Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Examining The Effects Of Reflection On Professional Identity Development In Community College Preservice Teachers, Delia Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Grounded in the constructivist theories of Dewey (1963) with learning situated as reflective practice, the study explored the impact of guided written reflection on levels of reflection, commitment to teaching and professional identity for community college preservice teachers enrolled in their first fieldwork course in a teacher education program.

Participants in the treatment group received instruction on levels of reflection using Nickel’s (2013) Levels of Deep and Surface Learning. Pre/posttest results were collected using three measures: Reflection Questionnaire (Kember & Leung, 2000), Professional Identity Status Questionnaire - PISQ-5d (Mancini, 2015), and Commitment to Teaching Scale (Van Huizen, 2000). Researcher-designed …

Humanizing Higher Education: Disrupting Racial Injustice In Teacher Preparation Through Critically Caring Communities, Melissa M. Boronkas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Institutions of Higher Education have played a foundational role in upholding racial inequities within the teaching profession. Eighty percent of public school teachers in the United States are white and female while more than 50% of the total student population is composed of minoritized students (Boser, 2014; NYSED, 2019a). There is a lack of cultural synchronicity between teachers and students in classrooms which is believed to result in unequal outcomes for minoritized students as compared to their White peers (Ingersoll, May, Collins, 2018). These findings are indicative of an underlying problem: racial and social integration has not been achieved. In …

Overcoming Adversity In The Stem Classroom: Examining Learned Helplessness In First-Year Community College Students Using Salivary Cortisol, Surveys And Interviews, Diane M. Price Banks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to determine whether a relationship between STEM attrition and Learned Helplessness exist in a group of first year STEM majors studied at an urban community college. STEM attrition rates have shown that 69% of the 20% of incoming STEM freshmen in associate degree programs, drop out or switch their majors to non-STEM curriculum within their first year of college (NCES, 2013). Learned helplessness is a behavioral phenomenon where some may become helpless as the conditions surrounding their success become adverse. Classic signs expressed with learned helplessness include: lack of motivation, depression, poor social skills, absence of control …

Streamlining Time Spent In Alternative Developmental Mathematics Pathways: Increasing Access To College-Level Mathematics Courses By Altering Placement Procedures, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Developmental mathematics, which is designed to prepare students for college-level mathematics courses, can be a barrier to students’ success. In the United States, the majority of students placed into developmental mathematics courses fail to complete the developmental sequence. Alternative mathematics pathways offer some benefits when integrated with “just-in- time support” or expedited instruction on specific prerequisite concepts needed solely for the current lesson. This study compares two statistics courses taught at a public community college: a complete course taught in one semester and a two-semester version with just-in-time developmental content integrated into the course. The study found that students placed …

Spatial Distribution Of Chinese Language Education And Historical Development Of Chinese Language Pedagogy In Higher Education In The United States, Jing Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project includes two major components: an interactive digital map that displays the geographical distribution of Chinese language programs in colleges and universities in the United States, their program starting years, the types of such universities and colleges, and their names and states; and a multimedia essay on the evolution of Chinese language pedagogy in colleges and universities in the United States. Data has been collected on the program start year, school names, states where schools are located, school types, and whether the school had been funded by two federal sponsored language programs: the National Defense Education Act in …

Using Site Visits To Strengthen Collaboration, Victor Piercey, Rebecca Segal, Afroditi Vennie Filippas, Tao Chen, Soloman Kone, Rosalyn Hobson Hargraves, Jack Bookman, John Hearn, Debbie Pike, Kathy S. Williams

Publications and Research

The SUMMIT-P project is a multi-institutional endeavor to leverage interdisciplinary collaboration in order to improve the teaching of undergraduate mathematics courses in the first two years of college. One goal of this work is to establish collaborative communities among the institutions involved. As part of the project, institutions visit one another on site visits that are structured according to a common protocol. The site visits have been valuable to the project. Participating institutions report the exchange of actionable ideas and feedback; members of the grant leadership team have used the site visits to direct the overall project, and evaluators have …

Developing Open Practices In Teacher Education: An Example Of Integrating Oer And Developing Renewable Assignments, Jennifer Van Allen, Stacy Katz

Publications and Research

This manuscript offers a reasoning for and example of integrating Open Educational Resources (OER) and open pedagogy within a teacher education course. We highlight a collaborative partnership between library faculty and education faculty and the decision points and processes we used when redesigning this course to provide an example of adopting OER and our considerations for developing a renewable assignment. The benefits of using OER for K-12 teachers include increasing awareness of and providing opportunities to develop open practices. The transition to a renewable assignment creates a space for teaching candidates to meaningfully contribute to the profession and engage in …

Exploring Pedagogies To Elevate Inquiry: Teaching Action Research In The Third Space, Sara B. Woolf

Publications and Research

This study chronicles a semester long inquiry focused on the impacts of pedagogical strategies informed by the tenets of third space theory on my own practices and understanding of students’ learning outcomes in an action research course. As I applied new instructional strategies to promote discourse and critical inquiry, I reflexively explored how these approaches enhanced my impacts on students’ learning and praxis of action research. This paper first provides a brief introduction to third space theory and then describes how I infused this framework into my course approach, the different types of data collected and analyzed to gauge the …

