Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Effects Of Service Projects On The Perceived Skills Of Engineering Technology Students, Philip Appiah-Kubi, Corinne Brion

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Client based service projects offer many advantages to instructors, students and host communities. However, instructors must carefully choose the projects in order to achieve the benefits that come with this pedagogical tool. The purpose of this research was to investigate the perception of engineering technology students on how different service projects influence performance and perceived skills. A modified perceived skill model was used to measure the perceived effect of the team based service projects on: motivation to learn, contribution to research knowledge, skills and personal benefit, and project as a learning device. The projects were either client based or non-client …

The Need For Academic Reform In Vietnamese Higher Education (Vhe) To Align With Employers’ Expectations, Hoang-Yen (Maya) T. Dang

All Theses And Dissertations

The effort to comprehensively reform Vietnamese higher education (VHE) in order to produce an educated workforce better able to contribute to economic development is a major concern not only of educators and the Vietnamese government but also of employers, workers, and the general populace.

Successful implementation of VHE’s “Vision 2020” relies on legal change together with macro-policies to support these educational initiatives. For the purposes of this study, however, the author focused on the current state of VHE in providing employable graduates to meet the needs of Vietnam’s knowledge economy in the 21st century. In particular, through an analysis of …

Improving Kindergarten Transition Practices For Students With Special Needs, Julia "Sandy" Flacke

All Theses And Dissertations

The transition to kindergarten is a magical milestone for children and families. For students identified with special needs, there are additional worries and celebrations to share with the transition team. The research site included in this study comprises pre-K programs that operated through a cooperative agreement between a Maine school district and Head Start. In the State of Maine, preschool students who are identified with a disability are provided services and programming through a Maine Department of Education (MDOE) agency: Child Development Services (CDS). For public pre-K programs in Maine, this created a unique situation. While the pre-K programs are …

Neoliberal Reading Interventions And Student Needs, Mahbuba Hammad

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

This article discusses reading programs within the context of Neoliberalism and the extent to which they address student needs. The rise of such reading programs in the market economy has come at the expense of placing the burden of reading development solely on the shoulders of students after restricting their academic and personal growth. The article explores how this has been done without any consideration regarding the needs of ethnically and culturally diverse students; and without taking into account the relationship between poverty and educational outcomes. Without a doubt, this has affected the ability of students to think critically about …

Remaking Identities, Reworking Graduate Study : Stories From First-Generation-To-College Rhetoric And Composition Phd Students On Navigating The Doctorate., Ashanka Kumari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to the decreasing number of first-generation-to-college doctorates in the humanities and the limited scholarship on graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition. Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have long been invested in discussions of academic and/or disciplinary enculturation, yet these discussions primarily focus on undergraduate students, with few studies on graduate students and far fewer on the doctoral students training to become the next wave of a profession. In this dissertation, I argue that if we engage intersectional identities as assets in the design of doctoral programs, access to higher education and academic enculturation can become more manageable …

The Influence Of Noncognitive Skills In Physician Assistant Education, Lynn Eckrote

All Theses And Dissertations

A holistic approach to the admission process in a physician assistant (PA) program can emphasize skills beyond the traditional measures of cognitive skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences that directors of physician assistant programs have with applying the MMI as a measure of noncognitive skills in the admission process. Physician assistant programs often do not put an equal focus on cognitive and noncognitive skills. This study addressed the research question: What experiences have PA directors had with applying the MMI as a measure of noncognitive skills in the admission process? The participants of this study …

School Entry Age And School Readiness., Robin Berry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beginning with the 2017-2018 school year, there was a change in School Entry Age (SEA) legislation. This dissertation analyzed the relationship between SEA and school readiness after the enactment of the new legislation. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to control for student demographics to ascertain the relationship between SEA and school readiness. Findings were as follows: older students scored significantly lower than younger students on the BRIGANCE Kindergarten Screen (BKS), students who had exposure to private child care outside of the home fared much better than students who were kept at home the year prior to kindergarten, and female students …

Dominant Leadership Dynamics Of School Administrators Leading Non-Instructional Personnel, Michael Ewton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the literature and many schools and school districts advocating for enhanced communication and engagement with parents, families, and the community at large, it is advisable that school-level administrators consider the manner in which they engage the non-instructional employees who serve their schools. This dissertation explores the dominant leadership dynamics experienced by high school principals responsible for supervising non-instructional support services and leading non-instructional operations personnel in their schools. Trained and expected to be instructional leaders, principals must still ensure their students receive the basic services necessary to maintain a safe and effective learning environment. Ensuring students receive the benefit …

