Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

The Effectiveness Of A Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program That Offer Special Benefits For Pregnant And Parenting Teens: A Qualitative Study, Marsha Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Teen pregnancy continues to be a problem for families, educators, health care professionals, and the government. Teenagers are not afforded the opportunity to learn or receive reinforcement on God's laws on abstaining from premarital sex because religious education is not allowed in the public school system. This increase has led to the creation of the Teenage Parenting Center (TAPP), located in southwest Georgia. TAPP is one of 64 schools in a school district that offers special benefits for pregnant and parenting teens. This qualitative case study used a phenomenological approach to explore the experience of eight former attendees of the …

The Impact Of Selected Initiatives On The Reading Criterion Referenced Competency Test Scores Of African-American And Disadvantaged Students In Grades 3, 5, And 8, Eric Fuller

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to examine the impact of selected research-based whole-school reading reform programs, Success for All (SFA), Core Knowledge, and Direct Instruction (DI) on the Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) reading scores of African-American students and students from disadvantaged subgroups in Grades 3, 5, and 8 in a large urban school system. The target sample consisted of 61 elementary schools and 16 middle schools. Student data consisted of 3,533 data points for African-American students and 7,550 data points for disadvantaged students attending reform and non reform schools respectively. A causal-comparative research design was the methodology …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of An Intervention Mathematics Class For Low Achieving Middle School Students In Northwest Georgia, Johnnie Coats

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

High-stakes testing has become crucial in public education, requiring students to meet increasingly higher standards, regardless of their ability levels. This causal-comparative study sought to determine the effectiveness of an intervention mathematics course in the middle school setting for at-risk, sixth grade students. The Georgia Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) math scores of 143 at-risk students enrolled in a remediation mathematics course were compared to scores from a control population of 143 at-risk students who did not participate in the class. Math scores from the 2008 administration of the CRCT test were used as covariates, and comparisons were made using …

The Effects Of Collaborative Strategic Reading On Informational Text Comprehension And Metacognitive Awareness Of Fifth Grade Students, Margaret Mccown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examined the effects of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) on informational text comprehension and metacognitive awareness of fifth grade students. This study tested the theories of metacognition and social cognition with a focus on self-regulation and self-efficacy. Participating students included a heterogeneous mix of regular education students, students with disabilities, and English learners (ELs). Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group design, this study examined the effects of CSR on informational text comprehension using the Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (QRI-5) and Georgia's Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT). Metacognitive awareness was measured using the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI). Data …

Pedagogía De Hablantes De Herencia: Implicaciones Para El Entrenamiento De Instructores Al Nivel Universitario, Lina M. Reznicek-Parrado

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study researches the differences in pedagogical needs between learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (FL learners) and learners of Spanish as a Heritage Language (HL learners) at the university level. By using the UNL Modern Languages and Literatures Department as an illustrative case and based on an analysis of the Heritage Language student profile in the context of the United States, this study seeks to explore arguments in favor of providing training for university-level instructors of Spanish that responds to the specific pedagogical needs of Heritage Language Learners.

The relevancy of this study is not only based on …

Asian American Studies Program: Community-Centered Commitments And Pathways In The Asamst Curriculum, Asian American Studies Program, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

UMass Boston offers the most Asian American Studies courses, faculty, and community linkages of any university in New England. Through culturally-responsive instruction in the classroom and holistic practices of mentoring, community-building, service-learning, and advocacy, we address the social and academic needs of students as well as the critical capacity-building needs of local Asian American communities. Our alumni include teachers, social workers, health care providers, business entrepreneurs, and leaders of local Asian American community organizations where we sustain vital, long-term partnerships.

Reviviendo Las Voces Perdidas: El Papel De La Educación Intercultural Y Bilingüe (Eib) En El Sistema Educativo Chileno, Ashlie Busone

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

A pesar del apretón que tiene el sistema capitalista en la implementación educativa de hoy, la tensión de cultura y poder se manifestó tanto en el aula como en el gobierno. En Chile, con un trasfondo de fuerzas de globalización y neoliberalismo, esto especialmente se ve en el intento político de reconciliar la gente indígena y la gente no indígena por el uso del sistema educativo. Con un marco teórico compuesto de las ideas de Freire, Gramsci y Bourdieu, este estudio desea aplaudir y criticar los educadores chilenos en sus esfuerzos de mantener y promover las culturas indígenas en un …

A Logistic Regression Analysis Of Student Experience Factors For The Enhancement Of Developmental Post-Secondary Retention Initiatives, Michael Shenkle

