Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Our Clinical Practice: An Innovative Approach, Delar K. Singh

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

This presentation covers the importance of clinical experiences in teacher preparation. It also includes a brief description of our innovative approach to clinical practice at a public comprehensive, state university in Southeast. Findings of our research endeavors indicate that majority of our teacher candidates agree or strongly agree that clinical experiences have helped them realize the realities of school and classroom. Further, clinical experiences have significantly contributed to their development as teachers. The presentation concludes with implications for action.

Innovation For Transforming Democracy: Emotionally Intelligent Citizenry, Delar K. Singh

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

In today’s milieu of school shootings, unprecedented rates of attempted suicide, drug addictions, escalating drop-out rates, teen age pregnancy, and behavior disorders, we propose that future teachers be trained in the delivery and maintenance of social-emotional learning. This presentation urges teacher educators to prepare future teachers for this task of inculcating emotional intelligence in every child.

How Focus Particles And Accents Affect Attachment, Kathryn A. Carlson, David Potter

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

This project shows that focus and information structure, as indicated by the focus particle “only” and pitch accents, influence syntactic attachment, in contrast to the well-known effects of prosodic boundaries on attachment. One written questionnaire, one completion study, and several auditory questionnaires show that the position of “only” strongly affects attachment preferences in ambiguous sentences, while contrastive pitch accents have smaller effects. The two types of focus marking do not interact but independently impact attachment. These results support a modified version of the Focus Attraction Hypothesis, with ambiguous material drawn to attach to the most important information in a sentence. …

A Space Of One’S Own: Houselot Size Among The Ancient Maya, Timothy Hare

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

This paper uses new data from lidar mapping to explore variation in the size of ancient Maya houselots. The amount of space available to households has important implications for subsistence, craft activities, social relations, and more. Comparisons of houselot data from three large cities (Coba, Mayapan, and Chunchucmil) and one rural area (southwestern Quintana Roo) show significant differences in houselot size across the four case studies. Site size has no effect when comparing across case studies although patterns of variation do emerge within the case studies. Of the major factors explored–wealth, household size, distance from site core, availability of open …

Marco: Solar Powered Autonomous Robotic Unmanned Surface Vehicle, Thomas G. Pannuti

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Autonomous sailboats have demonstrated that a robot could potentially perform long-term ocean monitoring and traveling. However, self-operating sailboats in the past had sails, which could lead to issues caused by tipping and heeling too much, and were not fully solar powered, which leads to short power endurance issues. Energy efficient and low cost autonomous robotic unmanned surface vehicle, named MARCo (Marine Autonomous Robotic Communicator), was programmed, developed and tested throughout the year 2018 in a public, co-educational university in Morehead, Kentucky. An off-grid solar system, comprised of 3x 20-Watt 12-Volt panels and a 12-Volt charge controller, was designed, constructed, and …

Project Momo: Multiwavelength Observations And Modeling Of Oj 287, Dirk Grupe

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Our project MOMO (Multiwavelength observations and modeling of OJ 287) consists of dedicated, dense, long-term flux and spectroscopic monitoring, and deep follow-up observations of the blazar OJ 287 at >13 frequencies from the radio to the X-ray band since late 2015. In particular, we are using Swift to obtain optical-UV-X-ray spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and the Effelsberg telescope to obtain radio measurements between 2 and 40 GHz. MOMO is the densest long-term monitoring of OJ 287 involving X-rays and broad-band SEDs. The theoretical part of the project aims at understanding jet and accretion physics of the blazar central engine in …

Insights Into Past Land-Use And Vegetation Change In The Llanos De Moxos (Bolivia) Using Fungal Non-Pollen Palynomorphs, Jennifer M.K. O'Keefe

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Here we document a 1000-year fungal record from the raised-field region of the Llanos de Moxos, a seasonally inundated forest-savanna mosaic in the Bolivian Amazon. Fungi are extremely sensitive to changes in vegetation due to their close relationship with the local environment, providing a useful proxy for past local vegetation and land-use change. Here the remains of fungal non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs) are identified from a sediment core taken from Laguna El Cerrito. A multivariate constrained ordination is used to extract relationships between the fungal NPP types and environmental gradients, specifically, tree cover, near-shore vegetation, crop cultivation, burning and local sediment …

