Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Redefining Significance: Experiences Of Humanities Faculty Engaged In Undergraduate Research, Susan Mendoza

Dissertations

Programs that actively engage students in research and scholarship are the touchstone for integrating undergraduate education with authentic scholarly inquiry. Recent empirical studies demonstrate that undergraduate research experiences (URE) are related to increased student learning and development, increased levels of retention, increased enrollment in graduate school, and increased understanding of research as a vocation and profession. However, these seminal studies focus on URE in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines. Although there are some studies that explore undergraduate research in the social sciences and humanities, the accepted models and best practices of undergraduate research are entrenched in the …

Asking And Understanding Questions: An Inquiry-Based Framework For Writing Teacher Development, Jessica Rivera-Mueller

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Teachers develop when they critically examine the questions they ask about their work because questions make pedagogical beliefs visible and available for critical reflection and revision. In a standards-based educational climate—a time when writing becomes a set of measurable skills rather than a complex social practice—teachers may feel that a critical examination of their questions is (at best) a luxury or (at worst) a distraction to work they need to accomplish. Therefore, writing teacher educators may find it increasingly challenging to help teachers engage in reflexive inquiry. This essay describes a Deweyian-informed framework that shows how addressing inquiries and critically …

A Phenomenological Study Of University Faculty Experiences With Disruptive Undergraduate Students In A Face-To-Face Classroom Or Laboratory Setting, Anne Marie Gillespie

Dissertations

Behavioral review teams on university campuses have become the standard since the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. An institutional assumption is that faculty members will make referrals to these specialized teams when encountering disruptive students within their classrooms. Unknown is what actions faculty members actually take when faced with disruptive students in the classroom. This phenomenological study captures the experiences of faculty members with disruptive undergraduate students in face-to-face university classroom or laboratories.

All of the participants in the study described experiences with disruptive undergraduate students. Three female and three male faculty members, split evenly between tenured/tenure …

Instructional Change In Academic Departments: An Analysis From The Perspective Of Two Environment-Focused Change Strategies, Kathleen M. Quardokus

Dissertations

Numerous reports demand changes in college and university teaching practices. This is especially true for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. STEM stakeholders are concerned about student retention within STEM majors, as well as the lack of sufficient graduates with the knowledge to advance these fields. A common conclusion of these reports is that teaching practices must change. Although these calls for change have occurred for decades, STEM fields have yet to experience widespread change. Thus, there is a need for more effective change strategies. Recently, researchers have suggested that effective change strategies should focus on changing the environments …

Chemistry Graduate Teaching Assistants: A Comparison Of The Classroom Discourse Within Expository And Problem-Based Learning Laboratories, Kelley M. Current

Masters Theses

Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) commonly function as instructors within undergraduate chemistry laboratories. This study sought to explore and describe GTA classroom discourse within two distinct instructional modes, using discourse analysis as the theoretical framework. Theclassroom discourse within a series of verification style labs was comparedto the classroom discourse produced within a set of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) labs. The results suggest three primary findings: (1) the apparent relationship between the instructional mode and form of GTA classroom discourse, (2) the patterns in classroom discourse observed within a given instructional mode repeat, irrespective of content, and (3) the classroom discourse observed within …

The Voices Of Higher Education Service-Learning Directors: A Qualitative Inductive Analysis, Kelsey Woodard

Dissertations

This research explored issues surrounding service-learning directors (SLDs) within higher education institutions, including who they are, how they became SLDs, and what they experience in the role. Qualitative data were drawn from in-depth interviews of 11 SLDs, as well as review of their vitaes. A qualitative inductive analysis was conducted in which important patterns, themes, and interrelationships that emerged from the data were coded into a category system of major themes and subthemes.

