Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Theory Building Through Praxis Discourse: A Theory- And Practice-Informed Model Of Transformative Participatory Evaluation, Michael Allen Harnar

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Stakeholder participation in evaluation, where the evaluator engages stakeholders in the process, is prevalent in evaluation practice and is an important focus of evaluation research. Cousins and Whitmore proposed a bifurcation of participatory evaluation into the two streams of transformative participatory and practical participatory evaluation (T-PE and P-PE respectively). T-PE stems from a social justice perspective and P-PE has more of a use orientation. T-PE is an underdeveloped evaluation theory with relatively low operational specificity. Case examples provide some understanding of it in practice, but comprehensive empirical support is still forthcoming. This study aims to develop a greater understanding of …

The Bucknell Community College Scholarship Program: A Documentary As A Performative Social Science, Sean D. Fortney

Honors Theses

Reviews Bucknell participation with the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (a non-profit foundation with a mission to “help under-resourced students of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education".

Intensive Mental Health Intervention And Incidence Of Discipline, Andrea Mulcay

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

A new trend when dealing with behavior issues in the classroom is that of providing mental health services within the school systems. This study is researching an alternative school that offers mental health services for students that have been expelled from their home school. The purpose of this thesis is to determine if these mental health services provided within the alternative school helps reduce the amount of discipline issues in the school system. There are 77 participants, 33 receiving academic services plus intense mental health services and 44 receiving academic services plus minimal mental health services. Findings show no statistically …

Relationship Between Assessment And Students’ Learning, Babar Khan

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

Assessment is a critical aspect of teaching and learning process which aim at collecting, interpreting and analyzing the regarding students’ performance. The quality of learning is determined by the quality of assessment practices in the classroom. There are many purposes of assessment that focus on the different dimensions of educational development, however, the most dominant purposes of assessment are improving students’ learning and develop accountability measures for learning at classroom and school levels. For effective assessment, using appropriate assessment strategies is significant. There are number of that can be employed to enhance students’ learning outcome but teacher rely on only …

Portfolio: A Professional Development And Learning Tool For Teachers, Babar Khan, Salima Begum

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

Professional development of teachers is considered a source to enhance teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. To meet this purpose teacher education institutions use a variety of ways for teachers’ development programs. Mostly these ways and strategies are used in short and long programs where teachers are provided opportunities to learn knowledge and skills outside classroom and schools. The purpose of these courses is to enhance the teachers’ capacity and improve students’ learning outcomes. However, most of these learning and strategies are limited to the training centers and teachers face challenges while implementing the learning in their respective schools. Teachers …

Transition From Lecture Based To Activity Based Teaching Through Whole School Improvement In Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistan, Salima Begum

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

The study sets out to answer the question, “How and to what extent has Whole School Improvement Program influenced the teachers to shift from lecture to activity based teaching and learning processes in the project schools in Gilgit-Baltistan of Pakistan? The study was conducted in two Whole School Improvement Programme (WSIP) project schools in district Gilgit from public and private education sector of Pakistan. A case study approach was used in qualitative paradigm and Context, Input, Process and Product model was used in data collection and analysis to evaluate the input given by Professional Development Teachers (PDTs) and outcomes of …

Comparing Technology-Related Teacher Professional Development Designs: A Multilevel Study Of Teacher And Student Impacts, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker, Lei Ye, Brooke Robertshaw, Linda Sellers, Heather Leary

The Instructional Architect Research Group

No abstract provided.

On The Road To Internationalization: Designing An International Student Handbook For Northern New Mexico College, Sara M. Mccormick

Capstone Collection

The United States continues to host more international students than any other country in the world. According to the recent Open Doors 2010/11 report published annually by the Institute of International Education (IIE), the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by five percent to 723, 277 during the 2010/11 academic year (Open Doors, 2011). Currently, there are approximately 2, 724 international students studying in colleges and universities across New Mexico (Open Doors, 2011). As the number of international students increases at Northern New Mexico College (NNMC), located in Espanola, New Mexico, it becomes …

