Elementary Education Commons^™

Subjective Well-Being Of Teachers In K-12 Christian Schools, Julianne Rettig

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

This non-experimental, quantitative study aimed to examine the factors that influence the self-perceived well-being of teachers in K-12 Christian schools. The sample for this study was convenient, non-probable, and purposive and comprised of 81 teachers from one Christian school system in Florida. The measurement tool used in this study is based on Seligman’s (2011) work on well-being. The Workplace PERMAH Profiler is a valid and reliable (α = .94) instrument that measures flourishing in terms of six domains: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment, and health. The internal reliability of study participant responses to survey items associated with the construct …

A Middle-Class Mother's Journey On Navigating The Educational System: The Impact Of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, And Class In Schools, Amy A. Hunter

Dissertations

This is a qualitative autoethnographic study of a Black mother in the Midwest region as she navigates the educational system for her children. This is a research document that informs the reader of the impact of racism and the intersectional identity of race, gender, and motherhood. The importance of intersectionality is highlighted in this research, and so it is that the mother is middle-class to articulate that poverty, access to resources, or the educational attainment of the mother are not necessarily mitigating factors for the treatment she receives within the educational setting. Moreover, is serves as a guide for other …

The Impact Of Supplemental Phonemic Awareness Lessons On Phonological Awareness And Spelling Development Among Kindergarten And First Graders, Crystal Olinger

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Reading is a developmental process that builds on complex cognitive processes and starts long before children enter school. This present study investigated the impact of supplemental phonemic awareness lessons on phonological awareness and spelling development among kindergarten and first graders. The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP-2) measured phonological awareness. The Kindergarten Inventory of Developmental Spelling (KIDS) measured spelling development in kindergarten students. The Developmental Spelling Analysis (DSA) measured spelling development in first grade. Participants in the treatment group received 16 weeks of weekly word study instruction and 10-15 minute daily phonemic awareness instruction. A mixed design full factorial ANOVA …

The Usage And Impact Of Act 1240 Teacher Licensure Waivers In Arkansas, Sarah C. Mckenzie

Policy Briefs

Act 1240 of 2015 allows Arkansas school districts to petition for waivers allowing for the employment of teachers who are not licensed under the standard procedures of the state. Since the program’s inception in the 2016-17 school year, the number of teachers employed under Act 1240 waivers has increased, with the Arkansas Department of Education reporting 836 teachers hired using Act 1240 waivers in 69 districts during the 2021-22 school year. This represents approximately one quarter of the districts within the state, but only approximately 2 percent of the nearly 40,000 teachers employed last year.

Using publicly available data from …

Partnering Pre-Service Teachers With First-Grade Writers: An Exploration Of Giving Effective Feedback, Kelly N. Tracy, Lydia J. Foust

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Feedback is a critical component of teaching and learning (Black & William, 1998; Hattie, 2009). Thus, it is essential for pre-service teachers to have a clear understanding of how to give effective feedback, including on student writing. This article describes a collaborative partnership project between a first-grade teacher and a teacher educator focused on giving students feedback on their writing. Using the online tool Flipgrid, the project brought together 15 first graders and 27 pre-service teachers enrolled in a writing methods course in an effort to offer on-going feedback to the first graders as they were in the process of …

Elementary Teachers' Experiences Of Student Engagement During Forced Virtual Learning: A Phenomenological Approach, Heather Nicole Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand and describe Virginia's Shenandoah Valley Elementary School teachers' experiences of student engagement during forced virtual learning. Teachers' experiences were defined by their positive or negative perceptions of virtual learning experiences. Bandura's social learning theory guided this study on the importance of student engagement in the classroom. This qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study included 12 elementary school teachers from the Madre school division. Data were collected through interviews, letter writing, and focus groups. The precoding and coding processes were used for data analysis to identify three final themes. The themes were online …

Public School Teachers' Experiences With High-Stakes Testing: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study, Lamorris Nakita Smith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to examine how public school elementary teachers perceive high-stakes testing situations as it relates to the impact of test anxiety on young children. Bandura’s (1997) social cognitive theory guided this study as it sought to explain the role of human self-belief in cognition, motivation, and behavior. Eleven teachers who are elementary teachers within a North Carolina public school system, have been teaching at least three years, and have administered high-stakes testing over the course of their teaching careers shared their lived experiences of high-stakes testing through their answers to the following: How …

A Creative Approach To Promoting And Discussing Social Emotional Learning, Lori B. Doyle, Jill L. Swisher

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

Social emotional learning (SEL) is an important topic in education and a desired area of professional development for teachers. This conceptual essay offers a creative approach in promoting and discussing SEL through the use of haiku poetry. The tenets from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) framework were synthesized into key concepts and presented as haiku poems as a pedagogical exercise to increase awareness on SEL.