Leadership Succession And Onboarding Processes Of: Mid-West United States International Baccalaureate (Ib) Primary Years Program (Pyp) Schools, Mary Nandra Kay Campbell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) model of education is unique and comprehensive, and so is the PYP principal. This qualitative study examined the perceptions of Mid-West United States IB PYP leaders related to leadership succession, the onboarding processes experienced by the new leaders, and the effective leadership traits possessed by the new leaders. This study involved a phenomenological study in nature. A criterion sampling approach was used to identify six participants of the study. A semi-structured interviewing protocol allowed elaboration by participants and to discover aspects not originally considered. The key findings included the following: lack of …

Characteristics Of High Quality Teachers: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study, Kelli Barnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A qualitative investigation was conducted to explore the characteristics of high quality teachers. This study used a phenomenological methodology, enabling the researcher to gather information from a purposeful selection of people directly identified as high quality teachers by their principals. This study employed processes of data collection commonly used in observational analysis and included the use of interviews found in qualitative design.

The researcher was able to extract meaning using the coding process and the constant comparative method. Information was sorted into themes that supported and aligned with the research questions leading to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. This …

High-Needs Schools: Preparing Teachers For Today's World

Occasional Paper Series

In the second decade of the 21st century, some schools are in trouble and some schools are not. The subject of this Occasional Paper is the preparation of teachers for schools that--lacking sufficient resources, effective leadership, or vocal advocates--are failing to educate their students by any reasonable measures. The teachers and teacher educator contributors to this volume offer a more variegated set of responses grounded in a diversity of local experiences. Their approaches to researching and understanding the immediacy of becoming a teacher are based on decades of working in hard-pressed urban schools and the institutions that supply them with …

The Effects Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On Student Achievement After Four Years, Jonathan Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) offers publicly-funded vouchers to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line, allowing them to enroll in participating private schools. Established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. In this study, we estimate the achievement impacts of ever using an LSP voucher to enroll in one’s first-choice private school over the four year period spanning from 2012-13 (Year 1) through 2015-16 (Year 4). In contrast to our previous research, which indicated large initial negative achievement effects of the …

The Effect Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program On College Entrance, Heidi Holmes Erickson, Jonathan Mills, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a private school voucher program available to families who have incomes no greater than 250 percent of the federal poverty line and whose children attend a low performing public school. It began as a pilot program in New Orleans in 2008 and was expanded statewide in 2012. Previous evaluations of the LSP generally found negative impacts of the program on math and English language arts test scores. In this study, we evaluate the effects of the program on college enrollment for the first cohort of students eligible to enter college by 2017-18. Using lottery …

Do You Get Cream With Your Choice? Characteristics Of Students Who Moved Into Or Out Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Yujie Sude, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Private school choice programs often are accused of failing to serve disadvantaged students. Critics claim that participating private schools “skim the cream off the top” by admitting only the best students and “push out” students who are the most difficult to teach. This study tests these student selection hypotheses in the context of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). We find LSP applicants are less advantaged than their public school peers regarding their family socioeconomic status and initial test scores. No consistent evidence indicates that the LSP private schools are “skimming the cream” or “pushing out” students based on their family …

Heterogeneous Impacts Across Schools In The First Four Years Of The Louisiana Scholarship Program, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a school voucher initiative that offers publicly- funded scholarships to students from economically-disadvantaged families to attend a participating private school of their choice. While school choice theory suggests that market- based reforms such as the LSP should improve student outcomes, experimental evaluations of the program instead find significant negative effects of the program on math and reading scores after its first year. Those effects diminish to insignificant differences by the end of the third year before becoming negative again in the fourth year. Our study builds on previous work with an exploratory analysis of …

Teaching Basic Cryptography Concepts Using Braille And Large Print Manipulatives, Jason Martin

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The scope of this article is to describe the creation and implementation of specialized adaptations used in teaching the subject of basic cryptography to students who are visually impaired or blind. Included is an overview of events held for visually impaired and blind transition age youth in Alabama and the methods used to engage this population in the subject of computer science. Teaching strategies utilized for this unique demographic of students are discussed as they relate to the sample cryptography lessons used during the transition day events. The construction of three forms of adapted ciphers are described in addition to …