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In response to stagnant undergraduate completion rates and growing demands for post-secondary accountability, institutions are actively pursuing effective, broadly applicable methods for promoting student success. One notable scarcity in existing research is found in the tailoring of broad academic interventions to better meet the specific needs of students from known risk populations. The purpose of this correlational study was to investigate possible predictive relationships among three specific pre-matriculation characteristics (gender, ethnicity and secondary school type) and subsequent academic year retention for residential undergraduate students that completed a developmental education course at a private, liberal arts university. A logistic regression was …

Los Efectos De La Educación Intercultural Bilingüe En La Ciudad De Cusco, Lilly Hacker

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este estudio examina los efectos de una educación intercultural bilingüe en la sociedad multicultural, ciudadana en Cusco, Perú. Para la investigación, usamos un caso muy distinto del colegio alternativa Pukllasunchis y enfocaremos en niños con raíces indígenas en escuela inicial.

La región de Cusco es un lugar donde ha sido una larga historia de opresión de la gente Quechua, lo que ha creado un sistema de exclusión de esta cultura indígena en nuestro sociedad actual. Infortunadamente, el currículum y las prácticas de muchos colegios refuerzan esta discriminación y tiene un gran efecto en el abandonamiento cultural que estamos viendo en …

Incarceration, Identity Formation, And Race In Young Adult Literature: The Case Of Monster Versus Hole In My Life, Tim Engles, Fern Kory

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Culturally Responsive Methodologies At Work In Education Settings, Mere Berryman, Suzanne Soohoo, Ann Nevin, Te Arani Barrett, Therese Ford, Debora Joy Nodelman, Norma Valenzuela, Anna Wilson

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe culturally responsive methodology as a way to develop researchers. The aim is to illuminate the dimensions of culturally responsive methodology such as cultural and epistemological pluralism, deconstruction of Western colonial traditions of research, and primacy of relationships within culturally responsive dialogic encounters. An overarching question is: “How can we maintain the original integrity of both participants and researchers and their respective cultures and co-construct at the same time something new?”

Design/methodology/approach – Five case study narratives are described in order for readers to understand the range and types of studies …

English Proficiency / Fluent English Proficient Students, Susan R. Adams

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

K-12 students whose first language is not English are identified upon enrollment in U.S. schools through a home language survey and are immediately assessed to determine whether English as a second language (ESL) services are required. Students who do not pass this initial screening assessment are classified as English Language Learners (ELLs), or as limited English proficiency (LEP) students, and are identified to receive school-provided English language development (ELD) and accommodations. Students who pass the initial screener or who demonstrate English proficiency two years in a row on state-mandated annual assessments are deemed fluent or fully English proficient (FEP) students …

Are Your S'S In Effect? Ensuring Culturally Responsive Physical Education Environments, Brian Culp

Faculty Articles

Schools have rapidly becoming a kaleidoscope of ethnicities and cultures represented by demographic changes that have affected America’s schools. As educators in this era of change, a unique opportunity exists to ensure quality physical education for all students. Culturally responsive practices in the classroom can assist in minimizing students' alienation as they attempt to adjust to the different "worlds" often represented in school.

Researching Pds Initiatives To Promote Social Justice Across The Educational System, Gail Shroyer, Amanda Morales, Sally Yahnke, Lisa A. Bietau

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

The examples and data shared in this chapter provide evidence that our comprehensive mission to understand and impact issues of social justice and equity within education is being achieved as the PDS Partnership continues to improve K-16 teaching and learning and enhance the teaching profession across all levels of education. The major implication of our findings is that systemic reform is achievable and the outcomes can be exceptionally rewarding. Of course, such initiatives require time, continuous effort, resources, broad-based participation of all stakeholders, and a sense of need for change. Developing human capital across the educational continuum requires a commitment …

Adapting School-Based Substance Use Prevention Curriculum Through Cultural Grounding: A Review And Exemplar Of Adaptation Processes For Rural Schools, Margaret Colby, Michael L. Hecht, Michelle Miller-Day, Janice L. Krieger, Amy K. Syvertsen, John W. Graham, Jonathan Pettigrew

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

A central challenge facing twenty-first century community-based researchers and prevention scientists is curriculum adaptation processes. While early prevention efforts sought to develop effective programs, taking programs to scale implies that they will be adapted, especially as programs are implemented with populations other than those with whom they were developed or tested. The principle of cultural grounding, which argues that health message adaptation should be informed by knowledge of the target population and by cultural insiders, provides a theoretical rational for cultural regrounding and presents an illustrative case of methods used to reground the keepin’ it REAL substance use prevention curriculum …

Organizing Against The Neo-Liberal Privatization Of Education In South Los Angeles: Reflections On The Transformative Potential Of Grassroots Research, Miguel Zavala

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This auto/ethnographic study narrates how members of the Association of Raza Educators (ARE), a grassroots teacher-led organization, came together in undertaking action-research within what eventually became a stalled campaign to defend South Los Angeles Elementary from corporate takeover. Most of the work within the campaign involved action-research, including what I term organic popular education. In this paper I analyze the ways in which action-research functions as public pedagogy, further arguing for studies conducted from the vantage point of people immersed in grassroots organizations.

