Other Education Commons^™

Does Gender Still Matter? Child Custody Bias In The Illinois Family Court System, Derek K. Ronnfeldt

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several decades, nearly all of the states have formed task forces to look at the perception of a gender bias within the family court systems as they pertain to child custody. This self-scrutiny has included the attitudes of judges and attorneys within the system and the need of reform of our family courts. This research focused on replicating a study conducted by Dotterweich and McKinney that was completed in 2000 that compiled statistics from four different state task forces in Maryland, Missouri, Texas, and Washington. This research focused on Illinois judges and attorneys, using the same questions …

Reading Horizons Vol. 55 No. 2

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

No abstract provided.

Pre-Service Teachers' Growth In Understandings Of Best Practice Literacy Instruction Through Paired Course And Field Experience, Jamie Lipp, Sara R. Helfrich

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Illiteracy is on the rise in the United States, and the potential negative impact on today’s struggling reader is devastating. Now more than ever, preparing pre-service teachers to be effective teachers of literacy is crucial. This study examined the growth in understandings of best practice literacy of eleven pre-service teachers through paired course and field work. Results reveal that through paired course and field work, growth of best practice literacy instruction is shown by pre-service teachers’ enhanced abilities to define, assign importance, and relate to implications for student learning as well as develop efficacy around their use. Results of this …

“It’S Just Too Sad!”: Teacher Candidates’ Emotional Resistance To Picture Books, Aimee Papola-Ellis

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The use of critical literacy with children’s books that focus on social issues and disrupt the status quo can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations with students about social justice and empowerment. Teacher candidates in a semester long children’s literature course were asked to respond to a range of children’s texts that dealt with many social issues and disrupted the commonplace. Despite an explicit emphasis on critical literacy and social justice, the candidates were very resistant to using many of the texts in their own future classrooms. They had strong emotional reactions that prevented them from consideration …

Creating Spaces For Literacy, Creating Spaces For Learning, Christy M. Howard

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This study represents the practices of a middle school social studies teacher as she focuses on integrating questioning, reading, and writing in her content area. This teacher uses literacy strategies to engage students in practices of reading multiple texts and writing to showcase learning. She creates opportunities for students to make connections to their learning, posing questions to enhance critical thinking and the use of multiple sources to support responses. Through these actions, she creates spaces for student reading, writing, and learning to occur.

Choice And Rigor: Achieving A Balance In Middle School Reading/Language Arts Classrooms In The Era Of The Common Core, Nancy L. Stevens

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

While the advantages of reading workshops are well known (Atwell, 1998), there is currently a debate among scholars, practitioners, and politicians about the use of instructional/independent level texts in light of the Common Core Standards’ end-of-year requirement for students to be reading at grade level (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). Particularly in middle school, where motivation to read often declines, a workshop approach can help students develop and strengthen their interest in reading. A classroom survey completed by middle school students in a suburban school district in the Midwestern United …

Unopa Notes, July 5, 2016

UNOPA: Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Influence Of Musical Engagement On Symptoms Of Tourette’S Disorder, William Christopher Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tourette’s is currently considered a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder. Georges Gilles de la Tourette is given primary credit for the diagnoses of the disorder in the late 1800s. Clear answers have been elusive although modern research and improvements to neuroimaging have enabled the causal factors of Tourette’s Disorder (TD) to be examined with greater scrutiny. Currently, there is no known cure or pharmaceutical treatment that has been proven 100% effective for all patients and symptoms of Tourette’s. Anecdotally, there have been recent media and self-reports of people diagnosed with Tourette’s finding relief from their symptoms through involvement in focus-based activities such …

Nebline, July 2016

NEBLINE Newsletter Archive from Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County

Feature: Lancaster County Extension Board — Building Our Community Connection

Food & Health

Farm & Acreage

Pests & Wildlife

Horticulture

Early Childhood

4-H & Youth

Extension Calendar

and other extension news and events

Intersecting Asset-Based Service, Strengths, And Mentoring For Socially Responsible Leadership, Lindsay J. Hastings

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

Grounded in a youth leadership and mentoring program, this chapter discusses the value of asset-based community development from the service-learning literature and the concept of generativity from the leadership development literature.