Making 3d Laser Cut Stratigraphic Audio-Responsive Tactile Templates, Michael A. Kolitsky

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The geologic method of stratigraphy which studies the structure of the earth by making layers was employed with 3D laser cutting techniques to make more easily defined tactile regions in templates of cells, tissues and anatomic regions containing muscles and bones. Templates were made audio responsive by hand-drilling a small hole in a template and filling that hole with conductive electric paint. A finger touch to the template top side now carries a charge similar to an electric circuit to the template bottom side resting on the surface of an iPad or iPad Pro where an audio button produces audio …

Assessing The Impact Of Holocaust Education On Adolescents’ Civic Values: Experimental Evidence From Arkansas, Mathew Lee, Molly I. Beck

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

American adults overwhelmingly agree that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, yet few studies investigate the potential benefits of Holocaust education. We evaluate the impact of Holocaust education on several civic outcomes, including “upstander” efficacy (willingness to intervene on behalf of others), likelihood of exercising civil disobedience, empathy for the suffering of others, and tolerance of others with different values and lifestyles. We recruit students from two local high schools and randomize access to the Arkansas Holocaust Education Conference, where students have the chance to hear from a Holocaust survivor and to participate in breakout sessions with leading Holocaust …

A Good Investment: The Updated Productivity Of Public Charter Schools In Eight U.S. Cities, Corey Deangelis, Patrick J, Wolf, Larry Maloney, Jay May

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

In 2015-16, the United states spent over $660 billion on its public education system in hopes of providing children with greater opportunities to excel academically and to improve their life trajectories. While public education dollars have risen at a relatively fast pace historically, future challenges, including underfunded pension liabilities, suggest policymakers should economize wherever possible. Meanwhile, the number of public charter schools has increased exponentially. from 1991 to 2018, charter school legislation passed in 44 states and the nation’s capital, and student enrollment in charters increased to around 3.2 million. Since educational resources are limited, we examine which types of …

Sulitest®: A Mixed-Method, Pilot Study Of Assessment Impacts On Undergraduate Sustainability-Related Learning And Motivation, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

A United Nations international collaboration between the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) resulted in the creation of Sulitest® (aka Sustainability Literacy Test) an open, online training and assessment tool freely available to higher education institutions globally. This study analyzes the effectiveness of the newly developed Sulitest® to not only measure sustainability literacy of higher education student populations, but also act as a catalyst for boosting affective learning outcomes by: (a) generating interest in sustainability-related issues, (b) improving sustainability-related understandings, and (c) enhancing students’ interests in the subject matter. In order to do …

Principal Self-Efficacy And Learning Organizations: Influencing School Improvement, Kristina A. Hesbol

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies: Faculty Scholarship

One key characteristic of high-performing schools is how they function organizationally, enabling them to enact reforms effectively and to deal with regular organizational ambiguity and chaos. The principal plays a pivotal role in developing a school culture that supports high-performing schools. This research studies the relationship between principal self-efficacy and a principal's perception of her school as a learning organization. We examined specific subcategories of learning organization attitudes and behaviors to determine whether principals consider distinct organizational behaviors a proxy for indicators of a learning organization, and whether that was related to their self-efficacy. The findings indicate that principals must …

An Examination Of How Middle School Principals Make Sense Of Their Role In Leading Standards Based Educational Reform, Barbara J. Maling Cas, Ma

Muskie School Dissertations

A dominant feature of the educational policy landscape has been the adoption and use of learning standards to design classroom instruction. As these efforts move forward, often without clear definition of the classroom practices that should be adopted, the role of the school principal is critical in interpreting the changes, and charting a course for the teachers in the building. This qualitative study, examines the sensemaking of four active middle school principals as they interpreted and led standards-based reform efforts in their buildings, using a novel theoretical framework based on prior research (Benford & Snow, 2000; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, …

Language Matters: What Are The Primary School Teachers' Perspectives And Lived Experiences Of Burundi's Language Policy?, Leah Passauer

Capstone Collection

Burundi is a small country in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Burundian language policy dictates that four languages, Kirundi, French, English, and Kiswahili, must be taught starting in the second trimester of grade one. The language policy decision is not an obvious one since the country is linguistically homogenous, meaning that almost the entire population speaks Kirundi as their first language. Primary school teachers in the public education system typically receive training in a vocational setting that may not fully prepare them for the complex multilingual classroom environment they are expected to cultivate. The aim of this small-scale mixed-methods …