Exploring Factors That Contribute To Academic Persistence For Undergraduate Hispanic Nontraditional Students At Hispanic Serving Institutions In The Southeast, Floralba Arbelo Marrero

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examined the academic persistence of 10 undergraduate Hispanic nontraditional students enrolled at a public and a private not for profit Hispanic Serving Institution in the southeastern region of the United States, each in their last year of a bachelor degree program. Using a phenomenological research design and an ecological and sociocultural framework the findings indicated that family context, personal aspirations, campus environment within Hispanic Serving Institutions, life challenges, and English language learning each play a vital role in the persistence behaviors of this population. These factors interact at the student and institutional levels to provide students with internal …

The Voices Of Reason: Counterstories Of The Urbanization Of A Suburban Black School In Georgia, Shana Hunt

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This inquiry explores the discrepancy of educational opportunities in a Black suburban public school near Atlanta, Georgia. Predominately Black suburban schools in the South have become increasingly similar to Black urban schools. Both Black urban and suburban schools have become places of complacency for teachers and students. There is an incessant fluctuation of teachers and an increase in low expectations for academic success in Black suburban schools. Both Black urban and suburban schools have limited funding while White schools, many times less than ten miles away, experience the benefits of magnet programs, cutting-edge technology and rigorous curricula. Many Black suburban …

Movement In Learning: Revitalizing The Classroom, Marcus Van

MA TESOL Collection

Movement is a vital part of our every day lives, and it is also important for a healthy brain. The following paper examines the shift from movement based learning to a more restrictive rote format, which often has adverse effects on learning. This work discusses the ways in which teachers are under pressure to “teach to the test” instead of creating student-centered classrooms. Some of the side effects of a test-centered approach are low self-esteem (from not meeting strict academic requirements) and behavioral problems in students.

Adding more movement to lessons can provide variation and relief from the rote-only system. …

Narrative Inquiry In The Language Classroom: An Incubator Of Identity And Growth Exploration, Olga Culver

MA TESOL Collection

The paper examines narrative inquiry within the precepts of socio-cultural and ecological theories. The work touches upon constructivist learning ideologies and examines social approaches to learning with an emphasis on biographical narratives. The author makes a case for self-discovery, holistic learning, and creating collaborative learning environments. The study also presents a methodology with practical applications for implementing a narrative praxis in a second language learning environment.

Road Scholar Service-Learning Corps: Reflection And Reciprocity In Rajasthan, India, Lezlie R. Weber

Capstone Collection

Road Scholar (RS) is the name for the programs developed and offered by Elderhostel, Inc., the not-for-profit leader in lifelong learning since 1975. RS inspires adults to learn, discover and travel (Road Scholar, 2012). Currently, RS is in the process of launching five new service-learning programs over the next two years. Road Scholar runs five different programs yearly to India; of the current programs offered there is no service-learning component throughout any of the programs. The specific location in India was chosen due to the need for an additional English teacher at the public school. There are a growing number …

Perceived Efficacy Of Beginning Teachers To Differentiate Instruction, Michelle K. Casey, Robert K. Gable

Teacher Education

A two-phase, sequential mixed-methods design was used to assess perceptions of teacher efficacy (10 item survey, alpha = .90) to differentiate instruction for N = 36 graduates from one MAT teacher preparation program. Research questions addressed levels of self-efficacy, perceptions of preparedness, teaching tenure, and number of certifications held. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and t-test procedures. A focus group with N = 10 purposively selected 2010 graduates and interviews with N = 2 graduates each from the 2008 and 2009 classes, and N = 2 faculty were conducted. No significant relationships were found for tenure and …

There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here: A Critical Race Perspective, Cleveland Hayes, Brenda Juarez

Democracy & Education

In this article, we are concerned with White racial domination as a process that occurs in teacher education and the ways it operates to hinder the preparation of teachers to effectively teach all students. Our purpose is to identify and highlight moments within processes of White racial domination when individuals and groups have and make choices to support rather than to challenge White supremacy. By highlighting and critically examining moments when White racial domination has been instantiated and recreated within our own experiences, we attempt to open up a venue for imagining and re-creating teacher education in ways that are …

The More She Longs For Home, The Farther Away It Appears: A Paradox Of Nostalgia In A Fulani Immigrant Girl’S Life, Kaoru Miyazawa

