Secondary Education Commons^™

Intergroup Dialogue With High School Participants, Meaghan E. Kachadoorian

Master's Projects and Capstones

Liberatory education facilitates identity expression, promotes empathy and understanding across difference, and builds capacity for recognizing and resisting oppressive social structures. However, many students’ educational experiences lack intentional practices that subvert societal intolerance. Without these practices, education can perpetuate social group divide without empowering students to create social change. The practice of dialogue, specifically critical intergroup dialogue, brings together participants from various social group identities in facilitated conversations in pursuit of social transformation. This project is an exploration of intergroup dialogue with high school students. For the research, I carried out a phenomenological study by co-facilitating a dialogue group with …

A History And Contemporary Analysis Of The Standard Adult High School Diploma Program In Minnesota, Ray Michael Ades

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This research project, which focused on a competency-based, secondary credential option for adult learners, known as the Minnesota Standard Adult High School Diploma, investigated the development of this credentialing option from its inception prior to 2014 legislation through present implementation. Three research questions, which centered on the circumstances that instigated, the process that developed the implementation of the Minnesota Standard Adult High School Diploma, which is referred to as the quintain in this study, and the perceived impact upon Adult Basic Education programs guided this multiple case study. Group interviews and document analysis were employed to answer the aforementioned questions. …

Using Graphic Novels To Teach English And American Culture In Japanese Middle Schools, Jenna Pollack

Master's Projects and Capstones

English proficiency in Japan has historically been lower than other Asian countries despite students learning English as a core subject beginning in elementary school. To help address this, Japan has brought thousands of assistant language teachers (ALTs) from native English-speaking countries through both government and private companies to help teach English and promote foreign cultural exchange. These teachers often experience cultural misunderstandings and microaggressions from both colleagues and students yet must continue to respectfully teach culture as cultural ambassadors. The purpose of this project is to design a handbook that guides ALTs working with middle school students in how to …

A Leadership Change. A Culture Shift...And A Police Riot: The Story Of How The Highest College Going High School In San Francisco Became The Lowest Graduating School In The District, Emmanuel Padilla

Master's Theses

Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, located in San Francisco’s Bayview, Hunters Point, scored the third lowest in the most recent Academic Performance Index (API) Report. Based on the median household income, the Bayview is a low-income community and according to San Francisco data, is a high crime neighborhood. The odds are against Marshall to provide exceptional service to their students, but it once did. In 2001, Marshall had the highest college-going rate in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Today, only 20% of its student body would be considered college ready. This study will look into what happened to …

An Exploration Of The Cultural And Social Experiences Of Urban High School Students Attending Schools Outside Of Their Communities, Kerrin Mckenney

Master's Theses

The historic residential racial segregation in the United States results in racially segregated public and private schools. Higher achieving schools tend to be in more affluent areas and are more accessible to white students. Schools that are older, in need of repairs, and tend to be identified as low-achieving, remain in the poorer areas and are mostly attended by students of color. Despite the 1954 landmark case that declared separate but equal schools unconstitutional, public schools are more segregated now than before the Brown v. Board of Education case was heard by the US Supreme Court. As a result, some …

Diagramming Academic Equity: Exploring Educator Perceptions Of Using Student Data To Institute Equitable Academic Programming In Public Secondary Schools, Matthew Dass

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

By viewing Adams’ Equity Theory through an educational equity lens, the author intends to demonstrate which data educators feel are most important when designing education plans that offer all public secondary students equitable access to school curricula and resources. Creating equitable educational plans for all students is vital to ensuring students are granted access to the curricular resources necessary to both achieve their respective academic potential, and stimulate engagement through integrating individual student interests into academic planning. Consequently, this study seeks to establish specifically which data points educators feel are most important when instituting equitable education programming for students, and …

Chemistry In Art: The Science Of Dye, Madeleine Gray Burland

Honors Projects

Fabric arts, and the practice of dyeing fabric using various resist techniques, is a tradition that goes back centuries, and is unique among art mediums in its relation to science, as the innovations in dye production have directly affected the art form. The development of synthetic dyes in the 1800’s greatly affected the way fabric is dyed, and subsequently the way clothes were made and consumed. As opposed to dyes made of natural materials, synthetic dyes cam in more colors, were brighter, easier to make in large quantities, and lasted longer since they didn’t fade with repeated washings. The practice …

Student Perceptions Of Social-Emotional Learning Through Morning Meetings In A 12th-Grade Economics Classroom, Summer Anguiano

