Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Elevating Nebraska’S Early Childhood Workforce: Report And Recommendations Of The Nebraska Early Childhood Workforce Commission, Susan Sarver, Catherine Huddleston-Casas, Cama Charlet, Renee Wessels

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

Executive Summary The science of early childhood development makes clear that the early years, from birth through age 8, are a time of unparalleled human growth and development— and that healthy development during these pivotal early years requires reliable, positive, and consistent interactions between the developing child and familiar, caring adults. Because of today’s economy, in which most parents of young children work outside the home, families often rely on early childhood professionals to provide positive interactions and experiences that young children need to thrive. Yet, despite what we know about the critical role of early childhood professionals in young …

Ready To Teach All Children? Unpacking Early Childhood Educators’ Feelings Of Preparedness For Working With Children With Disabilities, Mindy R. Chadwell, Amy M. Roberts, Alexandra Daro

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

Early childhood settings have the potential to support learners with diverse learning needs, including children with disabilities. However, if educators do not feel prepared to teach children with disabilities, this potential may not be fully realized. The current study examined early childhood educators’ (n = 1,296) feelings of preparedness for working with children with disabilities, including predictors of preparedness, and associations with assessment practices. Research Findings: Nearly 70% of educators felt well prepared to teach typically developing children whereas only 20% felt well prepared to teach children with disabilities. Educational attainment and education-related major predicted feelings of preparedness. Furthermore, feelings …

The Nebraska Covid-19 Early Care And Education Provider Survey Ii: Experiences, Economic Impact, And Ongoing Needs, Alexandra Daro, Kathleen Gallagher

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

The Nebraska COVID-19 Early Care and Education Provider Survey II, released in early August 2020, is a second survey following The Nebraska COVID-19 Early Care and Education Provider Survey that was conducted in March 2020. Both surveys were conducted by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska. Results from the March 2020 survey suggested that the coronavirus was negatively impacting early care and education professionals in Nebraska. Imminent threats of illness and directives for enhanced cleaning and precautionary methods (e.g., social distancing) were causing child care providers to experience high levels of stress. They were struggling to …

Vol. 59, Issue 3 Editorial Review Board

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

No abstract provided.

The Midway To Carrizo Succession In The Southeastern Texas Gulf Coast: Evolution Of A Tidally-Influenced Coastline, Jennifer M. O'Keefe

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

This study demonstrates that the Upper Midway to Carrizo stratigraphic succession in southeastern Texas contains a greater variability in depositional systems, facies, and reservoir sandstone-body geometry than previously documented. It also documents significant tidal processes on sedimentation in the Wilcox Group and Carrizo Formation.

Processing Gapping: Parallelism And Grammatical Constraints, Katy Carlson, Nayoun Kim, Mike Dickey, Masaya Yoshida

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

This study aims to test two hypotheses about the online processing of Gapping: whether the parser inserts an ellipsis site in an incremental fashion in certain coordinated structures (the Incremental Ellipsis Hypothesis), or whether ellipsis is a late and dispreferred option (the Ellipsis as a Last Resort Hypothesis). We employ two offline acceptability rating experiments and a sentence fragment completion experiment to investigate to what extent the distribution of Gapping is controlled by grammatical and extra-grammatical constraints. Furthermore, an eye-tracking while reading experiment demonstrated that the parser inserts an ellipsis site incrementally but only when grammatical and extra- grammatical constraints …

A Corepressor Participates In Lexa-Independent Regulation Of Error-Prone Polymerases In Acinetobacter, Janelle M. Hare, Alison N. Grice, Megan A. Peterson

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

The DNA damage response of the multidrug-resistant pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii, which induces mutagenic UmuD′2C error-prone polymerases, differs from that of many bacteria. Acinetobacter species lack a LexA repressor, but induce gene transcription after DNA damage. One regulator, UmuDAb, binds to and represses the promoters of the multiple A. baumannii ATCC 17978 umuDC alleles and the divergently transcribed umuDAb and ddrR genes. ddrR is unique to the genus Acinetobacter and of unknown function. 5' RACE (rapid amplification of cDNA ends) PCR mapping of the umuDAb and ddrR transcriptional start sites revealed that their −35 promoter elements overlapped the UmuDAb binding site, …

Cognitive Dissonance In Higher Education: Inflating Grades And Not Feeling Guilty, Ahmad Hassan, Fatma Mohamed, Jonathan Nelson

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Although there has been growing interest in recent years in investigating the phenomena of grade inflation in higher education, little has focused on the actual psychological processes through which professors may engage in inflating grades without feeling guilty or perceiving this behavior as problematic. Social psychology has focused on the apparent inconsistency between stated attitudes and actual behavior; specifically, cognitive dissonance theory provides insights into why people may behave immorally. By outlining the role of cognitive dissonance in the grade inflation process we provide greater understanding as to how professors cope with the negative psychological arousal associated with grade inflation.