Education Faculty Publications

Nostalgia, which is derived from the Greek words nos (returning home) and algia (pain), refers to longing for the loss of the familiar (Kaplan, 1987). The loss of our connection to the familiar is a painful experience as such loss is connected to a fundamental loss, the loss of ourselves. By losing a connection to familiar people, objects, and places that continue to remain the same from the past to the future, we also lose the continuity within ourselves. And this discontinuity of our past, present, and future selves creates anxiety within us (Milligan, 2003). The painful experience that accompanies …

The Denaturalization Of Romanies In Italy: How Language And Image Work Together, Theresa Catalano

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

This study attempts to reveal how the denaturalization of Romanies (a.k.a. Roma) in Italy is accomplished by Italian media through the combination of linguistic strategies and non-­verbal text such as photographs and videos. Both Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis are employed in combination with Social Identity and Nationalism theories to investigate linguistic strategies and images combined in texts to create a negative context model of this group in the eyes of the Italian public. Over 10 online newspaper crime reports from the years 2004–2010 are investigated as well as Italian government websites and videos. Data analysis includes an in-­depth …

Growing Effective Cld Teachers For Today’S Classrooms Of Cld Children, Gayla Lohfink, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke

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

Using a case study design, this investigation examined the effective teaching characteristics of nontraditional, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) student teachers placed in rural, elementary schools with high populations of Latino/a students. Data collected reflected high percentages of effective teaching characteristics in multiple domains with specific indicators reflective of consistent teaching over time. A discussion of these findings considered aspects within the distance-delivery model that facilitated the CLD participants’ development of effective teaching and noted (1) consistent leadership, (2) explicit teacher instruction within CLD school settings, and (3) the strong cohesive nature of the CLD participants’ cohort as positively affecting …

How Porous Are The Walls That Separate Us?: Transformative Service-Learning, Women’S Incarceration, And The Unsettled Self, Coralynn V. Davis, Carol Wayne White

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, we refine a politics of thinking from the margins by exploring a pedagogical model that advances transformative notions of service learning as social justice teaching. Drawing on a recent course we taught involving both incarcerated women and traditional college students, we contend that when communication among differentiated and stratified parties occurs, one possible result is not just a view of the other but also a transformation of the self and other. More specifically, we suggest that an engaged feminist praxis of teaching incarcerated women together with college students helps illuminate the porous nature of fixed markers that …

Putting ‘Maori’ In The Mainstream: Student Teachers' Reflections Of A Culturally Relevant Pedogogy, Steven S. Sexton

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper reports on student teachers experiences of an education program that was explicitly designed to be grounded in both Kaupapa Māori and mainstream pedagogy. This program started from the Kaupapa Māori view to be Māori as Māori. This was then supported by mainstream epistemology of New Zealand focused good teaching practice. A Kaupapa Māori approach was taken in this qualitative study that used participant driven spiral discourse. The paper suggests that this combined Kaupapa Māori and mainstream approach allowed these student teachers to find their place in education. Conclusions suggest that a culturally relevant pedagogy modeled as good teaching …

Supporting Native Indian Preschoolers And Their Families Family–School–Community Partnerships, M. Susan Mcwilliams, Tami Maldonado-Mancebo, Paula S. Szczepaniak, Jacqueline Jones

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

In this urban midwestern public school district, families of Native Indian students, pre-K through grade 12, attend four multigenerational gatherings like this one during the school year—one of a number of events orchestrated by the Native Indian Centered Education (NICE) program. NICE is a program in the school district that partners with families to provide Native-centric educational opportunities for preschool children. Family events such as the storytelling activity in the opening vignette represent trends in early childhood education: building family-school-community partnerships to enhance learning and build family resources. The all- Native-Indian preschool program is unusual and rare in urban areas. …

Improving Educational Outcomes Of English Language Learners In Schools And Programs In Boston Public Schools, Miren Uriarte, Faye Karp, Laurie Gagnon, Rosann Tung, Sarah Rustan, Jie Chen, Michael Berardino, Pamela Stazesky, Eileen De Los Reyes, Antonieta Bolomey

Gastón Institute Publications

Using 4 years of student-level demographic, enrollment and testing and school-level characteristics, this study analyzes the enrollment and outcomes of English Language Learners (ELLs) in Boston Public School between SY2006 and SY2009 and assess the relative impact of individual and school level factors in testing outcomes of ELLs. The study reports on the improvement in ELL dropout rates and testing outcomes during the period of observation. It reports also on the outcomes of ELLs at different levels of English proficiency and finds (1) higher dropout rates and lower testing performance among low English proficiency students; (2) a minimal proportion of …