Multilingual Zambia - Language Issues In Primary/Secondary Schools Of The Eastern/Southern Provinces, Kenzie Steiner

NUTR/GLST 498b: Global Research Experiences in Nutrition and Health

Introduction: Zambia is a multilingual country that uses 8 different languages for instruction including English and 7 other indigenous languages.

Methods: Survey research conducted between May-June 2022 on 6-7th graders within 9 Zambian schools. Classroom observations made and teachers interviewed.

Results: In Eastern and Southern Provinces, Zambian teachers speak an average of 5 languages while students speak an average of 2. Both teachers and students say English remains the most important language followed by first languages.

Conclusion: Continued research on language-in-education policies and impacts on student performance must be conducted if “One Zambia, One Nation” is meant to promote all …

Difficulties Facing Teachers In Teaching Mathematics To Students With Learning Disabilities In Light Of Corona Pandemic And Proposed Solutions From The Teachers' Point Of View, Laial Mohammad Damrah

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للبحوث في التعليم العالي

The study aimed to reveal the difficulties facing teaching students with learning disabilities in Mathematics in light of Corona pandemic and proposed solutions to them from the point of view of their teachers. To achieve this goal, the analytical descriptive approach was used, the study tool (questionnaire) was distributed randomly on a sample of 58 teachers was chosen out of 123 (47% of the study population) from all resource rooms in 5 directorates in Amman (26 male and 97 female teachers) for the academic year 2020/2021 to respond to a questionnaire items. The result showed that the most problems facing …

Desire And Marketizing English Version Of Education As A Commodity In The Linguistic Market In Bangladesh, Mohammod Moninoor Roshid Professor, Shaila Sultana Professor

The Qualitative Report

In recent years, the globalization of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) policy has grown exponentially, driven by socio-economic, political, cultural, and educational desires and forces. Despite having a well-established elite English-medium education in Bangladesh, EMI-based, a new type of education system has emerged recently at primary and secondary levels called English-version (EV) education. This paper investigates parents' desires to choose EV schools for their children and how those desires contribute to marketizing EV schools as a new and popular commodity in the education market of Bangladesh. Data were collected using open-ended questionnaires from 120 parents of primary school …

Unlocking The Potential Of Private-School Choice: Avoiding And Overcoming Obstacles To Successful Implementation, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Books

The parental-choice movement has secured a number of important victories in recent years. There are now 65 private-school-choice programs in the U.S., serving approximately 700,000 students, including new universal education savings account programs in Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, and West Virginia. Despite this progress, however, existing private-school-choice programs have, in some ways, fallen short of their transformational potential. The number of students served remains stagnant and below capacity in many states, faith-based (and especially Catholic) schools continue to close despite new eligibility for public funds, most funds are used to fill seats in existing schools and rather than driving the …

An Exploratory Study Of Elementary School Students’ Reading Performance Scores Before And After Covid-19, Timothy Goodman

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The purpose of this study was to explore the reading performance scores of elementary school students in one school district before and after school closures due to COVID-19. This nonexperimental, exploratory study of quantitative, archival data was designed to explore a single cohort (N = 2,006) of third- through fifth-grade students’ i-Ready reading diagnostic scale scores from five different assessment periods: before school closures in spring 2020 and four subsequent assessment periods after face-to-face instruction resumed in fall 2020. The research sample excluded exceptional student education students and English language learners who had been retained. Mean scale scores of …

Elementary School Educators’ Perceptions Of Discipline Policies And The Overrepresentation Of Discipline Outcomes In Urban Settings, William Casey Cooper

Ed.D. Dissertations

Since the formation of schools, schools have developed ways of understanding discipline and ensuring a safe and orderly environment. Governmental personnel began to influence local school policies beginning in 1989, with United States President Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs campaign. This led to the creation and development of zero-tolerance policies. School districts implemented zero-tolerance policies, which helped lead to the overrepresentation of discipline outcomes (i.e., punishment) among certain demographics. Following the Critical Race Theory theoretical framework, I interviewed 12 participants to determine their perceptions of discipline policies and the overrepresentation of discipline outcomes in urban settings. My participants included elementary …

Staying “Above The Fray” With Julia B. Lindsey’S Insights On Effective Reading Instruction, Troy Hicks, Emma Chappel, Kirstin Fish, Anne Hosking, Jill Johnston, Jodi Juergens, Georgianna Murray, Lindsay Picarski, Heidi Turchan, Meghan K. Block, Chad Waldron

Michigan Reading Journal

In this crowdsourced, collaborative book review, participants in an online book club share their insights on Julia B. Lindsey's 2022 Scholastic Professional text, Reading Above the Fray.

