Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Book Choices Of Girls During The Transition To Middle School: Empowerment Through Reading, Ilona Poole

Human Development and Family Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this project was to fill a research gap on the reading interest of early adolescent girls and to reveal whether the books these students are reading feature strong female leads. The literature review suggests that the transition to middle school is often a challenging and critical time for children, particularly for females. It also reveals the importance of book reading and relatable and strong girl characters to guide female students. These students can learn from the actions of the protagonist through character education. Based on this information, an online pilot survey was distributed to 4^th and …

Chronic Codeswitching: A Phenomenological Study Examining Multiracial Student Sense Of Belonging In A Predominantly White Institution., Nicholas Lamar Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Constantly feeling a lack of acceptance and getting the comment “You are too Black” or “You are too White” is a challenging, common occurrence for multiracial students, but especially those in predominantly White institutions. This is just one of the barriers that stand between multiracial students and forming a sense of belonging at a predominantly White institution. The majority of research examining sense of belonging focuses on either Black or White students, but neglect multiracial students and their experiences. This dissertation examines sense of belonging for multiracial (Black/White) students in a predominantly White institution, by interviewing 11 multiracial students at …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Impostor Phenomenon In A Hispanic Serving Institution, Olympia Caudillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Impostor phenomenon is a psychological experience where a highly talented individual doubts innate skills and accomplishments. Instead, success is attributed to factors other than intellectual ability, so the individual fears exposure as a fraud. Experiences of impostor phenomenon among students enrolled in Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) remains under-researched. This mixed-methods study aims to explore impostor phenomenon between doctoral students enrolled in a Hispanic Serving Institution based on existing research on impostor phenomenon, conducted in predominantly White institutions. The first phase of the study focuses on exploring impostor phenomenon in relation to doctoral studentsâ?? gender, type of program and generational status; …

Reframing The Pedagogical Underpinnings Of To Kill A Mockingbird: Queering A High School Text, Hovsep Hovannesian

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Given the current climate for social and political change in relation to identity and being, traditional high school texts like To Kill A Mockingbird are being rejected as degrading, out of touch, and even regressive and are being taken off the pedagogical shelf. This article pushes back on this outlook by suggesting that a more critical approach to such texts can make them not only useful but enlightening for the high school population asked to read them. Specifically, by proposing that high school pedagogy apply the foundations and frameworks of critical, identity-focused theories, like queer theory, to traditional high school …

Final Master's Portfolio, Elaina Halverstadt

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Practical matters of teaching college writing are the primary focus of this portfolio. Specific topics include an exploration of best practices in preparation for teaching an online college writing course, a rationale for introducing technical writing into an institution as a co-taught interdisciplinary course, a four-week teaching unit for teaching grammar concepts through creative writing, and a resource guide for teaching an introductory technical writing course at the college level.

Improvisation As A Teaching Tool For Improving Oral Communication Skills In Premedical And Pre-Biomedical Graduate Students, Marianne Phelps, Catrina White, Lin Xiang, Hollie I. Swanson

Theatre and Dance Faculty Publications

Objective:

To evaluate the relationship between training in theatre improvisation and empathy, communication, and other professional skills.

Methods:

Undergraduate and graduate students who were participants of a 10-week summer undergraduate research program engaged in theatre improvisation techniques during a 3-hour workshop. In Study #1, a de-identified, self-report questionnaire (known as the Empathy Quotient) was administered prior to and following the workshop. Paired sample 2-tailed t-tests were performed to evaluate pre- and post-test scores. To identify additional benefits of engaging in theatre improvisation techniques, Study #2 was performed. Here, a survey was administered to the participants following their completion of …

Teaching To The Test Or Limiting Students?, Victoria Rivera

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

The purpose of this paper is to shine light on the way the school systems have been teaching and how it is affecting students in a negative way. It focuses mainly on teaching to the test and how it stops students from learning creatively and also does not let teachers teach the way they might want to. It also shows how this is a wicked problem and is more than a small school system issue. This impacts students, teachers, and the society we live in. The results of this research was that there were a lot of other authors that …

Building Bridges In First-Year Composition: Investigating The Support Of Threshold Concepts In Writing-Related Transfer Across The Curriculum, Elise Antoinette Green

