Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Evaluating The Effect Of Garden-Based Education On Young Learners’ Preferences For And Willingness To Try Healthy Food, Sierra Gregory

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Childhood obesity in American children has tripled in the last 20 years, and 85% of current healthcare spending is linked to diet-related diseases. The consumption of highly processed foods is linked to these trends and makes up more than half of an average American youths’ diet. Reducing the consumption of highly processed foods in children’s diets can be addressed, in part, by addressing childhood neophobia (willingness to try new foods) associated with whole foods like fruits and vegetables. Influence over behavioral areas such as nutrition and in early childhood is essential to long-term sustained health, and garden-based interventions shows promise …

The Forgotten Subject: Pe And The Power Of People, Shea Franklin

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This project focused on student engagement in PE at the middle school level. Student engagement is so meaningful because even though physical education is supposed to educate kids to be physically active while being active in practice, quite the opposite is happening. Middle school is the point at which students begin to lose interest in PE, viewing it as repetitive and pointless, which is why it is so essential to make this forgotten subject fun again. After survey and interviewing students and staff members participating in physical education at a local middle school in Marina, three themes emerged from the …

Increasing Preschool Children’S Scientific Inquiry, Dianna Leon

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project focused on increasing scientific inquiry in young children. The problem that exists is that there is not enough focus on scientific learning in preschool settings compared to school settings with older age groups. According to Dejarnette (2018), young children can learn about science and are naturally curious, making them natural scientists. Science curriculum has many benefits for children, such as the development of observation, documentation, investigation, communication, and literacy skills. Science curriculum can create curiosity and enjoyment in young children while they learn about the world around them, creating a lifelong interest in learning (Larimore, 2020). Exciting …

Influences Of Cultural Capital And Internationalization On Global Competence: Evidence From China’S Higher Vocational Education, Yiying Teng

Education (PhD) Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to explore global competence-based pedagogy in higher education. Under the umbrella of cultural capital theory and internationalization framework, a systematic literature review analyzed and synthesized 26 empirical studies pertaining to global competence education in postsecondary education from 2013 to 2022. The review revealed a research gap highlighting the lack of exploration into global competence pedagogy among students in higher vocational education. To address this gap, the present study focused on a sample of 1,504 participants recruited from a Chinese vocational university situated on the eastern coast of China, encompassing both 3-year college students and …

Using Multiple Methods To Explore Antiracist Practices In A Cross Institutional Online Community, Mark Diacopoulos, Amanda Burbage, Kristen H. Gregory, Mary F. Rice

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

In this chapter, four white, cis-gender, teacher-educators engaged in a multiple method, cross-institution online collaboration during the dual pandemic of Covid-19 and structural racism. Using a book club reading schedule, arts based responses, problem posing, and memory work, the authors examined their experiences and reactions to the pandemic and concurrent incidences of structural racism. Drawing inspiration from Robinson and Robinson’s (2022) Imagine If, followed by Kendi’s (2019, 2023) How to be Antiracist, the authors describe how their online collaboration influenced their understanding of their past, helped them to unpack considerations of present problems in their practice, and helped them consider …

The Infinite Design Of Creative Self-Leadership, Adrian T. Ashdown

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of my Master’s of Science in Creativity and Change Leadership Project is to develop a Scope and Sequence for a Creative Self-Leadership course, providing participants with a structured framework for intentional personal growth and leadership development. The Infinite Design of Creative Self-Leadership serves as an individualized framework for influencing our human experience deliberately. Throughout this project, the core idea remains consistent: to teach creativity as a transferable skill with applications beyond traditional educational settings. The culmination of this endeavor will result in a comprehensive Scope & Sequence for The Infinite Design Creative Self-Leadership Course, offering participants a solid …

Parity In Higher Education In Prison Programs: Does It Exist?, Michael Lee Griggs, Vianey Luna

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The expansion of college-in-prison (CIP) programs, especially in California, where incarcerated college enrollment increased from 11,472 students to over 15,000 in two years, has spotlighted higher education for incarcerated individuals. This increase, supported by legislation that expands funding for CIP programs and allows time off sentences for successful course/degree completion, is further bolstered by the restoration of Federal Pell funding for incarcerated students after a 28-year ban. Despite the acknowledged benefits of CIP programs in reducing recidivism and enhancing post-release outcomes, existing research highlights the need for additional exploration into the quality of CIP programs. Senate Bill 416 further emphasizes …