Evolutionary Clustering And Community Detection Algorithms For Social Media Health Surveillance, Heba Elgazzar

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

The prominent rise of social networks within the past decade have become a gold mine for data mining operations seeking to model the real world through these virtual worlds. One of the most important applications that has been proposed is utilizing information generated from social networks as a supplemental health surveillance system to monitor disease epidemics. At the time this research was conducted in 2020, the COVID- 19 virus had evolved into a global pandemic, forcing many countries to implement preventative measures to halt its expanse. Health surveillance has been a powerful tool in placing further preventative measures, however it …

Diameter-Separation Of Chessboard Graphs, Doug Chatham

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

We define the queens (resp., rooks) diameter-separation number to be the minimum number of pawns for which some placement of those pawns on an n×n board produces a board with a queens graph (resp., rooks graph) with a desired diameter d. We determine these numbers for some small values of d.

Predicting The Behavior Of Reinforced Concrete Columns Confined By Fiber Reinforced Polymers Using Data Mining Techniques, Heba Elgazzar

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) usage to wrap reinforced concrete (RC) structures has become a popular technology. Most studies about RC columns wrapped with FRP in literature ignored the internal steel reinforcement. This paper aims to develop a model for the axial compressive strength and axial strain for FRP confined concrete columns with internal steel reinforcement. The impact of FRP, Transverse, and longitudinal reinforcement is studied. Two non-destructive analysis methods are explored: Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Regression Analysis (RA). The database used in the analysis contains the experimental results of sixty-four concrete columns under the compressive concentric load available in …

A Phenomenological Study: Understanding Teacher Experiences With Grief In The Classroom, Melissa A. Cyfers

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Teachers entering the classroom along with teachers who have been in the classroom for a long time often find themselves dealing with grieving students. Grief is something that everyone is familiar with, especially when dealing with a death. Often what is not so familiar are other events that can cause a grief response. Teachers spend a lot of time in training and being trained on many facets of education, emergency drills, and many things they may or may not encounter. Yet, a student expressing some type of grief is something nearly every teacher has encountered but has not been trained …

Adjusting, Appeasing, And Rearranging: How Agriculture Teachers Reconcile The Demands Of The Profession, Haley Q. Traini, Becky Haddad, Josh Stewart, Jonathan J. Velez

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

A teacher shortage continues to plague the SBAE profession. While this shortage has been quantified and explored from the perspective of individual teachers, little research has taken a systemic approach to the problem of the SBAE teacher shortage. We posit the teacher shortage problem as inextricably linked to a convoluted job description and growing list of competencies required to be a successful agriculture teacher. The teachers in this qualitative study shared their navigation of the process of reconciliation within their landscapes of practice and regimes of competence. Using hermeneutic phenomenology, themes of adjusting, rearranging, and appeasing emerged as the key …

Mentorship In Surgical Training: Where Do We Stand?, Saleema Begum, Muhammad Rizwan Khan, Madeeha Safa

Section of General Surgery

Mentorship in medicine aims at professional and personal development of trainees in the early stages of their careers. It is more popular in surgical subspecialties since transfer of technical skills is an integral part of surgical training, which makes it distinct compared to other specialties. Effective mentoring in surgery plays a crucial role in academic success, professional development, career guidance and personal growth of residents, and provides guidance and support to mentees to excel in their respective fields, and increases the likelihood of success by enhancing motivation with positive impact on burnout among residents. Efforts have been made by accreditation …

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Financial Literacy Crosses Disciplinary Boundaries, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues.

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Financial Literacy Crosses Disciplinary Boundaries, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues.

Mathematical Representations In A Synchronous Online Mathematics Specialist Preparation Program, Theresa Wills, Deborah Crawford, Kate Roscioli, Shruti Sanghavi

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

Universities are implementing more online courses (Yamagata-Lynch, 2014). However, instructors may feel a sense of trepidation in transitioning a mathematics class to a synchronous online platform because they do not want to compromise quality pedagogy (Herrington et al., 2001) for the convenience of an online environment (Wills, 2021). Some courses have successfully transitioned to a synchronous online environment while maintaining rich discussion and student collaboration (Baker & Hjalmarson, 2019); however, mathematics content courses include the additional challenge of incorporating problem solving with multiple representations. This paper focuses on how mathematical representations emerge in a synchronous online course for mathematics specialists.