Addressing The Learning Needs At Occupy Dc, Andrew J. Batcher

Capstone Collection

The purpose of this paper is to examine how learning can help the Occupy movement in Washington DC. It explores three questions. What are the learning needs of the movement? What educational content can help meet those needs? And how can education be practiced in a way that most effectively addresses the learning needs within the real world circumstances of the movement? Research methods include participant observation, surveys, interviews, focus groups, literature review, and primary document review. Data was coded into 11 outcome oriented learning needs and 3 educational orientations which are geared towards meeting those needs. This paper is …

Using Data Mining For Predicting Relationships Between Online Question Theme And Final Grade, M'Hammed Abdous, Wu He, Cherng-Jyh Yen

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

As higher education diversifies its delivery modes, our ability to use the predictive and analytical power of educational data mining (EDM) to understand students' learning experiences is a critical step forward. The adoption of EDM by higher education as an analytical and decision making tool is offering new opportunities to exploit the untapped data generated by various student information systems (SIS) and learning management systems (LMS). This paper describes a hybrid approach which uses EDM and regression analysis to analyse live video streaming (LVS) students' online learning behaviours and their performance in their courses. Students' participation and login frequency, as …

Organizational Adaptation Through Diffusion And Social Networks: A Study Of Family Consumer Sciences Extension Agents, Deborah Adkins Murray

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

This study examines the interconnectedness of social networks of the early adopter Family and Consumer Science Extension Agents (FCS Agents) of the Mental Healthiness and Aging Initiative (MHAI) pilot conducted in eleven (11) eastern Kentucky counties between October 2007 and April 2009 and compares the social network connections of the FCS Agents in the other six Extension Districts in Kentucky.

This research used whole-network survey analysis applying the social network approach, a conceptual model for explaining the communication of new ideas and information within an organizational network. Organizational networks are important structural elements of organizational systems and key to understanding …

An Analysis Of Factors That Impact Secondary Science Outcomes In Tennessee, Suzanne Lawson South

Ed.D. Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze school and district characteristics for 2005–2006 through 2007–2008 to determine which factors impacted science achievement for the graduating class of 2008–2009 in Tennessee. School size, socioeconomic status, per pupil instructional expenditures and rurality/urbanicity were predictor variables. Achievement was represented by performance on the science and reasoning portion of the ACT. Correlational studies indicated that socioeconomic status had a significant impact on science achievement while the impact of school size and rurality/urbanicity was observed to be weak. Statistical analyses through multiple linear regression produced a model in which socioeconomic status and rurality/urbanicity explained …

Have Institutional Review Board Regulations Affected Research Approval Patterns?, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Still `Unfinished Education:' Latino Students Forty Years After The Mexican American Education Study, Lizely Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The onus of this dissertation was to evaluate the educational conditions of Mexican American students forty years after the Mexican American Education Study published a six-volume study detailing the findings of the Mexican American Education Study (1970-1974). The MAES study focused on five southwest states Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. To learn the current status of Mexican American students, a three-tier scale of analysis was created. Each level of analysis had a specific focus: macro, meso, and micro. The macro level presented a descriptive analysis of the educational status of Mexican American students in the five states presented …

Teacher Evaluations: Empty Ceremony Or Vital Activity, Catherine Kennedy

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

One of the most critical duties of a school principal is to evaluate and lead teachers. A school district in Texas has mandated that all administrators conduct one hundred and forty-four walkthroughs per school year. Given that time is a priceless commodity in a typical school day, how effective is the above mandate to teacher and principal performance? The purpose of this research study was to examine how principals provide effective feedback to teachers on walkthroughs and evaluations. In addition this study looked at what teachers do with the feedback that is given to them on a walkthrough and evaluation. …

Job Satisfaction Of Female And Male Superintendents: The Influence Of Job Facets And Contextual Variables As Potential Predictors, Ila Phillip Young, Theodore J. Kowalski, Robert S. Mccord, George J. Petersen

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

A descriptive multiple regression approach was used to assess the job satisfaction of female and male public school superintendents taking part in a decennial survey conducted by AASA. Self-reported job satisfaction of public school superintendents was regressed on their affective reactions to specific job facets (supervision, co-workers, and compensation) and to contextual variables (type of school district, legislative mandates, and funding sources) purported to influence their job satisfaction. Results indicate that female and male superintendents were found to be similarly satisfied with their current job assignment but for different reasons as revealed by interaction terms addressed in the regression analyses.