(De)Composition: Earthen Storytelling For Collective Liberation, Priya Subberwal

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This interdisciplinary portfolio is an investigation into ecological communication through pedagogical design, online collaborative learning spaces, digital and print media, and creative writing. Braiding lenses of queer ecology, decolonial studies, anarchism, and collaborative and creative practice, this work hopes to explore the field of environmental communication through avenues that are reciprocal, community-driven, and oriented towards environmental justice and collective, intersectional liberation. Through the three distinct components of 1) the creation and facilitation of an online learning community, the Spiritual Ecology Study Club at Advaya, 2) the editing and production of two issues of Camas Magazine, an environmental literary magazine based …

Preservice Teachers' Pk-12 Educational Field Trip Experiences: Teaching Beyond The Classroom, Cecilia A. Turman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of the study was to investigate preservice teachers’ (PSTs) attitudes and beliefs towards their PK-12 field trip (FT) experiences as students, their memories, influences in their lives, impact on their educational approaches and career choices, as well as how, as future teachers, they would implement FTs to their future students to provide feedback on FTs’ training for preparation programs. Rationale: Anderson et al. (2010) criticized teacher preparation programs’ lack of teacher training to implement educational FTs and contended that instructors’ FTs experiences as students may have influenced the way they plan and carry out educational FTs. John Dewey’s …

Black Women Educational Leaders In Pk-12 Public Education: A Multiple Case Study On The Double Consciousness Of Black Women Educational Leadership In Southwestern United States, Malena Baizan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examined the stories of Black Women Educational Leaders (BWEL) in PK-12t public education and their double consciousness as expressed through their leadership. The focus of this study was BWEL’s counternarratives as leaders within a system built upon systemic racism and oppression. Their experiences as Black Women Educational Leaders in PK-12 in a school district in which most school administrators are white, but most of the student body is Black and Brown were highlighted and centered to shed light on how the double consciousness of Black women informs their leadership. Utilizing Critical Race Feminism as the theoretical framework with …

Preservice Teachers Learning To Teach In An Anti-Racist/Climate-Justice Program: Challenges And Promises, Richard Sawyer

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

The global climate crisis represents the most urgent problem facing the planet, impacting social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental dimensions of life. Alarmingly, it has impacted communities of color in disproportionate ways (Goddell, 2023; Pellow, 2013). The climate crisis, along with the intertwined context of racism, places a profound responsibility on social justice teacher educators to prioritize addressing these issues in teacher preparation. The intent of the following two case studies is to explore the impact of a project based teacher preparation program focused on cultural and environmental justice on the pedagogical knowledge and practice of teaching interns at the …

Programas De Ell Dentro Del Área De Fredericksburg, Va: Una Descripción Y Justificación Para Su Defensa, Natalie Buchanan

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

El propósito de esta investigación es analizar y discutir los desafíos comunes que los estudiantes aprendiendo Inglés como segundo idioma (para aquí y delante ELL) experimentan en Virginia. Con el fin de lograr este objetivo, realizaré entrevistas a varios maestros de ELL en las Escuelas Públicas de la Ciudad de Fredericksburg para discutir los problemas y desafíos que estos programas experimentan. Con mis hallazgos espero abogar por la comprensión de estos temas y sugerir ideas para ayudar a desarrollar programas de ELL más eficientes para la población actual de K-12 de ELL del 10% en las escuelas públicas de Virginia …

What Comes After The Critique Of The Corporate University? Toward A Syndicalist University, Clyde W. Barrow

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

For the past three decades, university faculty have produced a cascade of contemporary protest literature that routinely criticizes the knowledge factory, academic capitalism, managed professionals, college for sale, the university in ruins, the corporate corruption of higher education, and University, Inc. University faculty are regularly warned about the fall of the faculty, the last professors, and the last intellectuals. This article reviews the historical development of the corporate and neoliberal university, but it takes the next step of asking what is to be done after the critique of the corporate university. It calls on faculty to engage in a variety …

Faculty Learning Community: Advancing Faculty Academic Advising Pedagogy, Linda Jean Raynard

Masters Projects

Within higher educational institutions faculty may serve in a faculty advising role. The quality of faculty advising conversations can impact student’s sense of mattering and support to campus leadership, community, and beyond. Faculty, however, have competing priorities and a lack of pathological training that has prevented them from investing deeper in advising practices. Students may then miss important opportunities to initially connect with campus leaders about their curricular and co-curricular development. To better operationalize academic advising practices for faculty to use in their everyday student conversations, a faculty learning community is suggested to aid. The Faculty Learning Community: Advancing Faculty …

The Pop Culture Classroom: Advocating Education For The Digital Adolescent, T'Khiyah Trice-Wilford

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this research is to analyze visual mass media and its effects on adolescents' identity and their psychological, cognitive, socio-emotional, and moral development within educational settings. A particular emphasis is on how mass media has influenced adolescents since the turn of the century. Emphasis will also be placed on how ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identification are represented in these types of media. Furthermore, strategies and recommendations will be proposed as a response to this critical need during these formative years of adolescent development.