Masters of Education in Teaching and Learning

With increased interest in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), teachers have worked to find ways in which SEL can be brought into the school and classroom community. For this study, the researcher wanted to bring SEL into the classroom and understand how the students perceived it. The study was conducted in an on-level senior Economics classroom where SEL had not previously been introduced into the classroom culture. Data was gathered through a student survey, individual student interviews, and a focus group interview. To analyze the data, the researcher used a constant comparative method of coding to identify the data thematically. From the …

Valuing The Success Of Failure: Reflective Journaling And Mistake Acceptance, Elisabeth Thomas

Masters of Education in Teaching and Learning

This study examined ninth-grade students’ acceptance of their own mistakes in the classroom. The author implemented a journaling process twice a week in an attempt to give students a positive perception of their academic failures in a school setting. She collected data by using surveys, interviews, reflective writing, and a focus group. On top of this, the researcher asked about student perceptions of the journaling process as applied to the acceptance of their mistakes. Surveys were analyzed using descriptive statistics and were graphed. The constant-comparative method was used to understand major themes. This resulted in four major findings which included …

Queering Secondary Education: An Inquiry To The Necessity Of Queer Studies For All Students, Ashlign D. Shoemaker

Honors Theses

In the current state of secondary education, queer studies are appallingly underexposed. The subject matter is often completely disregarded due to a perceived discomfort around themes and content regarding LGBTQ+ sexualities. This process of elimination is a disservice to all students as they continue their education and move on to the adult world. Queer studies must be included for all students to ensure a society of empathy and understanding. Including the queer identity in the secondary education, classroom gives LGBTQ+ students the usable past that is essential to their wellbeing and mental health, and it provides exposure and understanding for …

Exploring Implicit Bias To Evaluate Teacher Candidates' Ethical Practice In The Internship, Jamie Silverman, Jessica Shiller

Journal of Practitioner Research

To create an equitable and ethical learning environment in the classroom requires teacher candidates (TCs) to develop positive relationships with students and to reflect on who they are. Using the elements of Richard Milner’s (2007) Framework of Researcher Racial and Cultural Positionality, this article presents an account of an innovative practice in how to engage secondary education TCs in a reflection of implicit biases, and how to interrupt them to become more ethical professionals. This article takes InTASC 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice as a point of departure and describes how a new teacher mentor piloted a series of …

The Island Earth Field Studio: A High School Summer Program On Polynesian Voyaging In Hawaii, Andrea M. Bachmann

Capstone Collection

The Island Earth Field Studio is a ten-day program for high school students to learn about Polynesian voyaging in Hawaii as a framework to understand non-Western knowledge systems. The program design is grounded in research on the historical significance of voyaging and informed by current literature on adolescent development and place-based pedagogy.

To further refine the program, a needs assessment was conducted using a combination of surveys and interviews with parents and educators in the continental United States (mainland) as well as interviews with local partners in Hawaii. The assessment revealed that cultural learning and community building were viewed by …

Teacher Perceptions And Implementation Of A Content-Area Literacy Professional Development Program, Osha Lynette Smith, Rebecca Robinson

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The Common Core State Standards recommend that all educators equip students with the literacy skills needed for college and careers. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine middle-level content-area teachers’ perspectives on a district-led literacy professional development program and their implementation of the literacy strategies they learned. The conceptual framework included Bruner’s constructivist, Bandura’s self-efficacy, and Knowles’s andragogy theories. These theories informed the investigation of adult learners’ perspectives regarding the way they learn and gain confidence in providing literacy instruction. Eleven English, math, science, and social studies teachers participated in the study through individual interviews. Data were …

Expectation Gaps Between High School Mathematics Courses And College Calculus, Lauren M. Godfrey

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

As a tutor at the Science and Math Learning Center (SMLC) at James Madison University (JMU), I have seen a disconnect between students’ preparation from their high school math classes and their application of particular topics in higher level math classes (i.e. Calculus I). As a future high school math teacher, I wanted to investigate the expectation gap between high school and college math classes. I observed a Calculus I class during the first week of classes to determine the students’ initial struggles. I finally landed on the topic of logarithms and specifically the rules associated with them. I conducted …

Exceptional Mathematics Teachers: What The Learners Think, Brianna Louvier

Masters of Education in Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this study was to determine high school learners’ perceptions of what makes an exceptional mathematics teacher. The author was a pre-service teacher serving her clinical teaching internship in a high school mathematics classroom in which Precalculus, Pre-AP Precalculus, and AP Calculus were taught. For this study, data was collected through a student survey, one-on-one interviews, and focus group interviews with students. The data was analyzed using the constant comparative method. Four major themes emerged from the data, including the significance of a teacher’s attitude, the importance of a teacher’s desire to help and teach learners, whether or …