The Rural Rise (Rural Initiatives Supporting Excellence): University-Rural K-12 Collaboration Programs For College And Career Readiness For Rural Students, Shane C. Shope

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Faculty from two universities in Florida and Ohio designed, developed, and implemented programs to work with youth from their respective service regions to support college and career readiness initiatives. Both programs were directed by university faculty and utilized university resources to support K-12 students’ career development skills. In this paper, we examine the programs’ designs, implementations, and results; we include feedback from students, school personnel, and local stakeholders. Attentive to results and the relevant literature, we hope to ignite a longterm discussion on how universities can create effective outreach programs that help support student transitions from high school to college, …

Examining Contextual Differences In Participant Characteristics And During-Program Occurrences With Drug Court Program Completion, Shondrah T. Nash

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

The study purpose was to compare individuals participating in rural and urban drug courts to examine factors associated with program completion. Secondary data (participant assessment; drug court Management Information System) as well as conviction information from a statewide database were examined for a sample of drug court participants (N = 534). Based on multivariate analysis, for rural participants, two variables were significantly associated with increased program completion: age and outpatient treatment. Conversely, for rural participants, the number of felony/misdemeanor convictions before drug court and receiving an incarceration sanction during drug court were associated with program non-completion. For urban participants, gender …

Intensive Disc-Reverberation Mapping Of Fairall 9: 1st Year Of Swift & Lco Monitoring, Dirk Grupe

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

We present results of time-series analysis of the rst year of the Fairall 9 intensive disc-reverberation campaign. We used Swift and the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network to continuously monitor Fairall 9 from X-rays to near-infrared at a daily to sub-daily cadence. The cross-correlation function between bands provides ev- idence for a lag spectrum consistent with the / 43 scaling expected for an optically thick, geometrically thin blackbody accretion disc. Decomposing the ux into con- stant and variable components, the variable component's spectral energy distribution is slightly steeper than the standard accretion disc prediction. We nd evidence at the …

Acceleration Of Coronal Mass Ejection Plasma In The Low Corona As Measured By The Citizen Cate Experiment, Jennifer J. Birriel, Ignacio Birriel

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

The citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) Experiment was a new type of citizen science experiment designed to capture a time sequence of white-light coronal observations during totality from 17:16 to 18:48 UT on 2017 August 21. Using identical instruments the CATE group imaged the inner corona from 1 to 2.1 RSun with 1 43 pixels at a cadence of 2.1 s. A slow coronal mass ejection (CME) started on the SW limb of the Sun before the total eclipse began. An analysis of CATE data from 17:22 to 17:39 UT maps the spatial distribution of coronal flow velocities from about …

Rearview Mirror Rainbow: An Optics Investigation, Jennifer Birriel, Ignacio Birriel

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

No abstract provided.

Key Components Of Tourism Destination Development, Janet Ratliff, Michelle B. Kunz

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

This paper examines variables that contribute to tourism revenues as reported by the state of Kentucky for a sample of 54 counties in Appalachian Kentucky. The study utilized five components of tourism, online promotional information, and reported tourism revenues to identify what variables contribute to regional tourism revenues. Regression analysis using factor scores found two factors influenced employment revenue and one factor influenced direct tourism revenue.

Novel Machine Learning Algorithms For Centrality And Cliques Detection In Youtube Social Networks, Craigory Coppola, Heba Elgazzar

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

The goal of this research project is to analyze the dynamics of social networks using machine learning techniques to locate maximal cliques and to find clusters for the purpose of identifying a target demographic. Unsupervised machine learning techniques are designed and implemented in this project to analyze a dataset from YouTube to discover communities in the social network and find central nodes. Different clustering algorithms are implemented and applied to the YouTube dataset. The well-known Bron-Kerbosch algorithm is used effectively in this research to find maximal cliques. The results obtained from this research could be used for advertising purposes and …

Life And Death In The Chicxulub Impact Crater: A Record Of The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, Jennifer M. O'Keefe

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Thermal stress on the biosphere during the extreme warmth of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was most severe at low latitudes, with sea surface temperatures at some localities exceeding the 35 C at which marine organisms experience heat stress. Relatively few equivalent terrestrial sections have been identified, and the response of land plants to this extreme heat is still poorly understood. Here, we present a new record of the PETM from the peak ring of the Chicxulub impact crater that has been identified based on nannofossil biostratigraphy, an acme of the dinoflagellate genus Apectodinium, and a negative carbon isotope excursion. …

Evidence-Based Practices In Mentoring For Leadership Development, Lindsay J. Hastings, Hannah Sunderman

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

Effective mentoring for leadership development requires nuanced practical considerations. The authors outline aspects of effective mentorship, highlight considerations for practitioners and mentoring programs, and offer critical perspectives on mentoring.

