Other Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

Exploring Grit In Exemplary School Superintendents, Denise Jaramillo

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify and describe how exemplary superintendents use five principles associated with grit (courage, conscientiousness, long-term goals, resilience, and excellence versus perfection) to accomplish extraordinary results in their organizations.

Methodology: This qualitative study was part of a larger thematic study conducted by nine doctoral candidates under the supervision of three University of Massachusetts Global faculty. The study used a phenomenological design to identify and describe how exemplary superintendents use five principles associated with grit to accomplish extraordinary results. Data were gathered through a combination of eight semistructured interviews, related observations, and a …

Guide To The Dr. Owen B. Kiernan Collection, 1934-2010, Undated, Noah Smith, Orson Kingsley

Archives & Special Collections Finding Aids

Owen Kiernan was born on March 9, 1914, in Randolph, Massachusetts. Kiernan graduated from Bridgewater State University in 1935 (known then as Bridgewater State Teachers College) and went on to get his masters at Boston University and his Doctorate at Harvard. Kiernan participated in baseball and basketball while at Bridgewater State and was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989. After graduating from Bridgewater State in 1935, Kiernan kept a strong connection to the school for the rest of his life.

Kiernan became the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education in 1957. He would stay in that role until …

Strengthening The Academic Progress Of Students Within Multi-Tiered Systems Of Support, Leslie Dial

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Leadership in education is thinking, communicating, and modeling to maximize student growth and achievement. This quantitative research study explored how leadership can strengthen the academic progress of students within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). When implementation of MTSS is guided by adaptive school leadership, educators will be prepared, communication will occur, interventions will be established, and data will be evaluated. Adaptive leaders who build efficacy will ensure fidelity and continuous improvement of student achievement.

Survey research was conducted to analyze the operational level of MTSS regarding the domains of Leadership, Building Capacity for Instruction, Communication and Collaboration, Data-Based Problem-Solving, Tiered …

The Elementary Assistant Principal: Exploring Mentorship As A Development Pathway For The Principal Job Role, Adib Shakir, Chinasa Elue, Sheryl J. Croft, Nicholas Clegorne

Georgia Educational Researcher

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenographical article was to explore the different ways that elementary assistant principals experienced mentoring from their elementary principals as a way to provide the requisite leadership development that would lead them to become a principal. This research study was conducted using in-depth semi-structured interviews as the primary data source. Ancillary data sources such as demographic surveys, reviewing district leadership secondary source documents, and researcher journal notes aided in the data triangulation and analysis. This study was guided by one main research question: What are the different ways elementary assistant principals experience mentoring from their elementary …

Preparing For The Future: A Collaborative Design For High-Quality Career And Technical Education Programming, Shannon Rodriguez

Education Theses and Dissertations

Educators in public education as faced with preparing students for college and career after high school graduation. The collaborative efforts of Career and Technical Education programming allows for the development of a high-quality program through exploring non-traditional teacher use goal setting and pedagogy provide a foundation of success for students.

Academic Achievement And Degree Attainment Among College Students With Children., Katrina Elliott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.) from 2012 to 2017 acquired by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey program, this study addresses the research questions of whether there is a difference in degree attainment of earning a bachelor’s degree in the time period from 2012 through 2017 and whether there is a difference in academic achievement as defined by students’ grade point average between students who have dependent children and those who do not have dependent children between the ages 18 to 29 attending a four-year institution after …

K-5 Elementary Alternative Program: A Case Study, William E. Scheuer Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to examine how the K-5 elementary alternative program All Students Can Thrive (ASCT) used student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. There is a lack of research on K-5 elementary alternative programs, such as ASCT, and specifically those that integrate student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. Literature does not contain universally accepted interventions that are effective in the elementary alternative setting to help students return to the mainstream classroom setting better prepared to display appropriate behaviors when a student is removed from a mainstream classroom setting due to disruptive behaviors. …

The Nationwide Teacher Shortage: Factors Influencing Educators To Leave The Profession, Abby Keegan

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This senior capstone research examines the nationwide teacher shortage, which has been apparent in America since the early 1960’s. However, this crisis did not begin to reach such levels of severity until recent years. There are currently thousands of vacancies in the teaching profession nationwide; not a single school across the nation is able to fill all the gaps. Research reveals that factors such as low salary, maltreatment from administrators, students, and parents, classroom safety concerns, a lack of teacher autonomy, and an overall societal disrespect for the profession can be to blame for this high resignation period. As these …

Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (Stem) Project-Based Learning (Pbl) Education: A New Mexico Case Study For Equity And Inclusion, Kimberly A. Scheerer

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

This research addresses how student participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) project-based learning (PBL) education activities encourages underrepresented minority student achievement in STEM career field trajectories. Seven New Mexico high school counselors and 12 STEM organization personnel were interviewed during this study. Their responses represent the nuanced professional voices where New Mexico public education intersects with STEM student interest and cultural influence.