Impacts Of An International Professional Development Program: A Qualitative Study, Marijn W. T. De Waal

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This qualitative study with phenomenological components examined the impacts of a U.S. State Department-funded teacher professional development program, hosted at a liberal-arts university on the east coast of the United States in the spring semester of 2018. An initial review of the public literature revealed that it was challenging to find evaluation data pertaining to this particular program or ones of a similar nature. Through semi-structured synchronous online interviews with five program alumni, the researcher probed if—and if so, how—the professional development (PD) program had made the intended impacts on participants’ (1) teaching methods/curriculum, (2) content knowledge in their personal …

Efficacy Of Response To Intervention For Students Struggling With Reading, Emily J. Warburton

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Response to intervention (RTI) has increased in popularity in schools recently as a means of helping students according to their responsiveness to 3 different tiers of intervention: general classroom instruction, small group instruction, and individual instruction. Using a PsychInfo search, we examined articles to determine the how well the current RTI model fulfills its intended purpose in providing remedial reading instruction to struggling children, teacher perceptions of the system, and what changes could improve the model in coming years. For elementary aged students, we found that RTI has helped students achieve grade-level benchmarks. For secondary school students, there is much …

Allow Good And Its Unforeseen Benefits On Teacher Candidates, Eduardo Palma

SPACE: Student Perspectives About Civic Engagement

In the spring of 2019, a nonprofit program named Allow Good collaborated with undergraduate students from Loyola University Chicago to instruct weekly sessions with high school students at Senn High School on local social issues, philanthropy in action, and the evaluation of local nonprofit organizations. In my role as a student leader involved in Allow Good’s educational initiative, my reflection of its implications, through a detailed evaluation of its impact on teaching and learning, examines my personal experience as a student teacher and the relationship between an interactive model of education and community development. It provides insight into the successes …

The Influence Of Student Enrollment In Pre-College Engineering Courses On Their Interest In Engineering Careers, Kelly A. Miller, Gerhard Sonnert, Philip M. Sadler

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

Pre-college student enrollment in engineering courses increases every year in the United States, yet little is known about the relationship between taking these courses and subsequent science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career interest. Through multinomial logistic regressions, and while controlling for student background variables and prior STEM career interest, this study addresses two research questions: (1) Does completing a pre-college engineering course increase the likelihood of an engineering career interest at the end of high school? (2) Does completing a pre-college engineering course have a different influence on career interest in engineering than on career interest in other STEM …

Is Tuition Free College The Golden Ticket? A Time Series Analysis Of Germany’S Higher Education Policy, 1990-2017, Hannah Wolfram

Business and Economics Honors Papers

Countries which have been able to offer free tertiary education are being applauded while the United States tries to find a way to rectify its high tertiary education costs. Germany has accomplished a system of subsidized higher education since the 1950s, making it seem highly successful. In order to investigate the potential benefits of subsidized higher education, this study uses a time series regression analysis to investigate the relationship between tertiary unemployment rate and public spending as a share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Germany over the period 1990-2017. The regression analysis corrected for multi-collinearity and serial correlation, …

Teachers’ Perceptions Of Alternate Academic Standards And Alternate Testing In Northeast Tennessee, Jodie Bakely

Ed.D. Dissertations

In accordance with the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), Tennessee developed alternate academic standards and an alternate assessment for students with significant cognitive disabilities. This study examined teacher perceptions of the alternate academic standards and alternate assessment in Northeast Tennessee. The researcher interviewed nine teachers of students with significant cognitive disabilities who had used the alternate academic standards and alternate assessment with their students in Northeast Tennessee. The study found that the teachers interviewed did not see the value in using the alternate state standards or alternate assessment with their students. The implications of this study included a need for …

Discipline-Culture And Instructional Practices: An Integrated Leader's Role, Joe L. Griffin

Dissertations

The goal of this study was to identify the extent to which integrated leadership is present in schools, according to secondary teachers. Second, the study sought to measure the discipline-culture of schools. Discipline-culture is defined as the way discipline is administered daily in a school and how it contributes to the instructional practices that teacher’s use. Finally, integrated leadership, coined by Marks and Printy (2003), was examined relative to discipline-culture and instructional practices with this study. Leadership has been studied in multiple countries across various grade levels, but integrated leadership's influence on discipline-culture and instructional practices has not been researched. …