English Theses & Dissertations

Drawing on a multiple-case, embedded design (Yin, 2018), I highlight the in-depth differences and similarities that exist across students’ experiences in first-year composition (FYC), looking specifically at whether learners used genre and rhetorical situation as threshold concepts to transfer writing-related knowledge and skills across the curriculum. I designed and conducted this research by drawing on theories of learning transfer (Perkins & Salomon, 1988; 1989; 1992; Salomon & Perkins, 1989), writing-related transfer (Moore, 2017; Nowacek, 2011; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014; Yancey et al., 2019), and threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2006). Across this study, I collected data as I facilitated …

Religious, Secular, And Spiritual Diversity On Campus: Book Review Of Goodman, Giess & Patel (2019) Educating About Religious Diversity And Interfaith Engagement, Karin Dejonge-Kannan

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Book review of

Goodman, K.M., Giess, M.E., & Patel, E (2019). Educating about religious diversity and interfaith engagement: A handbook for student affairs. Stylus Publishing.

Studenting And Teaching With Chronic Pain: Accessibility At The Intersection Of Contingency And Disability, Beth Greene

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (2017-2022 archives)

While much attention is given to undergraduate students with disabilities, far less is devoted to graduate students, particularly those who also act as faculty: Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). This article discusses issues of accessibility encountered by these contingent faculty members, specifically GTAs who have invisible disabilities, and how approaching discussions of contingency and disability with an ethos of transparent vulnerability—a level of transparency that necessarily leads to vulnerability—can help combat the stigma that continues to surround contingency and disability in higher education.

The Work Is Within: My Buddhist Faith As I Reckon With Police Shootings & Racial Unrest, Vicki Mokuria

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

Based on the author’s life story in which her husband was shot and killed by police officers in front of her and their two young children, she provides a first-person narrative of her experience, linking the ways her Buddhist faith and practice have sustained her over the years. She recounts snippets of her privileged childhood growing up Jewish in the South before meeting and marrying her Ethiopian husband and beginning a family with him, along with beginning their Buddhist practice. Specific aspects of Buddhist philosophy are incorporated in this piece to provide insights into a Buddhist lens on our current …

Close Encounters: Mass Incarceration Tactics, Kevin L. Jones

The Journal of Faith, Education, and Community

As a Black man living in America, my Christian faith walk began at an early age. Growing up in a suburban environment, I had several encounters with law enforcement that shaped my belief system. These encounters were and still are a stark reminder that Black boys and men are under attack. Policing negatively impacts Black boys and men when compared to other races of people. I realized that I was in their cross hairs and I was almost consumed by the criminal justice system on many occasions. Through the lens of Critical Race Theory, this work focused on the centrality …

“Can I Write About What Happened To Me?”: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Audience And Purpose Of Students’ And Their Teachers’ Writing In An Age Of Accountability And Unrest, Kate Sjostrom

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Many teachers and administrators, feeling the pressure to produce high standardized test scores and meet state standards, have narrowed the variety of genres taught and resorted to prescriptive writing formulas, effectively stunting the writing and thinking development of students and future teachers, and foreclosing the opportunity for writing to do important personal and interpersonal work in a time of racial reckoning, alienation, and violence. In this context, the study’s author and a pre-service teacher participating in the author’s research study on writing teacher identity development grapple with just what the audience and purpose of students’—and teachers’—writing should and could be. …

The Writing For Healing And Transformation Project, Heather Elizabeth Osborn

Education Doctorate Dissertations

As a qualitative action research study, the purpose of The Writing for Healing and Transformation Project was to facilitate more inclusive writing strategies and to promote individual and collective healing on issues of social suffering and oppression (Kleinman, Das, & Lock, 1997; Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016) for diverse students at a community college located in the northeastern United States. The 18 participants in the study included students in my English II literature and composition course. The theoretical framework encompassed Pennebaker’s (2016) “writing for healing” paradigm, advocating the use of expressivist writing and “social suffering theory,” examining how power structures affect …

Down The Rabbit Hole: A Fantastical First Year Of Teaching, Tabitha Dell'angelo, Maria Degenova

#CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College

Interviews and observations of first year teachers in the northeastern United States were used to construct a comic. The comic communicates the excitement, fears, and competing demands of a beginning teacher. The dialogue and setting are presented as surrealist to help the reader gain an understanding of the affective realities that the teachers expressed when describing their early teaching experiences. This approach allows for the multiple dimensions of the teachers’ lived experiences to be experienced in ways that a traditional text does not allow. The work takes a critical look at the transition of beginning teachers into their careers and …

Coming Together Through Object Based Learning In A Pandemic, Brian Sheehy, Michael Sandstrom, John Heeg

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

In the summer of 2019, three history teachers from all over the US, met in France for National History Day’s Memorializing the Fallen program and commenced a lasting friendship. While in France, touring the WWI cemeteries, memorial sites, and museums, we all realized the importance of experience-based learning and the seeds were sown for our interest in object based learning. Aside from the philosophical and pedagogical discussions on long bus rides and our passion for history, we shared a belief in the importance of revitalizing history education and helping it to evolve in the face of our twenty-first century world. …

Deliberation On The Public Good During Covid-19: A Case Study Examining Elementary Students’ Use Of Civic Perspective-Taking, William Toledo, Esther Enright

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Abstract

Building on prior research on place-based social studies instruction (Toledo, 2017; 2020), this study specifically looks at data from six third-grade teachers who designed and implemented a civics curriculum focused on engaging students with a unit on locally-relevant public issues. The ten-lesson unit that the teachers and research team collaboratively developed was taught in six classrooms across a large school district. A central public issue in the unit was travel across borders during COVID-19, or simply the coronavirus as it was commonly referred to at the time. Students also considered tensions between immigration and containment of contagious illnesses through …

Beyond Pandemic Pedagogy: Thoughts On Deconstruction, Structure, And Justice Post-Pandemic, Samantha Cutrara

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

No abstract provided.

Systemic Functional Linguistics And Its Application To The Study Of Academic Conference Presentations, Carolina Viera, Maite Taboada

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

Academic conference presentations (CPs) offer the possibility to study both the linguistic features of academic oral language and social conventions that take place during these events (Ventola, Shalom & Thompson, 2002). Academic conferences have been understudied (Robles Garrote, 2016), especially within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). For this reason, researchers who investigate this topic have insufficient reference literature. This study contributes to the understanding of CPs by discussing theoretical and methodological aspects of the analysis of a corpus of 32 CPs given in Spanish in the United States to determine the generic structure or prototypical text structure …

How Will I Thrive? Developing Designer Professional Identity Among Undergraduate Communication Design Students, Denise Bosler

Education Doctorate Dissertations

A designer’s professional identity is constructed throughout a designer’s life and is developed through life experiences and education. While understanding the general importance of a professional identity is often clear to recent design graduates, developing it requires becoming self-aware of what traits constitutes designer professional identity (DPI). Kunrath, Cash and Yi-ling (2016) define DPI as the synthesis of personal attributes and design skills. However, the development of this full complement of DPI traits is often ignored and ill-supported in design education curriculum. A student’s DPI, if under-developed, can be a barrier to successfully transitioning from student to professional. Design educators …

Music, Our Human Superpower, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

Research about music pervades every discipline because music touches every area of life. Studies revealing the salutary effects of music can be found not only in music educator research, but in research in psychology, speech and hearing, child development, neuroscience, and increasingly, health and wellness, aging, rehabilitation and recovery. Since my focus is especially in the areas of language and literacy, I research the positive effects of music on reading, writing, and learning languages - and of this, there is no shortage. In this brief Academia article, I share what I’d like to call an “homage-with-references” to our great Superpower, …

Needs Analysis In Teaching Chinese For Special Purposes: From Theory To Practice, Zhongqi Shi

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

As a critical component of curriculum creation and syllabus design, needs analysis has not been widely used in the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language. To address some common misconceptions, this article discusses various aspects of need analysis with the goal of structuring a more comprehensive picture of this approach. Based upon that, a variety of needs analysis methods are introduced through examples, aimed at enabling frontline Chinese teachers to effectively use needs analysis in their own classrooms and ultimately improving their instruction.