Higher education scholars have identified mentoring as an important tool in leadership development (Campbell, Smith, Dugan, & Komives, 2012; Dugan & Komives, 2010; Hastings, Griesen, Hoover, Creswell, & Dlugosh, 2015; Komives, Longerbeam, Mainella, Osteen, & Owen, 2009).Mentoring is recognized as one of the most promising practices for both leader and leadership development because of its effectiveness at facilitating development (Day, 2001). Mentoring embeds leadership development within the ongoing experiences of a …

Perfecting The Craft Of Teaching, Stephanie Nunez

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This ethnographic narrative follows my journey as a fifth grade teacher in the greater Los Angeles area. The purpose of this ethnography is to follow the development of my journey as a first-year teacher. In this ethnography, I explore my positionality and the levels of community, school, and classroom as ways to inform and improve my teaching practices as a social-justice educator. I begin this four part narrative by discussing my positionality and how it relates to my desires of becoming a teacher. Through this narrative, I was then able to conduct three case studies of students with different identities …

The Impact Of A University/Online Program Management Provider Partnership On Faculty Approaches To Teaching Design: A Case Study Using Activity Theory, Swati Ramani

CGU Theses & Dissertations

As the number of online courses increase in Higher Education, many higher education institutions outsource online course development to an Online Program Management (OPM) provider because of a lack of budget, staff, and technology. Current research indicates that OPMs often do not have instructional design (ID) services tailored to a specific university. This research uses a Case Study in order to analyze how the nature and dynamics of a business partnership between a research university and an OPM provider impact faculty engagement and development of pedagogical and technological knowledge. They Activity Theory conceptual framework was used to direct inquiry and …

Transcending Compromise: Principal Practices Predicting Teacher Effectiveness And Teacher Morale, David George Grant

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Two leadership styles have dominated the literature- instructional leadership and transformational leadership. No study could be found quantitatively integrating principal practices from these styles in ways that simultaneously predicted teacher effectiveness and teacher morale. Therefore, this study sought to better understand the complex relationships between principal practices, teacher effectiveness and teacher morale. First, this study synthesized meta analyses of principal effects for studies produced between 1978-2008 and presented a unique empirically grounded integration framework summarizing principal effects for student achievement and teacher morale. Second, the study used this framework to explore four research questions. An online survey was utilized to …

A Case Study Of The Impact Of The Dplc Model Of Professional Learning On Collective Teacher Efficacy And Organizational Trust In A Middle School, Maria Gaspar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The purpose of this case study was to investigate the relationship between the implementation of the District Professional Learning Community (DPLC) model of professional development and collective teacher efficacy and organizational trust at one middle school in a large urban school district. Data were collected from the following sources: Goddard & Hoy's (2003) CE Scale Form L, Hoy & Tschannen-Moran's (2003) Omnibus-T scale, six additional survey items used to explore teachers' perceptions of the DPLC model's influence on improving student literacy, and semi-structured focus group interviews. A series of analysis of variance (ANOVA) and chi-square tests were performed to analyze …

Sociotechnical Systems Approach For Designing Effective Pre-College Stem Programs For Adult Students, Ifeoma Okechukwu

Wayne State University Dissertations

In the context of its external environment, sociotechnical systems (STS) are tools for restructuring an organization’s components into inter-related and interdependent social and technical subsystems for improving the organization’s performance and the well-being of its actors. The theory of STS states that the optimal performance and effectiveness of an organization lies in the joint optimization of the social (all human-based elements) and the technical (the tools and technology for doing work) subsystems. Many technical industries know the benefits of STS, however the concept has a minimal presence in education, in spite of education’s many challenges such as improving the graduation …

Youth Organizers As Essential Partners In Teacher Education: Implications From A Community-Based Action Research Project, Kaitlin Elizabeth Popielarz