Ged Participants’ Beliefs And Experiences Of Play As A Multi-Domain Approach To Increasing Adults’ Success In The State Of Mississippi, Latisha Taylor

Dissertations

Societal advancements have aided in the evolution of twenty-first-century adult learners. Learners no longer conform to traditional instruction; instead, instruction that adapts to the learner’s needs are necessary. Conventional learning that ensues multi-domain approaches to learning is on the rise. Play-based learning is one such approach that is multifaceted, and versatility in bridging gaps that exist between the learner and the curriculum. Play-based learning is a form of instruction that has the potential to encompass the whole learner by allowing opportunities for cognitive, affective, and psychomotor interactions throughout learning. However, for many, play-based learning is an instructional approach represented solely …

Alternative Learning Environments As A Tool For Student Success For Struggling Learners In Northwest Arkansas School Districts, Steven Lee Watkins

Theses and Dissertations from 2020

Educating all students is the foundation of education. However, an epidemic is sweeping throughout America’s schools that is threatening the very underpinning of our society. The number of students that leave school each year without a high school diploma is placing an immense personal and economic burden on the student, as well as the economic impact on society. Alternative learning environments have emerged as an intervention to provide a foundation for success for the struggling learner. This quantitative study was conducted to evaluate the perception of high school alternative learning students and high school alternative learning teachers’ perceptions of program …

Mchale, Marguerite - Covid-19 Journal, Marguerite Mchale

Personal Journals

Marguerite McHale, and EIU student in Professor Mark Dries' HIS 1595 class maintains an upbeat journal documenting the challenges of the pandemic. Of particular note, she describes the growing divide between those supportive of the social distancing and masking initiatives, as well as the impact on high school students who she maintains friendships with as one who graduated a year early from high school. She includes a number of pieces of high school student commentary as well as memes related to the pandemic, and links to news stories. She also describes her home life, and finding ways to keep busy …

Loose Coupling In Curriculum Reforms: Rural Teachers´ Perceptions Of Peace Education In Post-Conflict Colombia, Pedro Pineda, Markus D. Meier

Peace and Conflict Studies

Previous research has shown how peace education (PE) mutates according to socio-political and curricular/didactic traditions, but we still need to know how PE disseminates at the school level. We surveyed teachers from 12 rural schools of the violent Amazon region of Colombia where a national Law made PE mandatory in schools and universities. Teachers working on schools affected by the armed conflict have high expectations about PE. Respondents identified PE with 21 didactic elements: (a) Approaches: values education, citizenship education, critical pedagogy; (b) Pedagogical principles: diversity and pluralism. (c) Learning processes: peaceful conflict resolution, promotion of a “life project”, political …

Speak The Speech: Lessons In Projection, Clarity And Performance, James Hagerman

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

This study compared two classes and their responses to a controlled curriculum versus an experimental curriculum based on teaching high school students in acting classes to project and speak with clarity during onstage performances. The experimental group had fifteen days of instruction, extensive feedback and an additional two lessons, while the control group participated in two out of the four lessons and had eight days of instruction with limited feedback. The driving question of this study was, “How do you get teenagers to project and speak with clarity on stage, so the audience is not left asking, ‘What did they …

A Place Of Yes? Experiences Of Educators Participating In Site-Based Teacher-Led Reform, Elizabeth Hind

Education (PhD) Dissertations

This study examined the experiences of four teachers who participated as mentors in a teacher-designed and -implemented creative community at a middle school in southern California. Using the arts-based research methodologies of poetic inquiry, narrative inquiry, and painting, the researcher explored how teachers experience teaching and learning when they deconstruct structures that perpetuate standardization and choose to approach education as a place of yes, freed from the parameters of mandated curriculum, the idea of education as product, and high- stakes accountability measures. The study revealed that the qualities of the creative community had a humanizing effect on its participants, allowing …

Faith And Experience In Education: Essays From Quaker Perspectives (Book Review), Linda Samek

Faculty Publications - College of Education

"In Faith and Experience in Education: Essays from Quaker Perspectives, we find essays emerging from conversations conducted by the Quaker Values in Education Group in Britain."

College Students And Their Political Participation, Emily Williams

Honors Projects

Historically, college students have had a low voter turnout despite having particularly high political engagement. This is a problem because it is instilling a bad habit of not politically engaging to the extent that a productive United States citizen should. By not voting, Americans are losing their rights to representation that reflects their views and beliefs. In this paper I discuss why this low voter turnout is negative and what the United States can do, via the government and educational institutions, to increase voter turnout. In this research, the reader will discover the reasons for low voting rates among college …