Student Perceptions And Preferences For Tertiary Online Courses: Does Prior High School Distance Learning Make A Difference?, Dale Kirby, Michael K. Barbour, Dennis B. Sharpe

Education Faculty Publications

University students who had completed at least one distance education course were surveyed during their first and fourth year of postsecondary studies. When controlled for those who had previous distance education experience in high school, it was found that self-regulatory learning behaviors, which are frequently linked to positive experiences and outcomes in online and distance education courses, were equally apparent in all of the participating students regardless of whether they had previously studied online. These findings suggest that high school students do not gain independent learning skills and attitudes in an online environment regardless of what stakeholders, administrators, teachers, parents, …

Effects Of Multisensory Phonics-Based Training On The Word Recognition And Spelling Skills Of Adolescents With Reading Disabilities, Sallyann Geiss, Kenyatta O. Rivers, Kelly S. Kennedy, Linda J. Lombardino

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of an Orton-Gillingham-based reading instruction system, the Barton Reading and Spelling System (BRSS; Barton 2000), that was used as a supplemental reading instruction program for increasing the lower-level reading skills of a group of adolescents with persistent reading problems. Nine students participated in the supplemental reading program based on pre-test scores of a spoken and written language assessment battery. Progress was measured at the end of intervention by post-testing students on the same assessment battery. Each student showed some improvements from their pretest to posttest scores on all of the …

A Discussion Of The Mental Health Of Public School Teachers, Gary W. Ballou

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Education and Professional Studies

It has been suggested that public school teachers are exposed to highly stressful situations which are related to psychological and psychiatric problems. Unfortunately, there is no quantitative data suggesting which factors contribute to improving the mental health of American teachers, nor have there been any prior studies that have directly compared the factors associated with mental health disturbances between teachers and workers in other occupations in the United States. In light of this, I felt it crucial to find the factors associated with psychological/psychiatric problems in public school teachers in the United States using an appropriate reference professional group.

Australian Core Skills Framework (Acsf), Philippa Mclean, Kate Perkins, David Tout, Kath Brewer, Linda Wyse

Vocational, adult and professional education research

The Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) provides a rich, detailed picture of real life performance in the five core skills of: Learning, Reading, Writing, Oral Communication and Numeracy.

These skills are essential for individuals to participate effectively in our society. They are inextricably interwoven into all parts of our lives, being directly or indirectly linked to the physical, social and economic wellbeing of individuals, workplace productivity and safety, community interaction and capacity, and ultimately to Australia’s economic and community wellbeing. The ACSF reflects contemporary use of English in Australia.

The ACSF has been developed to facilitate a consistent national approach …

Creating A State-Wide Transfer Program For Engineering Technology And Technology Management Studies, Gregory Arbuckle, Mark Doggett

SEAS Faculty Publications

The primary purpose of the Western Kentucky Pipeline for 2+2+2 Engineering Technology and Technology Management (ET/TM) students program is to significantly increase degree production and workforce preparation in central and western Kentucky through the construction of a long-term sustainable, reproducible model bridging program of cooperation between Western Kentucky University (WKU), Murray State University (MSU) and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS). The program will significantly increase industrial and technology education opportunities, technology enrollment and two and four-year degree completion. Additionally, this project supports the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) goal to double the overall number of undergraduate …

Turbulence, Perturbance, And Educational Change, Brian R. Beabout

Educational Leadership, Counseling, and Foundations

While scholarship on educational change has long accepted that disruptions to the status quo are an essential part of the change process, disruption has never been more central to planned change than it is in the current political context in the USA, where legislation has mandated school closure, reconstitution, and turnaround as required remedies for schools failing to produce annual student achievement gains required by government. We are also unfortunately hampered by the imprecise language that surrounds complexity- based theories of educational change. Words such as perturbance, turbulence, and disruption all have gained currency lately, but meanings are unclear and …