College students are frequently engaged in the community through local mentoring programs, as mentoring youth has become an increasingly popular service-learning pedagogical strategy among many higher-education institutions (Schmidt, Marks, & Derrico, 2004; Wells & Grabert, 2004). While many mentoring programs are designed to build resiliency in at-risk youth, mentoring has been identified as an effective practice in leadership development (Day, 2000; Dziczkowski, 2013).

This chapter will discuss the value …

Wilderness Restoration: A Case Study Of Two Place-Based Education Programs, Carolyn Ann Albracht

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Research regarding outdoor environmental education programs for youth tends to be quantitative in nature, examining cause-and-effect relationships between program content and participants’ behavior and attitudes. Some researchers have suggested that programs that help foster an affective connection with nature in its participants may have more lasting and greater impact on participants’ pro-environmental behavior and attitudes than those that take a more cognitive approach. In other words, appealing to youth’s emotional sensibilities may go further than only teaching facts and skills about how to be better environmental stewards. In order to study these affective connections and how they might be fostered, …

Wrack Lines Spring/Summer 2016, Margaret (Peg) A. Van_Patten Ms.

Wrack Lines

This is the entire Spring/Summer issue of Wrack Lines Magazine, which has a shellfish theme and a Connecticut focus. 24 pages.

The Explorations Program: Benefits Of Single-Session, Research- Focused Classes For Students And Postdoctoral Instructors, Jeremy L. Hsu, Anna M. Wrona, Sarah E. Brownell, Waheeda Khalfan

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

We present an update to Explorations, a program at Stanford University that allows undergraduates in an introductory biology course to explore specialized topics in the biological sciences while providing graduate students and postdoctoral scholars the unique opportunity to develop and teach single-session, research-focused classes. We provide an assessment of eight iterations of the program, using program attendance, student and instructor evaluations, senior exit surveys, course grades, and completion of undergraduate honors theses to assess the impact of our program on students and instructors. Students rated their experiences highly, and most reported that the program had a positive impact on their …

Examining Bridges Between Informal And Formal Learning Environments: A Sequential Mixed Method Design, Dagen L. Valentine

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this sequential mixed method study was to identify schools implementing a technology-based engineering design intervention in a way that connects or bridges formal learning environments of the school-day to informal learning environments such as afterschool programs. Further, this study investigated educators’ decisions that enabled or facilitated bridging between formal and informal learning environments. This cooperation and/or linking between informal and formal learning time is bridging. Participants included public schools (n=16) in Eastern Nebraska that incorporated the Nebraska Wearables Technology (WearTec) program at their school, club or Out-of-School-Time program during the 2015-2016 school year. Three of the schools …

Making A Place For People At A Wildlife Corridor On Chicago's South Side, Alexis Winter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What role do environmental conservation projects play in the transformation of American cities? How do these projects affect city residents? In this study, I ask these questions at the Burnham Wildlife Corridor, where the Chicago Park District worked with institutional and community-based partner organizations to engage city residents in the creation of a lakefront wildlife habitat and public nature area. Through ethnographic interviews and participant observation I explored how actors at various levels understand this changing landscape and their roles in shaping it. I situate the Burnham Wildlife Corridor project in the broader context of a state-level plan, the Millennium …

Adjunct Faculty Perceptions On Professional Development Offered And Needed By Institution Type And Career Cluster, Mark Parrish

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examined the perceptions of adjunct faculty in higher education to gather their opinion on professional development that was offered and the professional development they feel is needed and whether institution type or career cluster was significant in determining their perception. This causal-comparative, quantitative research study utilized an online survey and included 220 adjuncts from within the United States. The study utilized one-way ANOVA to determine if there were statistically significant differences in means between the institution types and career clusters of adjunct faculty related to professional development offered and needed. It was found that there were statistically significant …