Wayne State University Dissertations

The primary purpose of this critical qualitative action research project is to analyze the possibilities, contradictions, and limitations of youth organizers as essential partners in teacher education. More specifically, this research project examines the impact of designing and implementing a community-based social studies methods course alongside youth organizers and their adult allies. There is limited research in teacher education literature about partnering with youth-centered and youth-led grassroots organizations. In addition, research pertaining to community-based teacher education does not adequately affirm and center the voices and lived experiences of youth organizers who are social change agents in schools and communities. In …

Perceptions Of Novice Teachers’ Early Departure Decisions In A Southern Rural High School, Angela Marie Fortenberry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

One significant issue in U.S. public schools is the need to determine the root cause of the early departure of novice teachers. The problem that was the focus of this study was the departure of novice teachers from a southern rural high school prior to completing 5 years in the profession. The purpose of this project study was to explore novice teachers’ perceptions about early departure from the local high school. Fishbein’s expectancy-value theory was used in this exploratory case study to gain insight on seven novice teachers’ perceptions related to their early departures. The research questions focused on perceived …

Teacher And Parent Perspectives Regarding Challenging Behavior Of Preschool Children Of Deployed Parents, Stacie Phillips

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem addressed in this basic qualitative study was understanding the underlying reasons for challenging behavior exhibited in preschool children who experience disruption in social bonds and trust following deployment of a parent. Many teachers and parents are challenged by the need to support these children during this stressful time and untreated stress can lead to long-term issues. The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of teacher and parent perspectives of challenging behavior exhibited in preschool children experiencing disruption in social bonds and trust following deployment of a parent. Interviews of 7 parents and 7 preschool teachers addressed …

Stakeholders' Perspectives On Coaching And Family Child Care Provider Program Quality, Elizabeth S. Rodano

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although evidence exists that coaching is an effective method of professional development, there is limited understanding of the collaborative dynamic between coaches and family child care providers during the coaching process. The purpose of this study was to explore family child care providers and coaches perspectives about how a shared understanding is reached during the coaching process, as well as to determine how both parties perceive this shared understanding to influence their perspectives of program quality. This study was grounded in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, which posits that learning occurs through interactions after a shared understanding between two individuals is reached. …

Preschool Teacher Perspectives On Challenging Behavior And Behavior Management In Teacher-Student Relationships, Elizabeth Uchegbu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Challenging behavior is an expected part of development among preschool children, but

persistent disruptive behaviors can lead to teacher stress and burnout and negative

student-teacher relationships. Challenging behaviors are disruptive behaviors that

interfere with teaching and learning and can sometimes threaten the safety of children

and teachers in the classroom. According to current research, students’ academic success

is contingent on the nature of the relationships they have with their teachers. The purpose

of this basic qualitative study was to explore preschool teachers’ perspectives regarding

challenging behaviors and how the strategies they use to manage such behaviors could

affect relationships …

The Impact Of Technology Enhanced Learning On Pedagogy: A Case Study, Seth James Ismil

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite the growing trend of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) tools being integrated into pedagogy, there have been challenges preventing the transformation of pedagogy. This has included limited research on understanding why the increase in TEL integration has not resulted in movement from replacing to transforming pedagogy. The purpose of this qualitative explanatory single case study was to determine why teachers integrating TEL tools and applications have not done so in a way that transforms how teaching and learning occur. The conceptual framework of replacement, amplification, and transformation was used to examine levels of integration in this study. Participants were seven teachers …

Leveraging Best Practice In Teacher Residency To Enhance Teacher Preparation, Lindsey Pike, Melissa Carli

Education Faculty Publications

Critical teacher shortages in the U. S. drove the development of the Teacher Residency model to improve recruitment, preparation, and retention of highly qualified educators within public schools. Faculty and staff involved in the Teacher Quality Partnership project, a U. S. Department of Education funded teacher preparation program at the University of Central Florida, identified parallels between the National Center for Teacher Residencies'cometencies for effective teacher residency programs and the project's clinical internship experience. This manuscript details these parallels and discusses the potential to expand the project to meet all residency competencies as a pre-baccalaureate teacher residency program.

Comparison Of Minnesota Teachers’ Sex Education Instructional Practices With Professional Preparation And Development, Lisa Brichacek

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Nationally, many health teachers have not received health education training. Minnesota does not require sexual health training or sexual health professional development for health education teachers. School Health Profiles 2018 data was analyzed to determine who teaches sexual health education in Minnesota, what they teach, how they teach it, and their desired future professional development. Teachers who received pre-service health education training were compared with teachers who received other pre-service preparation. Additionally, teachers who received sexual health professional development were compared with teachers who did not receive sexual health professional development. Data analyses included crosstabs with Phi and Cramer’s V …