Providing Job Embedded Professional Learning For Mathematics Specialists, Ian T. Shenk, Vickie L. Inge, Candace J. Standley, Allison C. Depiro

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

We know that if professional learning opportunities are to be meaningful and create long-lasting and systemic change, they must be ongoing and job-embedded. One of the most beneficial aspects of having mathematics specialists in schools is that they can provide job-embedded professional learning directly to teachers. Perhaps due to the strong impact mathematics specialists have on teaching and learning, we may overlook the need to provide professional learning to support the growth of mathematics specialists themselves. Just as we provide coaching to teachers to affect their professional growth, we must identify similar opportunities to affect the growth of mathematics specialists. …

Leveraging Equity And Excellence For English Learners: An Annotated Bibliography, Center For Equity For English Learners

Annotated Bibliographies

Leveraging Equity and Excellence for English Learners: An Annotated Bibliography is comprised of 100 annotations from both recent and seminal literature (released between 1994–2018) that have significant implications for policy and practice for English learner (EL) schooling and academic achievement. The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to serve as a resource for educators and advocates who are working for equity and justice for ELs. The Center for Equity for English Learners conducted a review of empirical and theoretical articles from peer-reviewed journals, as well as books, book chapters, and reports from leading scholars in the field. This annotated bibliography …

Locational Disparity In Rural Education, Carlie A. Hedlund

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Location impacts the quality of education a student receives. Specifically in rural areas, the challenges that students face are unique to their location. The purpose of this literature review on locational disparity in rural education was to understand the complex problems facing rural students and educators. Resource inequities, lower population across an expansive area, and high poverty impact the educational achievement, postsecondary attainment, as well as the special education and gifted programs in these schools. These aspects were analyzed as they paint a cumulative picture of the rural educational experience. As a quarter of the United States population lives in …

Mathematical Knowledge For Teaching: Instructional Reasoning In High-Density Black Populations, Desheila Rumph

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

To be economically competitive, U.S. citizens must be mathematically competent (Wang et al., 2010). However, students in the United States have consistently underperformed those in other industrialized nations in mathematics (Program for International Student Assessment [PISA], 2018), which threatens the economic health of the nation (Achieve, 2013; Auguste et al., 2009; Harbour et al., 2018; Mickelson et al., 2013). Federal education reform was implemented and failed to improve the mathematics achievement of U.S. pupils (Cheong Cheng, 2020). Researchers have found links between teacher knowledge and student achievement; however, factors mediate this relationship (Hatisauri & Erbas, 2017). As a result, non-significant …

The Social Emotional Competence Of Teachers And Their Responses To Children With Challenging Behaviors, Christine Lynne Herndon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Expulsion rates for children occur at a rate of 10 children per every 1,000 enrolled in center-based early learning programs. The inability of teachers to manage the challenging behaviors of children contributes to these rates. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to answer the research question that inquired how teachers’ perceptions of their own social emotional competence influenced their responses to children with challenging behaviors. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s social emotional learning framework served as the foundation for the interview protocol questions. Data were gathered during semistructured interview from 6 teachers who met the …

Examining Teachers’ School Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions And Support Practices To Improve The Behaviors Of Students With Disabilities, Lolita Michele Owens

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe problem at a high school in the southeastern United States is that students with disabilities struggle to demonstrate appropriate behaviors despite the implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (SWPBIS). Current research findings have suggested that although SWPBIS includes strategies for students with disabilities, the behaviors of students with learning disabilities have not improved during SWPBIS implementation. There was a need to explore teachers’ implementation of SWPBIS for students with learning disabilities. In this basic qualitative study, how teachers at the research site high school were implementing SWPBIS for students with learning disabilities toward improving maladaptive behaviors was …

Military Spouses' Lived Experiences During Reintegration After A Noncombat Deployment, Trenye Black