The Impact Of Peer-Led Workshops In An Intermediate Algebra Course For Women, Minorities, And First-Generation College Students, Malika Ikramova

Publications and Research

The implementation of the Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) instructional model have shown to increase student pass rates and decrease failure and withdrawal rates in foundational mathematics courses. New York City College of Technology has implemented mandatory PLTL workshops in selected sections of MAT 1275: Intermediate Algebra and Trigonometry. Students spend an hour working collaboratively with their classmates guided by peer leader. Results from this study showed gender, ethnicity, and first-generation college student differences in their responses on the effectiveness of peer supported groups in this fundamental mathematics course.

A Space To Learn, Amy R. Goods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I explore what it means to different people, in different places throughout life’s spectrum to create a space to learn. This dissertation is a collection of work that I have written throughout my time at the CUNY Graduate Center. The chapters herein represent an arch of my learning over the past five years. The title, A Space to Learn, has multiple meanings. For one, writing this dissertation has provided me a space to explore and reflect on a variety of topics, ranging from memory loss, to teacher preparation programs, to eugenics and special education, to tracking and …

Aligning The Curriculums For College Success: High School And College Library Collaborations, Carl R. Andrews, Dickens Saint Hilaire

Publications and Research

In today’s highly competitive global economy, City University of New York (CUNY) graduates need strong critical thinking skills. More New York City students than ever before are applying to college and enrolling into CUNY schools. This is especially the case with high schools throughout the Bronx, a good portion of these schools are feeder schools for Bronx Community College (BCC). Unfortunately, many of the students who matriculate into BCC come un-prepared for college level work, where information literacy skills are essential. A strong body of published scholarly literature discusses the importance of information literacy instruction at the high school level, …

Radical Solace And Young Adult Writing: Racialized Dis/Ability, Fan Fiction, And Feel(Ing)S In Composition, Jenn Polish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Deficit-model pedagogies too often abound in our writing classrooms, in everything from punitive attendance policies to content selection and course design methodologies that inadvertently favor students whose bodies fit a white supremacist, ableist norm. I develop conceptions of fandom and consent-based pedagogical practices, and I argue that these can bring us closer to radical solace in our college writing classrooms, particularly when our classrooms are full of variously marginalized students. These students too often must endure deficit-model pedagogies that assume inexpert writing styles in both their written compositions and, indeed, in the very composition of their bodies. What happens, I …

Teaching With Technology: Using A Virtual Learning Community And Peer Mentoring To Create An Interdisciplinary Intervention, Rebecca Mazumdar, Nadia Benakli, Pamela Brown

Publications and Research

This paper describes the development and implementation of engaging and supportive experiences to promote student engagement, persistence and success at a commuter, open enrollment, public, minority serving institution. Project components included faculty development at the SENCER Summer Institute (SSI) 2016, attended by a team comprised of an academic administrator, full-time faculty from English and math, and part-time faculty in chemistry; creation of a virtual learning community of freshmen enrolled in chemistry, English, and math linked by the specific theme of the environmental impacts of deicing roads with salt and the overarching theme of the impacts of human activities on the …

La Comunicación Lingüística En Español Y Sus Barreras En El Sistema De Salud De Los Estados Unidos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La enseñanza del español con fines médicos en los Estados Unidos ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, los pacientes de origen hispano se encuentran desprotegidos ante las barreras lingüísticas que impone el sistema de salud estadounidense en muchos contextos monolingües y bilingües. Esta investigación descriptiva muestra como, por un lado, los malentendidos producidos por la comunicación ineficiente desarrollada por intérpretes e intermediarios (familiares, enfermeras con conocimientos de español, facultativos con una preparación lingüística deficiente, etc.) tienen serias repercusiones para la salud en el tratamiento de los casos. Por otro lado, el estudio da cuenta …

Reseña De El Trabajo De Fin De Grado Y De Máster. Redacción, Defensa Y Publicación, De Iria Da Cunha, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Estudio Contrastivo Intercultural De Las Funciones Retóricas De Las Citas: La Producción De Textos Académicos En El Nivel De Posgrado Escritos En Español E Inglés, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

The main objective of this research is to discover which rhetorical functions were used in the Master´s thesis writing written by eight (8) American and eight (8) Spanish postgraduates in their na-tive language. A computerized tex-tual analysis of the rhetorical func-tion of citation was used to study this phenomenon (Petrić, 2007). The results obtained from the re-search showed that the different cultural conventions in the thesis writing indicate that when com-pared with native Spanish writers, the American writers of English use the highest number of cita-tions, and write a relatively longer Introduction and Conclusion parts. On the other hand, the …

More Than Free: Equity In Open Educational Resources, Nicole Williams, Kathryn Anastasi