Data analysis revealed the following major themes: (1.0): all the SLDs came from various helping profession backgrounds, with interesting journeys to become a SLD; (2.0) many SLD’s …

Teaching Students About Plagiarism: What It Looks Like And How It Is Measured, Diana Stout

Dissertations

This case study examines how full-time faculty, adjunct instructors, and graduate teaching assistants teach students how to avoid plagiarism. Additionally, this case study includes a cross-section of teachers who encounter plagiarism in writing assignments across the curriculum. While many studies in the past have focused on students, this study places the spotlight on teachers. For this study, participants have been asked how they can be sure whether their instruction is correct or not, what it means to paraphrase and rewrite correctly, and how do they assess their students to determine if correct learning has taken place. Additionally, these instructors were …

Exploring The Experiences Of Counselor Educators Recognized For Their Excellence In Teaching, Allison E. Buller

Dissertations

Teaching is a deeply held value for counselor educators. Nonetheless, counselor education programs have historically provided only minimal attention to preparing doctoral students to actually teach. Furthermore, little of the research in the field of counselor education addresses the way counselor educators are prepared to teach. Using qualitative methods, this author engaged counselor educators identified as excellent teachers in an examination of meaningful experiences that contributed to their development as faculty in counselor education. By exploring experiences that prepared them to teach, excellent teachers provided the next generation of faculty members with rich descriptive strategies for teacher preparation in counselor …

Textbook Alternatives: Options For Students And Faculty, Michele D. Behr

Academic Leadership Academy

The issue of course textbooks continues to be a challenge at WMU as well as in all of higher education. For students the primary concern is textbook prices. Students often spend several hundred dollars per semester for required textbooks, at a time when tuition and other costs of attending college are increasing as well. Faculty are of course sensitive to student concerns and frustrations about textbook prices, but may be unaware of other options to cover the same content. Currently there is a movement toward Open Educational Resources (OER) which is a way to provide open access to high quality …

A Case Study Of How Students Enrolled In Cte Programs And Faculty Understand And Assess The Implications Of Globalization On Career Preparation, Mohammad A. Moradi

Dissertations

Globalization reflects a shift in the workforce development paradigm. This descriptive qualitative case study was conducted at a Midwestern university with 12 student participants and three faculty members from three engineering programs. The purpose of this body of work was to explore the participants‘ perceptions of globalization, and to understand the implications of globalization on career and technical education (CTE) programs, program selection, and career choices, the training of the students enrolled in CTE programs, and the role of teaching faculty and the college in this process.

How CTE programs aligned many diverse programs to meet a growing demand for …

Teacher Leadership In Community Colleges: Transforming Teaching And Organizational Governance, Pamela Miller

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe and interpret the experiences of community college teachers in order to understand their perception of theirleadership role and the impact of teacher leadership on institutional governance and student success. This research addressed gaps in the teacher leadershipliterature by contributing a quantitative analysis of the leadership perceptions of community college faculty. The results of the study should be of interest tocommunity college faculty and administrators, teacher educators and teacher preparation institutions, and policy makers as they work to implement change efforts related to curriculum and instruction, professional development, institutional leadership, and governance.

Chapter …

Automotive Service Technology Intersectional Skills Proficiency Assessment, David L. Macquarrie

Dissertations

This dissertation focused on the creation and validation of a criterion referenced credentialing assessment of automotive service technicians' intersectional skills (ASTIS) proficiency. These intersectional skills are prerequisite and common to multiple job level tasks that an automotive service technician (AST) performs on the job. An assessment of the ASTIS was created to aid automotive technician employers in the evaluation of hiring prospective technician employees and is not duplicated by current certifications (e.g. ASE) as they do not uniquely assess these skills.

This dissertation focused on the ASTIS skills and the information an employer can obtain pertaining to a prospective employee's …

Examining The Keyword Mnemonic Strategy As An Effective Academic Intervention For High School Students Labeled Emotional Or Behavioral Disordered, Karen A. Kleinheksel

Dissertations

This investigation explored whether keyword mnemonic strategies were effective for high school aged students labeled emotional or behavioral disordered(E/BD) in recalling the definitions of scientific vocabulary terms. Ten students labeled E/BD from a suburban public high school in a Midwestern state participated in this investigation. A demographic description of the subjects indicated the following information: (a) all students' ethnicities were Caucasian, (b) sixty percent of the subjects were male, (c) the average subject's age was 17 years 1 month, and (d) all students were in the tenth through twelfth grades.

In a multiple baseline across subjects design using a single …