For students, STEM PBL can foster deep integration across educational disciplines and enhance STEM career trajectory interest and readiness. STEM education converged with PBL methodologies has the ability to leverage community support while broadening student networks. …

A Qualitative Investigation: Black & Brown Men Retention And Recruitment In The Grow Your Own Program And Partners Colleges Of Education And Universities, Sunni Ali, Alberto Lopez

Journal of Research Initiatives

Three decades ago, the U.S. Department of Education identified increasing the number of teachers of color as a priority. Three decades later, the nation is still confronting a gap between the number of students of color and teachers of color serving in our classrooms. Black and brown men make up less than three percent of the teaching workforce (Bryk, A., Gomez, L., Grunow, A. 2011). Regardless of race, all students benefit from having black and brown male teachers working in urban settings because it counters the deficit model while affirming minority male students' cultural efficacy. Through focus groups, we interviewed …

Critical Civic Engagement: Creating Yards And Building Community At Predominately White Institutions, Heather Moore Roberson

Journal of Research Initiatives

This article details the journey of a Black Greek professor who created yards on a predominately white campus. This piece of scholarship challenges the historical narrative of the civic engagement movement and considers equity and inclusion with existing civic engagement literature. Specifically, this research contends that civic engagement scholarship must consider the historical legacy of historically Black Greek letter organizations, their commitment to service, and undergraduate education. The construction of “yards” is a civic engagement initiative that builds meaningful connections between college campuses and local communities.

Using Markup Languages For Accessible Scientific, Technical, And Scholarly Document Creation, Jason J.G. White

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

In using software to write a scientific, technical, or other scholarly document, authors have essentially two options. They can either write it in a ‘what you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) editor such as a word processor, or write it in a text editor using a markup language such as HTML, LaTeX, Markdown, or AsciiDoc.

This paper gives an overview of the latter approach, focusing on both the non-visual accessibility of the writing process, and that of the documents produced. Currently popular markup languages and established tools associated with them are introduced. Support for mathematical notation is considered. In …

Pedagogical Leadership During Crisis: The Shift To Distance Learning In An Israeli Religious College During Covid-19, Shmuel Shenhav

Journal of Practitioner Research

I knew that serving as an administrator-leader is challenging under any circumstance. However, grappling with an almost unforeseen crisis tested my endurance and commitment to new levels. I am honored to serve as a college administrator overseeing four different master's degree programs at Michlala Jerusalem College. I soon realized that there was a need for a new kind of pedagogical leadership as the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. The need for college administrators and instructors to remain "agile" to adapt to the challenges of moving instruction online was apparent. So I utilized practitioner inquiry as my approach to …

Best Practices For K-12 District Level Leaders, Carolyn D. Manning-Washington

Journal of Research Initiatives

In an ever-evolving time of technology in our society and, more specifically, in our schools, the need for school leaders to equip themselves as technology leaders of the 21st century has approached. While the role of the school principal has included the need for sound instructional strategies and keen managerial styles, this role is changing quickly due to the increased access to information communication technology. Principals are finding themselves strapped with cell phones, ipads, laptops, and other technology tools to meet the ever-demanding needs of the principalship role. Therefore, school district leaders would be wise to investigate and evaluate the …

Trauma-Informed Practices For Test-Taking Anxiety At The Elementary Grade Level, Kate Campbell, Shalini Mathew

Journal of Research Initiatives

Test -Taking Anxiety (TTA) is a challenging experience for children of all ages. Childhood exposure to trauma and adverse experience has been increasing. Fortunately, trauma-informed practices, such as mindfulness activities have become more widespread in schools throughout the last few years. Existing school counseling literature offers limited perspectives on how school counselors can support elementary students for TTA. This conceptual article explores the effects of trauma-informed practices on elementary-age students' test anxiety and overall academic success in schools and offers implications for practice.