Research Methodology At Level 8 And 9: A Web-Enabled Approach, Daire Hooper

Teaching Fellowships

This research explored the potential use of webinars as a method of course delivery in the College of Business, Technological University Dublin. In-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of students to gain insights into their experience with webinars and to delve into how they interacted with the webinar, whether they would prefer this mode of delivery in the future and to assess their overall perceptions of webinars. Findings indicated that students found the webinar to be a novel and innovative way for delivering course content, however, students reported having connectivity issues and at times encountered audio problems. Furthermore, …

Developing A Course In Media Entrepreneurship, Kate Shanahan

Teaching Fellowships

The objective of this teaching fellowship was to develop a module in Digital Media Entrepreneurship for the fourth year BA journalism students in Technological University Dublin (DIT), the pilot to run in the Semester beginning September 2012. Part 1 of this research involved a survey of the students prior to the pilot to ascertain their attitudes to and expectations of a module in media entrepreneurship, as well as their skill sets. Part 2 will take place after the pilot to see whether these expectations have been met and whether the students’ skill sets have improved. Unlike other modules on the …

Internships And The Assessment Of Student Learning, William K. Templeton, Karel A. Updyke, Robert B. Bennett

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

The use of internships is a powerful learning tool that allow business students to make connections between their classroom experience and the world of work. If designed appropriately and positioned correctly in the curriculum, they can also be an ideal opportunity to conduct assurance of learning activities related to business school accreditation. This study reports on survey results relating to business schools’ use of internships in their assurance of learning efforts and describes one school’s successful attempt to use internships as the key platform for its well-developed assurance of learning program.

Engaging With The Community, Ellen Hazelkorn, Elaine Ward

Books/Book chapters

This article focuses on how higher education institutions (HEIs) engage with their external community, contribute to social and economic development, and underpin civil society and democracy. The external community consists of a wide-range of stakeholders from business and industry, the public, private and non-governmental sector, and civil society. While many HEIs have historically had a strong association to their city or nation, today the health of society and the economy is inextricably tied to greater collaboration between “town” and “gown”. The article has five main sections: i) Introduces the social and public responsibility of higher education, ii) Describes the policy …

Rubric For Assessing Epistemological Understanding Of Students Who Are Learning Design., Shannon Chance

Conference papers

There is an extensive base of literature that attempts to describe how college students understand “knowledge” and their role in generating it. Educators draw from this literature to help students develop increasingly sophisticated ways of using knowledge. Although existing research aims for broad generalizability, it is clear that various disciplines have developed their own unique value systems. Scholars of “hard,” physical science are likely to hold very different ideas about the nature of “fact” and “inevitability” than those in the “softer,” social sciences [1]. Various disciplines conceptualize, use, and generate new knowledge in ways that differ dramatically, yet little research …

Confusing Achievement With Aptitude, Dave Powell

Education Faculty Publications

My wife and I read and reread the words several times, allowing them to sink in. "Being in an academic class would cause him harm," the principal wrote about our son, "as the rigor would be too great." The report continued, "He would be the lowest-ability student in the class and by a large margin." It is a day you don't soon forget when the principal of your son's school tells you—in an email, no less—that your child simply is not capable of managing academic work. [excerpt]

Listening For The Squeaky Wheel: Designing Distance Writing Program Assessment, Virginia M. Tucker

English Faculty Publications

Distance writing programs still struggle with assessment strategies that can evaluate student writing as well as their ability to communicate about that writing with peers at a distance. This article uses Kim, Smith and Maeng's 2008 distance education program assessment scheme to evaluate a single distance writing program at Old Dominion University. The program's specific assessment needs include the ability to determine how well students are developing expert insider prose and working together as a virtual community. Kim, Smith and Maeng's assessment scheme was applied to six courses within the writing program, revealing that programmatic assessment weaknesses included providing varied …

Typical And Top-Ranked Polish Private Higher Education : Intersectoral And Intrasectoral Distinctiveness, Joanna Musial

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation analyzes the degree and shape of differences between private and public sectors (intersectoral) and within the private sector (intrasectoral) in Polish higher education. The intersectoral hypothesis is that Poland's two sectors are quite different and that these differences mostly follow those claimed and so far found in leading literature on private higher education globally. The intrasectoral analysis focuses on the top-ranked private institutions, for which I hypothesize characteristics of "semi-elite" institutions.