Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

The Relationship Of Collegiate Athletic And Recreational Sports Involvement To Student Success And Persistence, Gregory Joseph Corack

Online Theses and Dissertations

Administrators often scrutinize extracurricular involvement in college as an unnecessary financial strain on dwindling university budgets. Student Affairs practitioners must constantly justify programs as adequate additions to the in-class learning students receive on a daily basis. The experiential education students receive through extracurricular programming is well documented, and an essential part of the college experience. Varsity athletes and intramural participants gain valuable skills through their participation in sports activities and are consequently present some of the highest group success rates on campus.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between involvement in collegiate varsity and recreational sports …

Food Landscapes: A Case Study Of A Cooking And Art- Focused Program For Teens Living In A Food Desert, Jessica R. Norris

Theses and Dissertations

This study constructs themes and propositions about the experiences of youth participants in the fall 2013 Food Landscapes program at the Neighborhood Resource Center in Richmond, Virginia. During the program, youth participated in cooking-based volunteerism with adults with disabilities and created short videos about their experiences. In this study, I analyzed pre- and post-program participant interviews, twice-weekly program observations, and facilitator reflections to understand how Food Landscapes affected youths’ conception of community engagement and communication strategies. This case study offers insight into how youth experience after-school programming of this design. Based on my findings, youth develop and rely upon a …

The Reliability And Validity Of The Thin Slice Technique: Observational Research On Video Recorded Medical Interactions, Tanina Suzanne Foster

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Reliability and Validity of the Thin Slice Technique: Observational Research on Video Recorded Medical Interactions

Introduction: Observational research using the thin slice technique has been routinely incorporated in observational research methods, however there is limited evidence supporting use of this technique compared to full interaction coding. The purpose of this study was to determine if this technique could be reliability coded, if ratings are consistent between the first, second and third slice, and if they are indeed representative of full interactions.

Methods: Three 30-second thin slices were sampled from the beginning, middle and end of a full-length video-recorded …

Let Us Rank Journalism Programs, Joseph Weber

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Unlike law, business, and medical schools, as well as universities in general, journalism schools and journalism programs have rarely been ranked. Publishers such as U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Washington Monthly do not pay them much mind. What is the best journalism school in the country? The top ten undergraduate and graduate schools? It is impossible to know. That should change, and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) should lead the way. It should develop a ranking system that would be helpful to anyone interested, especially because federal policy makers soon will …

Teacher Support Mediates Concurrent And Longitudinal Associations Between Temperament And Mild Depressive Symptoms In Sixth Grade, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Patrick Pössel, Stephanie Winkeljohn Black, Kate Niehaus

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The combination of changes occurring at the transition to middle school may be a catalyst for the onset of depressive symptoms, yet teacher support at this transition is protective. Research points to certain temperamental traits as risk factors for developing depressive symptoms. This study examines student reports of teacher support and teacher reports of student–teacher relationship (STR) quality as mediators of associations between child temperament (i.e. negative emotionality at age 4½ : and emotional reactivity in elementary grades) and depressive symptoms in sixth grade. Results indicate (a) negative emotionality predicted emotional reactivity and depressive symptoms; (b) emotional reactivity predicted depressive …

Examining How Students Make Sense Of Slow-Motion Video, Min Yuan, Nam Ju Kim, Joel Drake, Scott Smith, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Slow-motion video is starting to appear in science classrooms as a source of data for students to examine. However, seeing important features in such video requires a particular kind of student engagement and supported acts of noticing. This poster reports on an exploratory study of what students noticed and talked about when viewing slow-motion video during a classroom design experiment focused on bodily activity as it relates to motion and animation.

Kingswood Lake Management Plan, Sarah Martina Tierney

Honors Theses and Capstones

High water quality and natural buffers exist on Kingswood Lake located in Brookfield, New Hampshire. A comprehensive lakes inventory (CSI) was recorded and health of the land, wildlife, and waterways were observed. Educational outreach was taken to inform the local community and to instruct them on proper stewardship of the land. A completed watershed management plan was constructed including key recommendation of limiting nitrogen loading in the area, checking septic systems for leaching, stabilizing shoreline from erosion, and establishing man-made rain gardens to help preserve water quality. The Kingswood watershed management plan acts as a guide for the town of …