A Polite And Respectful Acceptance —— Implicit Function Of Refusal In Chinese From Pedagogical Perspective, Yawei Li

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

This paper discusses the implicit function of refusal expressions that has been used by Chinese native speakers when responding to people’s offerings. By analyzing three conversations regarding how Chinese people have accepted people’s offerings during different time periods (1960’s, 1980’s, and 2000’s), the author argues that the verbal refusal in reacting to people’s offerings (especially gifts) does not literally mean “No, I don’t want it.” Instead, it is a way to show humility, politeness, and respect to the gift giver, and it functions as an implicit form of acceptance. By referring to three excerpts chosen from The Book of Rites …

Today’S Fake News Is Tomorrow’S Fake History: How Us History Textbooks Mirror Corporate News Media Narratives, Nolan Higdon, Mickey Huff, Jen Lyons

Secrecy and Society

The main thrust of this study is to assess how the systematic biases found in mass media journalism affect the writing of history textbooks. There has been little attention paid to how the dissemination of select news information regarding the recent past, particularly from the 1990s through the War on Terror, influences the ways in which US history is taught in schools. This study employs a critical-historical lens with a media ecology framework to compare Project Censored’s annual list of censored and under-reported stories to the leading and most adopted high school and college US history textbooks. The findings reveal …

A Comparison Of Self-Reported Anxiety And Depression Among Undergraduate Music Majors And Nonmusic Majors, Danni Gilbert

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this exploratory research study was to compare anxiety and depression levels reported by music majors and nonmajors at a small, private liberal arts university. Study participants completed the Burns Anxiety Inventory and Burns Depression Checklist. Anxiety and depression levels were significantly higher among music majors, and there was a strong, positive relationship between anxiety and depression. Regardless of major, self-reports were not affected by year in school. Implications for additional mental health resources and strategies for improving music major health and self-care are discussed, along with a need for increased music faculty awareness of perceived anxiety and …

Standardizing America: Why It Should Be A Method Of The Past, Samantha N. Jackson

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper examines, critiques, and suggests improvements on the method of standardized testing in American schools. This paper discusses the history and development of standardized testing and its initial purpose and intentions. Additionally, the effects of standardized testing on students, teachers, and parents are evaluated, with special consideration on how high stakes testing adversely affects disadvantaged student groups such as children in minorities and low-income districts, bilingual students, and children with disabilities. The research suggests that standardized testing is not only damaging to students in these groups, but most likely not the most efficient way of testing student performance in …

Ua64/4 College Of Education & Behavioral Sciences Human Relations Center, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the Human Relations Center.

Remote Learning In The Era Of Covid-19: Accounting For Students' Personal Verve, Marissa Langley

Scripps Senior Theses

This study focuses on accommodating remote academic lessons for students’ personal verve levels. Personal verve is defined as the ability to adapt to and concentrate in environments with high levels of stimulation. The sociocultural psychologists Boykin discerned higher verve levels in Black communities compared to White communities. Boykin found that many Black students tend to learn best in high verve conditions, which incorporate aspects of African American culture like group work, varied activities, movement and noise, as opposed to traditional low verve conditions which consist of sitting quietly at a desk during lectures. White students tend to have low personal …

Teacher Perspectives On The Influence Of Participation In Dalcroze Training In The K–12 Music Classroom: A Mixed Methods Study, Holly Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the teacher perspectives on the influence of participation in Dalcroze training in the K–12 music classroom. A primary goal was to investigate how Dalcroze training influenced music teachers’ classroom instructional practices. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was use for this study. Participants (N = 91) completed a cross-sectional survey, the Dalcroze Training Experience Questionnaire (DTEQ). Interview participants (N = 6) were selected using stratified sampling based on their years of Dalcroze experience and not demographic characteristics. Each participated in one semi-structured interview.

Quantitative data was analyzed using a …

Teacher Perceptions Of Culturally Relevant Strategies To Promote Black Student Achievement, Kimberly Elyse Hendricks

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A long-standing, race-based academic achievement gap between Black and White students has existed in a local district in the southwest United States for more than 5 years. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study was to explore teachers’ perceptions and experiences related to the use of culturally relevant or responsive (CRR) teaching strategies. The study was guided by Hale’s theory explaining how culture shapes a child’s cognition and learning styles, indicating benefits when the teacher used the students’ cultural assets during instruction. Research questions were written to address teachers’ perceptions of, experiences with, and the value of using CRR …