Unpacking The Cultural Relevance Of The High School Experiences Of African-American Males, Damiso A. Josey

All Theses And Dissertations

Despite the vast research on cultural competence and student engagement, little is known about the perspectives of the Black male students who have graduated from any New Jersey public schools This qualitative, phenomenological, multi-case study examines the experiences of Black male students who have been educated predominantly by White educators. The gap in the literature highlights the need for researchers and educators to examine teacher cultural competence from the students’ perspective as it impacted student engagement in the educational process. Student disengagement is a factor in school dropout and a racial/cultural gap exists between Black male students and educators not …

Teachers’ Perceptions Of Professional Learning Communities, Violet E. Eyanagho

All Theses And Dissertations

The professional learning community (PLC) is an essential organizational structure in education, intended to cultivate a collaborative culture, improve professional practices, increase student achievement, reform failing schools, and sustain high achieving schools. Because there is little in the literature which examines teachers’ perceptions of the PLC concept and the work accomplished in the PLC process, the problem studied here was teachers’ perceptions of their work in PLCs at a middle school in Texas. The two research questions addressed the roles of the PLC teams and their individual members in improving student learning. A grounded theory approach was used in the …

The Lived Experiences Of Clinical Adjunct Dental Hygiene Faculty, Susan Lori Vogell

All Theses And Dissertations

Clinical education is an integral part of a dental hygiene student’s education. Clinical adjunct dental hygiene faculty primarily teach in the clinical setting. Clinical adjunct dental hygiene faculty are often hired for their clinical expertise and may lack teaching experience. The transition from clinical practice to academia raises concern about the adequacy of support and preparation clinical adjunct faculty receive as they begin their new role as educators. The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis was to explore clinical adjunct dental hygiene faculty members’ experiences of preparedness as they transitioned from clinical expert to novice educator. Six clinical adjunct dental …

Performance Assessment Of Aspiring School Leaders Grounded In An Epistemology Of Practice: A Case Study, Jessica E. Charles, Rebecca Cheung, Kristin Rosekrans

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

There is increasing interest in the field of leadership preparation about the opportunities that robust performance assessments may provide to capture and evaluate the complexity of school administrators’ work. Heretofore, the conversation about administrator performance assessment in leadership preparation has mainly centered on the development and impact of large statewide assessments that grow out of a Cartesian epistemology of individual knowledge possession, in which individuals must demonstrate mastery of a set of static knowledge and skills. We analyzed the characteristics of a performance assessment system that deliberately accounts for the organizational complexity of practice and knowledge generation in its design. …

The Efficacy And Limits Of The Collegiate Men Of Distinction Mentoring Program, D'Angelo S. Taylor

All Theses And Dissertations

Black men collectively have not achieved the same success in graduation or retention as their counterparts in higher education. At the University of Southern Indiana, the four-year graduation rate for Black men sits at 1.5 percent which is more than twenty points lower than the 22 percent national average (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). The purpose of this research was to examine the effectiveness and limitations of the Collegiate Men of Distinction mentoring program. This program was created to combat low persistence rates among the Black male population at the University. In creating the program, young men were given …

Lessons Learned From Observing Teaching Practices: The Case Of Ghana, Corinne Brion, Paula A. Cordeiro

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for providing a quality education for all by 2030. In order to achieve the SDGs and improve educational outcomes globally, it is essential to understand what teaching strategies teachers use and to comprehend if students are learning. The purpose of this study is 1) to understand what teaching pedagogies Ghanaian teachers use in their Low-Fee Private Schools (LFPSs); and 2) to determine whether students stay on task. Using the Stallings Snapshot Observation instrument, the researchers observed 19 class periods in numerous grades in four schools. Findings reveal that the teachers used a combination of …

Review: ‘Culturally Responsive School Leadership’, Corinne Brion

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Context matters. These two words ring true everywhere, in every situation we find ourselves and for everything we do or say, but they have a particularly strong impact in American schools. Even though the fact that American schools have legally been desegregated since 1954, researchers such as Bolgatz (2005b); Delpit (1995); Lindsey, Robins and Terrell (2009); and (Singleton, 2014) argue that schools and classrooms are still largely segregated in a variety of ways. The majority of schools for example, lack contextually appropriate curriculum, do not promote diversity among students, teachers, and staff, and/or fail to engage all parents and community …