The Association Between Elementary Teacher Licensure Test Scores And Student Growth In Mathematics: An Analysis Of Massachusetts Mtel And Mcas Tests, Life Legeros

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This quasi-experimental value-added study provided evidence for the predictive validity of the Massachusetts MTEL General Curriculum Mathematics Subtest by finding an association between the licensure test results of 130 teachers and the growth of their 2640 grade 4 and 5 students. The study took advantage of a natural experiment that arose due to a policy change made by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MADESE) in response to the initial administration of a new highly rigorous math-specific licensure subtest for elementary and special education teachers in March, 2008. The emergency amendment allowed test takers to conditionally pass the …

Outstanding Educational Performance Awards: Highlighting High-Achieving Arkansas Schools, 2013, Vera R. Deberg, Sarah M. Burks, Prairey Walkling, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

The GPA measure, we believe, is a better representation of student achievement on statewide standardized exams. In this report, we are presenting a list of the top 25 schools in each area. In some cases, these "top 25 lists" will contain more than 25 schools as some schools' GPA scores will be identical. This is not a new phenomenon, as we also exceeded 25 schools in previous reports when using the percent proficient and advanced metric as an indicator for student achievement; however, there are fewer ties using the more precise GPA measure.

After we present our overall snapshot of …

Disparity Of Principal Accountability, Mary Kathryn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

This study begins with a review of court cases that have helped shape public education in America. Following the review is an analysis of federal reform in education from 1965 to the present, paired with educational leadership literature to highlight a disparity in what federal mandates and state policies have in place for accountability measures. The study ends with a state analysis of Illinois and Iowa to find the strengths and weaknesses of state policy in the area of principal accountability.

As policymakers have worked to increase accountability in K-12 education, efforts have focused on a variety of measures to …

Pisa In Brief : Highlights From The Full Australian Report : Pisa 2012 : How Australia Measures Up, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli, Sarah Buckley

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

PISA is a survey that measures the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds, who are near the end of compulsory schooling in most participating education systems. PISA in Brief summarises the results from the PISA 2012 assessment of students’ mathematical, scientific and reading literacy skills. It tells us about how students performed in the assessment and describes some wider findings about what lies behind their results.

Do School District Bond Guarantee Programs Matter?, Michael Cirrotti

Economics Student Scholarship

The State of Washington enacted a school district bond credit enhancement program in 1999. Oregon did the same in 1998. I use data from the National Center for Education Statistics for a representative sample of states in order to examine whether or not these programs increased the likelihood that school districts in Washington and Oregon issued bonds. I isolate the programs’ impact in Washington and Oregon through difference-in-differences analysis to control for other variation in the data in ten other representative states during the same time period. The results suggest that state-level school district bond guarantee programs increase the likelihood …

Mixing The Emic And Etic Perspectives: A Study Exploring Development Of Fixed-Answer Questions To Measure In-Service Teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, M. Brooke Robertshaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this dissertation study was to develop fixed-answer questions to measure teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge when teaching with online learning resources. Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is a framework to describe the kind of knowledge that teachers use when they are teaching with technology. Online learning resources include text, video, images, and interactive websites that teachers can use to help teach subject matter to their students. Fixed-answer questions are the kinds of questions found on standardized tests like the SAT, and tests that K-12 students take as a part of state and national testing. Many measures have …

How (And Why) Nclb Failed To Close The Achievement Gap:Evidence From North Carolina, 1998-2004, Roslyn Mickelson, Jason Giersch, Elizabeth Stearns, Stephanie Moller

The Bridge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Legal & Social Policy

Recent state and national policy changes for public education are premised upon the idea that high-stakes tests can improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps. Opponents maintain that such policies fail on both counts. Using a unique longitudinal dataset from North Carolina, we find that high-stakes tests have failed to close achievement gaps associated with social class and race, and that the persistence of these gaps is related, at least in part, to academic tracking. Such findings add to the questions being raised about such policies as No Child Left Behind.

Demographic Changes In The Arkansas Public Schools: A Five Year Comparison, Reed Greenwood, Vera Deberg

Arkansas Education Reports

This report provides a glimpse into the changes in public school demographics in Arkansas at the state, county and district level over a five-year period. This report compares enrollment information from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2012 based on data obtained from the Arkansas Department of Education website during the summer of 2013 (Arkansas Department of Education, Data Center).