Factor Analysis Of The Preschool Behavioral And Emotional Rating Scale For Children In Head Start Programs, Cynthia J. Cress, Matthew C. Lambert, Michael Epstein

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Strength-based assessment of behaviors in preschool children provides evidence of emotional and behavioral skills in children, rather than focusing primarily on weaknesses identified by deficit-based assessments. The Preschool Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scales (PreBERS) is a normative assessment of emotional and behavioral strengths in preschool children. The PreBERS has well-established reliability and validity for typically developing children as well as children with identified special education needs, but this has not yet been established for children in Head Start programs, who tend to be at high risk for development of emotional and behavioral concerns. This study explores the factorial validity of …

A Phenomenological Examination Of How Student Army Veterans Describe Influencing Factors On Their Post-Service College Application, Aubrey L. Sejuit

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will explore how student Army veterans describe influencing factors on post-service college application. The qualitative research design in conjunction with the Livingston, Havice, Cawthon, & Fleming (2011) Student Veteran Academic and Social Transition Model (SVATSM) allows this researcher to generate a study with implications for the needs of Campus Professionals, Military Personnel such as U.S. Army Career Counselors and Army Soldiers, and Counselors to include Counselor Educators, School Counselors, Career Counselors, and Mental Health Counselors. The study explores what challenges are faced when working specifically with this population that may determine the choice to apply to college after …

Faculty Perceptions Of Online Student Disruptive Behavior, Kenneth J. Posner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Limited research and literature address online student disruptive behavior and the effectiveness of conflict management strategies to address these inappropriate behaviors. Through expanded offerings of online education, higher education institutions need to prepare strategically and intentionally for increased instances of online student disruptive behavior. This research study developed and administered an online survey to obtain quantitative and qualitative data. Utilizing the Qualtrics Research Suite and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for quantitative data analysis and MAXQDA for coding the qualitative data this research study examined five research questions identifying online student disruptive behaviors, observed frequencies, and effective …

Effects Of Weeding Strategies On Information Resource Management Among Public Libraries In North-Central States Of Nigeria, Tangkat Yusuf Dushu Mr.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study investigated Effects of Weeding Strategies on Information Resource Management Among Public Libraries in North-Central States of Nigeria, the researcher observed that Every library's print collection is limited by the space available, and collections must change over time to reflect changes in the community and in the library's goals, as result, five (5) research questions and objectives were formulated with respect to how unwanted information resources managed, shelf-time period of information resources, effects of weeding on library organisation and services and the challenges of weeding in public libraries. Survey research method was adopted for the study and staff in …

Blue-Collar Scholars: Bridging Academic And Working-Class Worlds, Nathan Lee Hodges

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores one white working-class family’s hopes, fears, illusions, and tensions related to social mobility. I tell stories from my experiences as a first-generation college student, including: ethnographic fieldwork; interviews with my family, community members, and former teachers; and narratives from other working-class academics to provide an in-depth, evocative, and relational look at mobility. I explore the roots of vulnerability in my family and how I was socialized into understanding belonging and worthiness in particular ways, and how this socialization influences my feelings of belonging and worthiness in the academy. The goal of this research is bridging – past …

Esther Izaak, Esther Izaak, Institute Of Child Nutrition. Child Nutrition Archives.

Oral History Project (all interviews)

Esther Izaak was born on the island of Montserrat, where she attended secondary school. She continued her education at the University of the Virgin Islands, as well as studying in the United Kingdom. After several years teaching, she accepted the position of the director of the School Food Authority for St. Thomas and St. John. She is now the training director for St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John.

Belinda Moitt, Belinda Moitt, Institute Of Child Nutrition. Child Nutrition Archives.

Oral History Project (all interviews)

A native of the island of Antigua, Belinda Moitt immigrated to St. Thomas in 1961. After working for several years as a housekeeper and then in several restaurants, she was hired as a cook in the school lunch program.