Great Lakes Great Books: Encourage The Joy Of Reading, Lynette Marten Suckow

Michigan Reading Journal

A sampling of books from the Great Lakes Great Books list for 2022 that includes grade levels from K-12 and addresses the importance of engaging text, as well as artwork that enhances the story.

The Best Way To Learn A Pedagogy Is Practice: A Project-Based Learning Journey, Kelly C. Margot, Katherine Worden

Michigan Reading Journal

Project based learning (PBL) is an instructional practice that gives students an opportunity to learn while focused on sustained inquiry. The teacher becomes a facilitator of learning by guiding students through an inquiry-process that includes authentic learning leading to a student-created product that will be shown to an authentic audience. Preservice teachers often lack exposure to this type of inquiry-based learning from their own school experiences and may be intimidated by this type of pedagogy. This manuscript tells the story of one English preservice teacher’s experience learning to be more comfortable with PBL and the role teacher education played by …

Why Not Sign? Classrooms As Sites Of D/Deaf And Multilingual Literacy Development, Dawnavyn James, Brianne R. Pitts

Michigan Reading Journal

While often, “bilingual” literacy instruction has overlooked the potential of incorporating ASL in classrooms (U.S.DPE, 2021), this article engages discussions of practice from a Missouri Kindergarten classroom to argue that teachers can improve student literacy outcomes by leveraging d/Deaf and hard of hearing multilingual learning (DML) strategies as a way of (re)imagining students’ multimodal literacy development. By engaging with a variety of strategies learned from DML students, readers may conceptualize DML inclusive classroom practices. Following a review of the literature and discussion, games, instructional strategies, and text recommendations for educators seeking DML inclusive literacy environments are provided.

Mindfulness In Education: Why Every School Should Be Teaching It, Ashley L. Baer

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

Were you ever asked to pay attention in school? As an educator have you asked students to pay attention? Compare that to how many times you were taught or taught a student to pay attention. Most likely the answer is never. Mindfulness is explicit attention building and emotional regulation. Learn how and why you should create a mindful breathing culture through short experiential practices, activities, and games including breathing activites, and movement.

Exploration Of Motivations For Adopting A Four-Day School Week Or Year Round Calendars: Evidence From Arkansas, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee, Kate Barnes

Policy Briefs

This brief provides an overview of the motivations for Arkansas school districts adopting a four-day school week or year-round calendar. In addition to examining these motivations, this brief provides an overview of the districts adopting non-traditional calendars and policy recommendations for districts and communities considering changing calendars.

We Wanted To Do Something Innovative: Exploring Motivations Of Arkansas Districts Adopting Four-Day School Weeks Or Year-Round Calendars, Kate Barnes, Sarah C. Mckenzie

Arkansas Education Reports

Recent legislation has allowed Arkansas school districts increased flexibility to adopt a non-traditional calendar. Act 688 introduced four calendar options for districts: a traditional calendar, a four day calendar, a year-round calendar, and an alternate calendar based on the number of instructional hours.

During the 2022-23 school year, 33 school districts throughout the state adopted new calendars. The motivations behind why districts adopted new calendars were unclear. This report aims to identify the rationale behind why these districts moved away from the traditional calendar.

This report uses data gathered from interviews with twenty-three superintendents in districts that selected non-traditional calendars …

Problems Are A Gift- How To Turn Challenging Behaviors In The Classroom Into Opportunities For Growth And Connection, Lindsey Kealey

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

Lindsey Kealey discusses practical ways apply a trauma-responsive approach to helping children and adults solve problems in the classroom. When you unwrap problems with students in productive, rather than punitive ways, you will find that problems are not just fires to put out or issues that weight us down. Rather, problems can be a gift to ourselves and the students we teach.

Book Review: Teaching With A Social, Emotional, And Cultural Lens, Shauna Mayer

Essays in Education

Successful teachers are continually looking for ways to improve student achievement. Nancy Markowitz and Suzanne Bouffard write about how the incorporation of teaching through a social, emotional, and cultural lens allows students to be successful inside the classroom. The authors provide several tips, tools, and research-based strategies that align with the Anchor Competencies Framework. The book prepares new teachers, and provides new insights for current and veteran teachers.