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The reintegration of a military service member into family life after a deployment can beexciting, but the reintegration process can also prove difficult. The difficulties associated with reintegration can be compounded when there is lack of acknowledgment of challenges faced by military spouses. The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of military spouses following the reintegration of military personnel returning from noncombat deployment. In-depth face-to-face interviews were completed with 9 military spouses. The resiliency model of stress, adjustment, and adaptation was used as the conceptual framework to provide understanding for factors common in the …

K-3 Teachers' Perspectives On Culturally Responsive Teaching For Linguistically Diverse Learners, Carol E. Herbert

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractU.S. schools are diverse due to an increasing number of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners. Researchers recommend using culturally responsive teaching (CRT) that connects race and literacy, culture, and language with CLD learners. If K-3 teachers do not use CRT practices, CLD students’ English proficiency will be delayed, which may negatively influence self-esteem, academic achievement, social skills, and mobility through society. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore Title1 K-3 primary and resource teachers’ perspectives of CRT practices used with CLD learners. Gay’s theory of CRT, featuring teacher attitudes, culturally diverse curriculum content, culturally congruent instruction, …

College Readiness Of Freshman Students From Inner-City Schools, Shanitra Jones Barnes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A problem that exists in higher education is that many students are not college and career ready. Many students enter college without being academically prepared to succeed. The purpose of this study was to explore the academic college readiness barriers and supports of freshmen college students from a Midwestern inner-city college. The conceptual framework of this study was Bourdieu’s social capital theory. The research questions address what college freshmen who graduated from inner-city public high schools perceive to be the barriers and necessary supports to reaching their academic goals. The basic interpretive research design was used to investigate the problem …

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 …

Shifting Emergency Remote Teaching Into The Future Of Kentucky Education, Amy Argo

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Kentucky educators discovered the difficulties of a rapid transition to emergency remote teaching. This phenomenological, qualitative research study explores middle and high school teachers’ lived experiences of teaching Kentucky public school students during the shutdown of school buildings during the spring and fall 2020 semesters.

Twenty-nine educator participants freely discussed their greatest successes and barriers concerning parental support, teacher mental health, communication, digital divides, student motivation, and teacher preparedness. This project gives voice to the teachers of Kentucky with a practical significance: effective online instruction can only occur if educators are properly prepared to teach …

“You Pulled The Chair From Right Under Me!”: How A Black Young Man Disappears From A High School Reading Class, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Relational identities in the classroom shape teachers and their students as well as the researchers who study them for the long term. Researchers whose fieldwork is located at “home” simultaneously embody with research participants the past, present, and future interactions on a shared continuum of experience. The collaborative enterprise of fieldwork is relived, retold, remade, and it is always present.

In this chapter, the shared, embodied experience that infused the ethnographic space in situ transformed one’s understanding of young people, their teacher, and the researcher. The study was focused on better understanding students’ experiences with literacy in high school. Within …

Dance As Dialog: A Metaphor Analysis On The Development Of Interculturality Through Arts And Community-Based Learning With Preservice Teachers And A Local Refugee Community, Theresa Catalano, Uma Ganesan, Alessia Barbici Wagner, Jenelle Reeves, Alison E. Leonard, Stephanie Wessels

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This paper explores the use of arts and community-based (ACB) approaches to intercultural teacher education. Twenty-four preservice teachers and five adult Yazidi refugees/community members participated in this study which involved a two-week arts-based workshop in Fall 2019 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Data for the study included pre- and post-group discussion recordings as well as oral and written reflections one week after the workshop. Using metaphor analysis, the authors examine the way project participants talk about their experiences in the workshop. Findings showed how ACB approaches hold promise as a vehicle for developing interculturality in teacher education.

Investigating Preservice Teachers’ Science Teaching Self-Efficacy: An Analysis Of Reflective Practices, Deepika Menon, Saiqa Azam

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this mixed methods research was to investigate the development of 55 preservice elementary teachers’ science teaching self-efficacy beliefs through analysis of their reflective practices in a science method course. This year-long study was conducted at two public universities located in the USA and Canada. Within the theoretical frameworks of science teaching self-efficacy and reflective practice, we examined how and in what ways preservice teachers’ reflections on their past science experiences and current science teaching practices contributed to their self-efficacy beliefs. Data were collected from pre- and post-course administrations of the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument-B (STEBI-B), written …