savings experienced from economies of scale, while opponents of consolidation claimed the consolidation would not relieve financial stress but would risk more behavioral problems and a loss of community identity. In this case study of a …

Teacher Perceptions Of Curriculum-Driven Technology After Working With Instructional Technology Coaches In Middle Schools In One Southeastern School District, Julie Pepperman

Ed.D. Dissertations

The use of curriculum-driven technology in K-12 public schools was mandated by federal law. School and district leaders were required to provide curriculum-driven technology professional development and support to teachers. The use of the curriculum-driven technology coach was an option some schools chose to meet the curriculum-driven technology professional development requirements and needs of their teachers. The purpose of this research was to explore one school district’s middle school teachers’ perceptions of the importance of curriculum-driven technology and their perceived self-efficacy in using curriculum-driven technology in instructional practice after collaborating with a curriculum-driven technology coach. This qualitative study was conducted …

An Approach To Mapping The Development Of Professional Skills In A Structural Engineering Programme, Patrick Crean, Dervilla Niall, Una Beagon, Aimee Byrne, Darren Carthy, Caitríona De Paor, Louise Lynch

Conference Papers

Engineers of the future will be presented with complicated, complex problems and their role in the development of sustainable solutions to global problems will become even more critical. Recent literature highlights the need for the development of a set of professional skills in order to address these challenges. These skills include technical, non-technical and attitudinal skills. This paper describes a case study of a whole-of-programme review of teaching and assessment of professional skills in a structural engineering programme. In a systematic process, lecturing staff mapped the modules they teach against a set of professional skills, which were distilled from literature …

Lessons From The Pivot: Higher Education's Response To The Pandemic, Janine S. Davis, Christy Irish

Education Faculty Articles

The intensity of major events often leads us to remember minute details of where we were and what we were doing when they occurred: what we wore as we watched the towers fall on September 11, 2001; the faces of our classmates when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986; the smell in the air when we lived through a major earthquake, fire, or other personal tragedy. Similarly, faculty, staff, and students will remember the series of moments that led to the closure of their schools and universities as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world--the timeline …