Open Educational Resources

Faculty creation and adoption of OER and ZTC materials can provide students with benefits that extend beyond no-cost or low-cost considerations. These materials can be the foundation of more culturally relevant classroom materialsthanstudents are used to seeing. They can increase the accessibility of instructional materials to students with disabilities. They can be employed to support student-centered learning ideas which upend traditionalnotionshow information flows between teachers and students. Using OER and ZTC materials has the potential to address many of the concerns about inequality that faculty and students alike have about the current educational model. Although OER and ZTC initiatives present …

Teaching | Learning Is Emotional: Interpretive And Impressionistic Approaches To Exploring Emotions In Science And Science Teacher Education, Katelin Corbett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a compilation of studies, on emotions in teaching and learning. My experiences as a teacher and student of physics have informed my perspective. These experiences as well as my role as a science teacher educator have contributed to my transformations. My work is interpretative and impressionistic. I attempt to address what is happening and why it is happening through my own interpretation, participant reflections, heuristic responses and dialogue with participants. My research community has also informed this work, as well as the preservice and inservice teachers that have participated in each of the studies. I consider this …

Elementos Persuasivos De La Citación En El Discurso Académico De Posgrado: Los Verbos Introductores De Las Citas En La Sección De La Conclusión, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Symptomatic Leadership In Business Instruction: How To Finally Teach Diversity And Inclusion For Lasting Change, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

Are business faculty complicit in mythologizing business concepts by ignoring historical precedence?

The refusal to examine in totality the history of discrimination and racism allows us to perpetuate a mythology of white supremacy that is enhanced through impotent diversity programs repeated throughout corporate America. This paper examines the importance of demythologizing the business curriculum through symptomatic thinking, which allows faculty and students to untangle the quagmire of diversity and inclusion in corporate America. Students are thereby equipped with tools for behavior transformation in the workplace that uses a symptomatic, rather than symbolic approach, to decision making and problem solving.

Language Attitudes In Algeria, Kamal Belmihoub

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Awakening Mindfulness In Science Education, Olga Calderón

Publications and Research

Contemplative/mindful education focuses on practices that enable class participants to develop awareness of the events that transpires in the moment in the classroom. Breathing meditation, radical listening, awareness of own and other’s emotions, compassion for others, reflection and conversation, are practices that are used as interventions to manage and ameliorate diverse emotions that often arise in the science classroom. This study took place in a graduate History and Philosophy of Science Education class for pre-service and in-service teachers at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in the spring of 2014. The goal was to encourage participants to …

Is Teaching About Selling? Absolutely., Norman Eng

Publications and Research

In this post, Dr. Norman Eng gives his perspective on the much-debated question of whether teaching is about selling. It comes back to our understanding (or perception) of selling.

Feeling Overwhelmed, Professors? Let’S Fix That (Q&A With Dr. Tim Slater), Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Dr. Tim Slater discusses time management ideas that new professors should keep in mind. What are his top recommendations? How do you juggle multiple professional opportunities? How do you grade large classes? We discuss this and more in my Q&A with "The Busy Professor."

Students: Professors, I Wish You Would.., Norman Eng

Publications and Research

What do students wish they could tell their professors about their instruction but never do? Read their unvarnished responses in this eye-opening post.

5 Tech Tools Every Professor Should Use Now, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

What Do You Do When Your Student Plagiarizes A Minor Assignment?, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Time to ask the class, I thought. In the K-12 classroom, teachers do this all the time. When patterns of behavior occur, such as bullying or tattling, the best teachers call for “community meetings.”

As If By Magic: Unleashing Critical And Expressive Voices Through A Rhetoric Of "This/And" In First-Year Composition, Nolan Chessman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation engages academic, creative, and student genres in conversation in order to challenge the strict discursive and stylistic boundaries placed around college writing, particularly in first-year composition. Because this project aims to thrust first-year writing pedagogy beyond the confines of fixed genre forms, its inquiry is multimodal, intermingling writing styles and research modes so that, in scholar-teacher Wendy Bishop’s words, “I can think in and through them all” (“Places to Stand” 17). The particulars—or “data”—informing this study are primarily archival, textual (often a combination of the two), experimental, and experiential. Broadly speaking, this inquiry consists of seven chapters, which …

The Relationship Between Clinical Teaching Effectiveness And Emotional Intelligence In Clinical Nurse Faculty In Pre-Licensure Baccalaureate Programs In New York State, Caroline K. Mosca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is important to evaluate the Clinical Teaching Effectiveness (CTE) of nurse faculty because clinical teaching is one of the most effective pedagogies in nursing education (Billings & Halstead, 2012). However, clinical faculty must be able to manage effectively the stressors of the clinical setting, where lessons can be unpredictable and the environment is often laden with intense emotion (Gerolamo & Roemer, 2011; Ondrejka, 2013; Roberts, Chrisman, & Flowers, 2013). Emotional Intelligence (EI) may facilitate CTE because higher EI has been associated with improved management of stress in both nursing and the general workplace (Goleman, 1995; Görgens-Ekermans & Brand, 2012; …