Study Of The Lack Of Student Ability To Repair Relationships Among School Peers, Brittany M. Parker

Masters Projects

Social-emotional skills and student relationships have been researched for years, yet there are still school systems who seek to punish students when they have conflict instead of teaching them the way to manage their emotions. To learn in school is to be social, there cannot be one without the other. In order for students to do their best learning, it is important for them to be able to handle conflict in a healthy way and repair peer relationships. This project examines the benefits of teaching social-emotional skills, in addition to implementing a peer mentoring program in an effort to equip …

Censorship Of Lgbtq+ Books: Causes And Consequences, Merrick Glass

Honors Projects

Censorship in the United States of America has accelerated over the past four years. LGBTQ+ books are specifically being targeted and banned within high school classrooms. Banned books are nothing new--court cases today are influenced by Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) plurality decision on censorship. Students and professionals alike have power in their rights and voices. In the framework of bell hooks, the classroom can be perceived as a site of resistance in order to take power back into students' hands. Without a diversity of books, students will lack cognitive development and community.

Tools Of Oppression: The Virginia School System And The School To Prison Pipeline, Natalie Johnson-Abbott

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper examines the intersection of race, cultural expression, and disciplinary practices within the American education system, focusing on Virginia's school districts. Recent legislative efforts, such as the CROWN Act in Texas, have sought to address discriminatory practices related to cultural expression in schools. Legal actions, like the lawsuit against the Winner School District in South Dakota, have aimed to rectify disparities in disciplinary outcomes for Indigenous students. However, meaningful reform requires more than just legislative and legal interventions; it necessitates a fundamental shift in educational practices to promote inclusivity and cultural sensitivity. This includes diversifying school staff, implementing culturally …

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, “If I Told You That A Flower Bloomed In A Dark Room, Would You Trust It?1”: A Case Study In English Language Arts Achievement, Anna E. Russell Ziegler

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between culturally responsive pedagogy and student achievement to showcase how teaching can build a more equitable learning community where all students thrive. Using a case study model, the author explores how one English teacher designed culturally responsive instructional practices to improve student performance. Analyzing data from student work, student interactions, and student conversations, I discovered instructional themes that improved learning for each student and can be transferred to classrooms across the country.

Yoga Program For Children At Risk For Trauma: Promoting Self-Regulation And Educational Participation, Sydney Gonzales, Rebecca King

Spring 2024 Virtual OTD Capstone Symposium

This presentation describes implementing a yoga-based program within an early childhood education setting. Occupational therapists can utilize yoga-based activities and advocate for their use in classrooms to promote the positive development of self-regulation and educational participation for at-risk populations.

The Role Of Emotions In Qualitative Analysis: Researchers’ Perspectives, Hilary Lustick, Xiaoye Yang, Abeer Hakouz

The Qualitative Report

Qualitative research is an inherently social and relational endeavor that relies on and engages our emotions. Yet, researchers receive little guidance on how to engage emotions without being swayed by personal biases. Lustick (2021) developed a framework called “emotion coding” for systematically engaging thoughts and emotions in qualitative data analysis by asking what a chunk of data can teach us about ourselves, our participants, and our study. In this study, we interviewed 15 researchers who had tried using the emotion coding technique, about their impressions of this technique and the role of emotion in qualitative research overall. Framed by Goffman …

Connecting Culturally Relevant And Sustaining Education Competencies In Teacher Preparation Programs To The Experiences Of Mixed-Race Learners In K-12 Settings: A Mixed Methods Study, Marissa Wallace

Education Doctorate Dissertations

Mixed-race individuals are increasing in number within the United States population. There is limited research on mixed-race learners in K-12 school settings. This study delves into the unique educational experiences of this group of learners and provides implications for future teachers. With a focus on the Pennsylvania Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CR-SE) competencies, the researcher incorporates the competencies into course work and field experiences for pre-service teachers taking a course focused on literacy instruction and intervention. Quantitative, pre- and post- surveys, and qualitative data, open-ended responses, observations, and end of semester reflections were collected from pre-service teachers. Qualitative data, …