Charter School Authorizers, Reed Greenwood, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

Two types of charter schools exist in Arkansas: open-enrollment charter schools, which operate independently of any district, and district conversion charter schools, which operate within an existing school district. Charter schools have more autonomy on certain rules and regulations than traditional public schools; however, charter schools are held accountable for academic results and fiscal matters, as defined by the charters contract. Charter schools are approved and held accountable by a charter authorizer. In the 2013 General Assembly, a law passed to change Arkansas’ charter authorizer from the State Board of Education to a newly created panel within the Department of …

Childcare And Youth Training And Technical Assistance Project (Cyttap) November 2013 Evaluation Report, Kit Alviz, Tonia Durden

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

The Childcare and Youth Training and Technical Assistance Project (CYTTAP) works to improve the quality and quantity of child care in states with high densities of off-installation military families. From November 2011 through October 2013, childcare providers and early childhood education professionals attended face-to-face trainings, train-the-trainer events, and low- or no-cost online trainings. Trainings included Better Kid Care (face-to-face trainings covering a wide range of topics including partnerships with parents, health and safety, nutrition and physical activity, and curriculum planning); I Am Moving, I Am Learning (face-to-face training to prevent childhood obesity); and Rock Solid Foundations (a series of programs …

Tapping Into The Skills Of School Librarians, Audrey Church

Education & Human Services Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the role of school librarians in evaluating the teacher's effectiveness. It states that librarians has knowledge about various areas other than library including information literacy, media literacy and digital literacy. It further presents various scenarios that can be used for analyzing the performance of librarians including formal observation, self-evaluation and portfolio.

Enhancing The Academic And Social Learning Of Irish Undergraduates Through Emotional And Social Skills Development., Aiden Carthy, Celesta Mccann, Sinead Mcgilloway, Colm Mcguinness

Articles

This paper considers the potential merits of emotional competency coaching for undergraduate students. We outline the findings from our previous work which showed, for example, that a sample of First Year undergraduate students failed to engage with coaching primarily because it was not a mandatory aspect of the curricula. An analysis of the National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) - which details the specific learning outcomes that must be achieved by all Irish academic syllabi found that this framework makes scant reference to the development of social and emotional skills. Therefore, a revised working model of the NFQ is proposed, which …

Public School Choice And Desegregation In Arkansas, Kaitlin P. Anderson, Jennifer W. Ash, Sarah M. Burks, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

Public school choice is an umbrella term for policies that allow students to enroll in a public school other than their residentially-assigned school. Public school choice, also called openenrollment, is typically divided into two categories: intra-district choice, transfers to schools in the same district, and inter-district choice, transfers to schools in other districts.

Digital Fluency : Skills Necessary For Learning In The Digital Age, Gerald K. White

Digital learning research

This article examines the skills that will be required for the 21st century that will need to be embedded in educational curricula in order achieve them. It begins by considering how communicating between people has changed and current educational responses. A view of 21st century skills follows with an argument for some core subjects that will be necessary. Learning and teaching are then discussed leading to a view about what is needed in order to develop digital fluency in education, for now and the future.

Conference On The Future Of School Psychology, Susan C. Davies, Brooke Gosser

Counselor Education and Human Services Faculty Publications

The University of Dayton School Psychology Program recently participated in the 2012 Conference on the Future of School Psychology. This conference provided students and faculty at The University of Dayton the opportunity to participate in a national dialogue on the future of our field. This multi-site conference was jointly sponsored by the National Association of School Psychologists, Division 16 of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Study of School Psychology, the Council of Directors of School Psychology Programs, Trainers of School Psychologists, the American Academy of School Psychology, the American Board of School Psychology, and the International School …

Networking Young Citizens : Learning To Be Citizens In And With The Social Web, Suzanne Mellor, Terri Seddon

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

Many claims are made, both in the popular press and the professional education literature, about the significance of the social web in enabling civic participation. However empirical evidence supporting these claims is sparse and contested rather than strongly-indicative. The Monash University pilot research project, Networking Young Citizens, relates to the discussion about the ways in which the social web might support the civic participation, especially of young people, by examining the ways in which Web 2.0 was integrated into teaching and learning in the school, and any other processes of civic socialisation that were consciously adopted in three schools.