A Call For Digital Citizenship Curriculum In Early Childhood Education, Jenna K. Ladd, Joel J. Traver

Essays in Education

Accessibility of information (factual or fabricated), social interconnectedness, and more of our daily lives being lived in the digital world has created challenges and opportunities for children and families around the world. As a result, there exists an emerging need for families with children aged birth-to-five to receive education and support through standards-based digital citizenship curriculum to navigate living online. Several models of digital citizenship curriculum have been created for the K-12 education to provide education and guidance for teachers, administrators, and parents of older children. Thus, we call for the development and implementation of standards-based digital citizenship curriculum in …

Recognition Of Design Failure By Fourth-Grade Students During An Engineering Design Challenge, Ron K. Skinner, Danielle B. Harlow

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

The practice of persisting and learning from design failures is essential to engineering design and offers unique ways of knowing and learning for K-12 students. To understand how students engage in the practice of persisting and learning from design failures, we must first understand how, if at all, they recognize that a design failure has occurred. We studied a classroom of fourth-grade students engaged in an engineering design challenge and examined the ways in which design failure occurred and how students recognized, neglected to recognize, or misinterpreted design failure. We found that, in addition to anticipating failure, conducting fair tests, …

Predictive Correlation Between Teacher Self-Efficacy Factors In Literacy And Preparedness To Teach Morphology, Angelique M. Tomlinson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative predictive correlation study was to examine the relationship between teacher self-efficacy factors in literacy and teacher preparedness in teaching morphology in elementary classrooms. Results from this study have the potential of determining needed instructional changes at both the teacher training and elementary school levels. One hundred fifteen respondants came from elementary teachers in three school districts across the Tennessee Valley, although only 69 participants completed the survey in its entirety. The Teacher Sense of Efficacy in Literacy Instruction (TSELI), with demographic questions on education level, teacher position, and completion of Language Essentials for Teachers of …

How Exemplary Title I Elementary School Principals Lead With An Infinite Mindset, Lindsey Rae Gatfield

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how exemplary Title I elementary school principals perceive practices of Sinek’s infinite mindset framework are embedded in their organization to inspire achievement of extraordinary results. A further purpose of this study was to understand organizational supports and barriers exemplary Title I elementary school principals perceive affect infinite mindset development. Methodology: This phenomenological study explored experiences of exemplary leaders and their perceptions of how the five practices of infinite mindset are embedded in their organization. The target population for this study was exemplary Title I elementary school principals in Orange …

Moving From Theory To Practice: Examining Teaching Mathematics For Social Justice In An Elementary School Classroom, Krystal Giles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teaching mathematics for social justice is a distinctive approach to mathematics education that seeks to have students use mathematics to navigate their identities, understand their lived experiences, examine inequities, and become agents of change. Current research provides a rich explanation of what teaching mathematics for social justice entails. Still, there is a need for research that studies how to move from theory to practice. The purpose of this research study is to examine the experience of teaching mathematics for social justice within my fifth-grade mathematics classroom for myself and my students, analyze the extent to which students’ ethnic and academic …

The Casnr L.I.N.K.S. Newsletter: Learning Innovation Network For K-12 Schools, Volume 2, Edition 3, March 2023, Bailey Feit, Tammy Mittelstet

CASNR L.I.N.K.S. Newsletter

The purpose of this L.I.N.K.S. newsletter is to provide a monthly update of opportunities and resources for K-12 schools to connect with the University of Nebraska's CASNR Food, Energy, Water, and Societal Systems (FEWS²) programs and partners.

Included in this edition:

K-12 curriculum and resources

Elementary school resources

Middle school resources

High school resources

STEM educational trailers

Career exploration: Pathways for students who like animals and insects

Teacher and student opportunities

Registration open now for Cultivando Caminos

CASNR six interest areas: Analytic investigators, health system innovators, food system futurists, environmental stewards, entrepreneurial designers, community leaders

Environmental careers spotlight: Wildlife careers, …

Practice Habits Of Instrumental Music Students In Elementary School Vapa Programs: An Empirical Mixed-Methods Survey, Timothy Johnson

Doctor of Education (EdD)

The purpose of this empirical research study was to gain knowledge about the practice habits of elementary school students in Grades 5 and 6. Sixty-five instrumental music students served as research subjects. They were enrolled in the newly established string orchestra supported by the Fairfax Elementary School District. Drawing upon my empirical experiences and instrumental music training, I identified and examined practice habits affecting motivation to learn music. Data generated from five open-ended and ten closed-ended questions were analyzed and contributed to the findings from the survey. An examination of published literature also contributed to the collection of resource data. …