Breaking The Fourth Wall: Co-Constructing Evaluative Practices In The Graduate Methods Classroom, Kelly W. Guyotte, Carlson H. Coogler

Feminist Pedagogy

This article centers on the authors' experiences co-teaching a semester-long qualitative ABR course by exploring a pedagogical practice implemented by Kelly—the co-construction of an evaluation rubric between teacher and student. We focus on this practice in particular because we believe it is uniquely situated for graduate student teaching. Typically, instructors develop course assessments on their own, establishing their own criteria for what should be included within an assignment. Students, then, refer to rubrics as they compose their assignments ensuring they ‘meet’ or ‘exceed’ the articulated criteria, with little opportunity to provide feedback on how their work is evaluated. Breaking the …

Assessing Higher Order Thinking In The New Jersey Social Studies Standards For Grades K-8 By Using Artificial Intelligence (Ai), Connie Sanchez

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

New Jersey consistently ranks as one of the top-performing states in the country when it comes to education. Most recently, it was ranked third in the nation. A look at the state standards in any subject shows the state works diligently to vertically align standards while also challenging students in order to better prepare them for the future and to be able to live in a global society. It is evident in looking at the New Jersey Department of Education’s standards that the planning they do is performed with an eye toward the future. The social studies standards are no …

Ennobling Each Other Through Collaborative Inquiry: Exploring Music As A Provocation For Leadership Development, Ihan Ip

Dissertations

Amid the challenges in a global village, leadership education needs to surpass traditional methods, nurturing creativity, flexibility, and adaptability. This study is a collaborative action inquiry that considers music as an arts-based method in service of leadership development. The study unfolded over five cycles, in which 14 coinquirers collaborated in a process of exploration. The study illuminates the strong potential of music as a provocation for leadership development and reveals crucial realizations in the area of facilitation in collective processes.

This dissertation tells the story of the inquiry with the voices of its coinquirers and offers insights on facilitation through …

“Flattening” Asian American Studies In Secondary Education: Strategies And Recommendations For Conceptualizing The Field Of Public Schools, James O. Fabionar, Jesse Mills

School of Leadership and Education Sciences: Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, political pressure to address systemic racism, police brutality, and racialized violence in California has resulted in the passage of laws and policies that mandate public schools, colleges, and universities to require Ethnic Studies courses. Amidst this expansion, an array of policies and practices are emerging within and across systems that reflect what is believed to be core knowledge in Ethnic Studies and subfields like Asian American Studies. This article distills observations from one site among these different systems—secondary schools—and describes a “flattening,” or watering down, of Asian American Studies in emerging curricula and instructional practices. It discusses …

James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Us About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan

Scholars Week

James Baldwin writes about the importance of the representation of race in school classrooms in his essay A Talk to Teachers. Baldwin's discourse surrounding the representation of race in schools can be extended to the queer community and the importance of representation in the classroom of these marginalized communities. Combining Baldwin's essays and fiction with educational research, I plan on highlighting the importance of representation of marginalized communities in the classroom and the role that educators play in ensuring that all students feel seen in the classroom.

Ua64/2 The Challenge: Magazine For The Center For Gifted Studies (No. 56 Spring 2024), Elizabeth Joyce Editor

Gifted Studies Publications

Magazine created by and about the WKU Center for Gifted Studies.

Teacher Roles In Correction: Understanding Disciplinary Alternative School Programs In Nebraska, Philip Thomas White Iii

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Through semi-structured interviews with teachers and semi-structured interviews-turned-testimonios of students, I have sought to understand the purposes and consequences of Disciplinary Alternative Programs (DAP). Four different locations from across the state of Nebraska were utilized with 16 teachers and two students participating. Research questions considered the purpose of DAPs to better understand how these programs fit into broader systems of schooling. While highly cautious IRB oversight limited the number of students who could be participants in this study, their insights were substantially augmented by the sixteen educators from such environments who were also interviewed. Participant responses offered nuanced and …

Constructing Refugee Identity: A Heuristic Inquiry Into Experiences Of Ukrainian Refugees, Deana Tsabak

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Besides the despicable atrocities and devastation, Russia’s war in Ukraine caused the emergence of a group of refugees previously unknown in the U.S. and the world. The phenomenon of “Ukrainian refugees” is new to the immigration and resettlement agencies, host communities, employers, and educators. This research explores how five Ukrainians who left their homeland after the beginning of Russia’s war construct their refugee identity in the United States. Furthermore, this study aims to discover in what ways learning English in the English Language Learning (ELL) program at a community college in Nebraska influences refugee identity construction in resettlement.

This study …