Revisiting Ethnic Differences In In-Person Learning During 2021-2022, Alison Heape, Andrew Camp, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools throughout the United States, forcing a shift to remote learning that lasted the rest of the academic year. In the fall of 2020, schools reopened using combinations of in-person, hybrid, and remote learning models with great geographic variability in access to in-person learning. A growing body of research shows important racial differences in the use of in-person learning during the 2020-2021 school year, with Black and Hispanic students returning to in-person learning at lower rates than white students (Camp and Zamarro, 2021; Kurmann and Lalé, 2022). This in-person learning gap …

Implementing Tactile Learning To Aid Students Understanding Of The Bohr Model, Christin B. Monroe, Andrew B. Stein, Cindy Tolman

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

It is essential for introductory level chemistry students to understand atomic models and how atoms interact to form chemical bonds. The tactile model in this article utilizes marbles to represent subatomic particles, a cup to represent the nucleus and wooden rings to simulate the electron orbitals. These inexpensive items can be combined to construct models in which students can build foundational knowledge of atomic structure and how subatomic particles interact. Students were asked to provide feedback comparing the use of this tactile model to atomic computer simulations, videos and their textbook regarding the method they felt was most useful to …

An Exploratory Study Using Improvement Science To Better Understand How Modeling The Inverted Pyramid Fosters Servant Leadership Characteristics In A Rural Public School District, Jennifer Anderson

All Dissertations

A rural superintendent is a community figure who is responsible for meeting the needs of students, families, teachers, community stakeholders, and school boards. The superintendent's job is complicated. It has been stated that career superintendency in a single district is extremely rare, and turnover is among the highest in the education field (Chingos et al., 2014). The rural, mid-size public school district in this study was not immune to this problem, with many seasoned leaders on the cusp of retirement. Of the 30 district and school administrators currently employed in the district, including the superintendent, 20 of these leaders are …

Experiences Of Latina Student Mothers In The Transfer Pipeline: An Interpretive Phenomonological Analysis, Aurora Vilchis

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Characteristics of who today’s college student is has drastically changed over the years with more students over age 25, may have dependents, employed full-time, attending school part time and likely a parent. These students are known as post-traditional students who make up 85% of undergraduates nationwide. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the experiences of Latina students, who are mothers, and have successfully transferred from a community college designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) to a four-year public higher education institution also designated as an HSI. Data was collected from eleven participants who shared their experiences …

Overview Of The Proceedings Of The 2021 Inclusion In Science, Learning A New Direction, Conference On Disability (Island), Cary Supalo, Jasodhara Bhattacharya, Daniel Steinberg

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

No abstract provided.

Remote Learning - The Future Of Education: Effective Instructional Strategies Used By Parent Educators And Recommendations For Building Capacity, Raelene Ferguson Haugen

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed methods Delphi study was to identify the remote learning instructional strategies used by expert Southern California parent educators for implementing the anticipatory set, modeling, checking for understanding, and guided practice elements of Madeline Cheek Hunter’s Instructional Theory Into Practice (ITIP) framework. The study sought to identify how expert Southern California parent educators rated the effectiveness of the remote learning instructional strategies in the aforementioned elements of Hunter’s ITIP framework. Additionally, the purpose was to generate recommendations from expert Southern California parent educators to build capacity in the identified effective instructional strategies.

Methodology: The classical …

Silos In Higher Education Institutions: Shifting From Organizational Phenomena To A Practical Framework For Equitable Decision-Making, Mandi Sue Mizuta

Dissertations and Theses

As higher education has evolved, administrative and support functions have become more stratified and specialized, creating institutions with complex and compartmentalized organizational structures known as silos. These silos have a detrimental impact on institutions, employees, and ultimately the student stakeholders that they serve. Silos within higher education administration support services are readily acknowledged anecdotally; however, robust research to describe this phenomenon and actionable resources to address it are lacking. This multi-paper dissertation explores the theoretical implications and practical applications for using collaborative, intentional approaches to address what is argued to be at its core is a matter of equity. The …

Finding Correlations Among Academic Performance, Demographic Influences And Clinical Competency Utilizing Predictive Variables In An Associate Degree Nursing Program, Rebecca Montz, Brett Welch, Neil Faulk, Clementine Msengi

Journal of Research Initiatives

A nonexperimental, quantitative, correlation study was utilized as the research design to explore the relationship between multiple academic and demographic variables on the final clinical assessment score and Health Education Systems, Inc., (HESI) Exit Exam (E²) score from a South Texas ADN program. The research was conducted to address the nursing workforce shortage and effective ways to predict academic and clinical achievements for associate degree nursing (ADN) programs. The academic variables for the research consisted of preadmission grade point average (GPA) and Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) I prerequisite GPA. Age and gender were used as the demographic variables …

Addressing Teacher Attrition Through Trauma-Informed Practices In The Workplace, Amy Pahl, Amy L. Pahl