Professional Resource: The Routledge Companion To Remix Studies (2015), Benjamin Thevenin

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.

Padawan’S Journey: Remixing Star Wars Radio For Adolescent Literacy Education, Mark J. Davis

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The Star Wars phenomenon motivates adolescents who may be disengaged in the classroom. The wealth of visual content may overshadow the power of the music, sound effects, and dialogue. In literacy education, skills are often practiced by reading and discussing traditional texts. In this digital literacy project, struggling readers remixed the Star Wars canon through audio storytelling. Students served as actors, Foley artists, and directors in the recording of brief episodes based on the original trilogy. The project heightens students’ oral fluency and text comprehension by engaging in close reading and structured dialogue. The recordings demonstrate how students can be …

Evaluating Online Media Literacy In Higher Education: Validity And Reliability Of The Digital Online Media Literacy Assessment (Domla), Tom Hallaq

Journal of Media Literacy Education

While new technology continues to develop and become increasingly affordable, and students have increased access to digital media, one might wonder if requiring such technology in the classroom is akin to throwing the car keys to a teen-ager who has not completed a driver’s education course. The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable quantitative survey providing accurate data about the digital online media literacy of university-level students in order to better understand how digital online media can and should be used within a teaching/learning environment at a university. This study identifies core constructs of media …

The Think Aloud Approach. A Promising Tool For Online Reading Comprehension, Stefania Carioli, Andrea Peru

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there has been little research on online reading and there is a lack of attention paid to this topic in most European educational institutions. In particular, primary and secondary school teachers are not adequately trained on how and when to intervene to support students’ proficiency in the online reading comprehension. After presenting a rationale demonstrating why students may struggle with online reading comprehension and the importance to adopt a self-regulated reading, this study proposes a Teacher’s Guide that could support late primary and secondary school teachers …

The Issues And Challenges Of Assessing Media Literacy Education, Evelien A. Schilder, Barbara B. Lockee, D. Patrick Saxon

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In the media literacy literature, the challenges associated with assessment have, to a great extent, been ignored. The purpose of this mixed methods study was therefore to explore the views of media literacy scholars and professionals on assessment challenges through qualitative interviews (n = 10) with the intent of using this information to develop a quantitative survey to validate and extend the qualitative findings with a larger sample of media literacy professionals and scholars from around the world (n = 133). The findings offer an overview of the assessment challenges encountered by these participants.

Urban English Language Arts Teachers’ Stories Of Technology Use: A Narrative Inquiry, Bridget Abbas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Technology use in high-minority, low-income middle school ELA classrooms is defined by traditional instructional practices (Applebee & Langer, 2013; Attewell, 2001; Boser, 2013; Cuban, 2001; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008), barriers to access (O’Dwyer et al., 2005; Purcell et al., 2013; Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010), and inequalities in use (Banister & Reinhart, 2011; Beers, 2004; Gorski, 2009; Makinen, 2006; Powell, 2007; Reinhart et al., 2011; Dijk, 2003, 2006; Warschauer et al., 2004). This characterization, or grand narrative, of technology use is echoed and challenged by this narrative inquiry. Here the stories of two ELA teachers frequently using technology in instruction and …

Development And Validation Of A Remote Sensing Model To Identify Anthropogenic Boreholes That Provide Dry Season, Refuge Habitat For Anopheles Vector Mosquitoes In Sub-Saharan Africa, James Pkemoi Kukat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A lack of surveillance systems is an impediment to public health intervention for perennial vector-borne disease transmission in northern tropical savanna region of Kenya. The population in this area are mostly poor nomadic pastoralists with little acquired functional immunity to Plasmodium falciparum, due to infrequent challenges with the parasite. A common characteristic in tropical savanna climatic zone is the availability of riverbeds that have anthropogenic boreholes that provide malaria vector mosquitoes, such as Anopheles gambiae s.l and Anopheles funestus, with aquatic refuge habitats for proliferation and endemic transmission to proximity human households during the dry-season. Unfortunately, currently there …