This …

Child Care Expansion Initiative: Ripple Effect Mapping: October 2013 Executive Summary, Kit Alviz, Tonia Renee Durden

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Ripple Effect Mapping (REM) sessions were conducted for the evaluation of the Childcare and Youth Training and Technical Assistance Project (CYTTAP) and in collaboration with the Military Child Care Liaison Initiative (MCCLI). The combined Child Care Expansion Initiative works to improve the quality and quantity of child care in states with high densities of off-installation military families through state systems building and provides professional development opportunities for early childhood professionals and child care providers. From September 2012 to February 2013, REM sessions were held in nine states. Future strategies recommended include identifying and bringing in the right Military Child Care …

Cognitive Task Analysis-Based Training: A Metaanalysisof Studies, Colby Tofel-Grehl, David F. Feldon

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Cognitive task analysis (CTA) is enjoying growing popularity in both research and practice as a foundational element of instructional design. However, there exists relatively little research exploring its value as a foundation for training through controlled studies. Furthermore, highly individualized approaches to conducting CTA do not permit broadly generalizable conclusions to be drawn from the findings of individual studies. Thus, examining the magnitude of observed effects across studies from various domains and CTA practitioners is essential for assessing replicable effects. This study reports the findings from a meta-analysis that examines the overall effectiveness of CTA across practitioners and settings in …

2012-13 Arkansas Test Results, Michael L. Crouch, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

In early August, the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) released the 2012-2013 test score results. The following brief will highlight the results of these tests, compare achievement scores over time, and provide a glimpse of regional achievement results for the following exams:  Benchmark Exam (Grades 3-8)  End-of-Course Exam (Algebra I, Geometry, Biology, and Grade 11 Literacy).  Iowa Test of Basic Skills (Grades 1-9)

What Stick Figures Tell Us About Irish Politics, Sharon Feeney, John Hogan, Paul F. Donnelly

Conference papers

This paper forms part of an ongoing research project using the technique of freehand drawing to study how students entering university in Ireland perceive the state of Irish politics and the wider society. By sidestepping the cognitive verbal processing routes through the use of freehand drawing, we find that students tend to present a more holistic, integrated and clearer understanding of the pertinent issues from their perspective.

The Confounding Effects Of Ability, Item Difficulty, And Content Balance Within Multiple Dimensions On The Estimation Of Unidimensional Thetas, Ki Lynn Matlock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When test forms that have equal total test difficulty and number of items vary in difficulty and length within sub-content areas, an examinee's estimated score may vary across equivalent forms, depending on how well his or her true ability in each sub-content area aligns with the difficulty of items and number of items within these areas. Estimating ability using unidimensional methods for multidimensional data has been studied for decades, focusing primarily on subgroups of the population based on the estimated ability for a single set of data (Ackerman, 1987a, 1989; Ansley & Forsyth, 1985; Kroopnick, 2010; Reckase, Ackerman, & Spray, …

A Phenomenological Investigation Into The Self-Efficacy Beliefs Of Teachers Who Have Persisted In The Teaching Profession, Shana Market Norton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This phenomenological study investigated the lived experiences of 12 secondary school teachers from public secondary schools in northern Georgia regarding their feelings about self-efficacy and why they have persisted in the teaching profession. The research questions centered around their perceptions on how self-efficacy influences the academic achievement of their students, on what personality characteristics they feel teachers add to their positive or negative self-esteem in teaching, and on what factors they identify as influencing their professional self-efficacy in teaching. Teacher self-efficacy, the belief in oneself to succeed at completing a task, is a key factor in retaining teachers. Four data …

The Academic Impacts Of Attending A Kipp Charter School In Arkansas, Caleb P. Rose

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

KIPP Delta College Preparatory School (KIPP: DCPS), an open-enrollment charter school, opened in 2002 in Helena, Arkansas. Since its opening, KIPP: DCPS students have consistently outperformed their peers in the Helena/West Helena School district, and moreover, recent test scores suggest that white students and minority students are achieving at the same rate, essentially eliminating the achievement gap that persists between whites and minorities elsewhere in the state. In fact, KIPP's achievement record was so influential that when Arkansas lawmakers instituted a cap on the number of open-enrollment charter schools in the state, they made an exception for KIPP, essentially allowing …