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Teacher attrition and turnover have been widely studied to understand the reason for the number of teachers moving each year or leaving the profession altogether. Researchers have attempted to understand the contributing factors that lead to teacher movement and attrition, yet a knowledge gap exists between understanding the problem and finding solutions. The aim of this study was to investigate how implementing trauma-informed practices in the workplace impacts teacher mobility and attrition. A grounded theory approach was taken, which data from interviews to investigate the problem. Teachers who have left the profession or have moved from a position were interviewed …

Economics Of Sustainable Public Pension Funding, Robert M. Costrell, Josh B. Mcgee

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

In this paper we propose a new approach to sustainable public pension funding, as an alternative to: (i) traditional actuarial full-funding policies, on the one hand; and (ii) recent proposals aimed instead at stabilizing pension debt at current levels. Actuarial contribution policies aim to fund liabilities that are wrongly discounted at the expected rate of return on risky assets; and these policies promise to do so with amortization schedules that terminate in a precipitous future drop in contributions, which never materializes. Conversely, recent debt-stabilization proposals (Lenney, Lutz, and Sheiner, 2019a; 2019b) properly discount liabilities at a risk-free rate, but effectively …

Understanding Holistic Development And Wellness: Experiences And Perspectives Of Filipino Student Leaders, Leandro Loyola

Journal of Research Initiatives

This study focuses on how student leaders coming from different Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) understand Holistic Development and Wellness based on their experiences and perspectives. Literature underscores the clear role of HEIs in ensuring the holistic development and wellness of the students, whose responsibility includes creating programs and policies that promote the development of students in different aspects. This responsibility is being shared with the members of the community like the administrators, teachers, and even with the students. Student leaders, especially the active student ones, are believed to play an active role in leading the implementation of programs and …

Changes In Teachers’ Mobility And Attrition In Arkansas During The First Two Years Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Andrew Camp, Gema Zamarro, Josh B. Mcgee

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a trying period for teachers. Teachers had to adapt to unexpected conditions, teaching in unprecedented ways. As a result, teachers' levels of stress and burnout have been high throughout the pandemic, raising concerns about a potential increase in teacher turnover and future teacher shortages. We use administrative data for the state of Arkansas to document the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on teachers’ mobility and attrition during the years 2018-19 to 2021-2022. We find stable turnover rates during the first year of the pandemic (2020-2021) but an increase in teacher mobility and attrition in the …

Does The Timing Of Money Matter? A Case Study Of The Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship, Jessica Goldstein, Jonathan N. Mills, Albert Cheng, Collin E. Hitt

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This paper examines the effect of a state-financed merit-aid scholarship—the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship (ACS)—on post-secondary outcomes at a large university in Arkansas. Exploiting scholarship eligibility requirements, we implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to identify the scholarship’s causal impacts on college outcomes. The analysis focuses on currently enrolled sophomores, juniors, and seniors who receive the scholarship to investigate the broad impacts of receiving money at nontraditional points in an individual’s college trajectory. Findings indicate small, negative impacts of scholarship receipt on short-run outcomes such as GPA and credit accumulation, but large statistically significant declines in the likelihood of graduating …

Student Characteristics, Institutional Factors, And Outcomes In Higher Education And Beyond: An Analysis Of Standardized Test Scores And Other Factors At The Institutional Level With School Rankings And Salary, Jonathan Wai, Bich Tran

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

When seeking to explain the eventual outcomes of a higher education experience, do the personal attributes and background factors students bring to college matter more than what the college is able to contribute to the development of the student through education or other institutional factors? Most education studies tend to simply ignore cognitive aptitudes and other student characteristics-in particular the long history of research on this topic-since the focus is on trying to assess the impact of education. Thus, the role of student characteristics has in many ways been underappreciated in even highly sophisticated quantitative education research. Conversely, educational and …

Which Police Departments Make Black Lives Matter, Which Don’T, And Why Don’T Most Social Scientists Care?, Robert Anthony Maranto, Wilfred Reilly, Patrick Wolf, Mattie Harris

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

In part via skillful use of social media, Black Lives Matter (BLM) has become among the most influential social movements of the past half century, with support across racial lines, and considerable financial backing (Fisher, 2019). Will this translate into public policy reforms which save Black lives? After all, higher education is a key institutional backer of BLM, and a considerable literature dating back decades (e.g., Lindblom & Cohen, 1979) casts doubt on the effectiveness of social science in solving social problems, for numerous reasons. Often, the best social science is simple counting. This paper makes two unique contributions. First, …