Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Development And Initial Validation Of The Mindful Self-Regulated Learning Scale (M-Srls), Sarah Wolff

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Modern mindfulness is a catch-all term. Just exactly what it looks like within the context of education and how it is taught vastly varies. As such, program fidelity and integrity is questioned. Here a definition of mindful self-regulated learning is proposed and the Mindful Self-Regulated Learning Scale (m-SRLS) is developed. This includes item generation and development, systematic testing of item performance, scale dimensionality, convergent and divergent validity, measurement invariance across groups and subgroups, and scale reliability over a series of five pilot studies and five primary studies using independent samples. The resulting m-SRLS is a context specific measurement tool that …

Standardized Test And The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Phenomenological Multi-Site Case Study Of Singapore And Southern Nevada Within A Culturally Responsive Evaluation Framework, Rosnidar B. Arshad

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As world governments scramble to contain the spread on Covid-19, temporary closure of schools was enforced, and on-site classes were converted to online or virtual versions within short notice. Yet, as dictated by world society, schools must prepare students for standardized tests in order to be acknowledged as legitimate. World rankings impose pressure on school systems to target high standardized test scores in order to gain and maintain economic viability for jurisdictions. This dissertation presents the pressures of high performance in standardized tests amidst a global pandemic as a problem to be researched within a context of sociopolitical and socioeconomic …

Beyond Right Or Wrong: The Influences Of Thinking Disposition And Item Difficulty On Student Behavior During High-Stakes Testing, Kristina Lindquist

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A hallmark of clinician decision making is the ability to know when to make quick decisions and when decision making should be slowed to account for complicating factors. Throughout the physician training process, multiple choice test items are used to assess student knowledge however, these items do not assess the process used by a student to arrive at the answer choice. If an important characteristic of decisions in clinical practice is timing, then decision timing could be an important consideration for medical school assessments. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to investigate factors that may affect the amount of …

Reimagining High School Writing: A Multi-Case Examination Of The Impact Of External Pressures On High School Writing Contexts, Nicole Elizabeth Klimow

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research concerning teachers’ pedagogical beliefs shows a strong relationship between planning and instruction; however, the sources of pedagogical beliefs have not been researched thoroughly. Because teachers bring their histories and experiences to their interactions with students, their pedagogical beliefs may also be present in their instruction, mediating the relationship between knowledge (planning) and action (writing instruction). Framed by Sociocultural Theory (SCT), the purpose of this qualitative, multi-site, multi-case case study was first to understand teachers’ expectations for teaching writing based on their beliefs about learning. A secondary intent was to examine ways in which high school English teachers’ learning expectations …

A Phenomenology Study Of First-~Year Teachers Looking At The Shared Lived Experience Of Learning To Grade, Brandon Lee Yost

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study describes the phenomenon of how first-year teachers learn to evaluate students learning by (letter) grades. Grades seem simple enough; but in reality, each grade carries serious consequences with it – for either good or bad. For example, grades affect benefits/consequences at home; they affect placement in remedial or advanced courses; they affect grade level promotion; they affect participation in programs, i.e. extracurricular activities like sports; they affect high school graduation, college acceptance, and scholarship eligibility (Brookhart, 1991; Marzano, 2000).

Despite the extreme importance of grades and how they can influence a person’s life over a period of time …

Cognitive Differences Between High And Low Responders Of A Tier Ii Reading Intervention, Jillian Cohen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study evaluated a population of young students with potential reading disabilities who participated in a large western school district's Reading Skills Development project from October 2012 to May 2013. The following questions were addressed: Are there cognitive differences between students who respond well to an intense Tier II reading intervention and those who make little progress? If so, which cognitive skills best discriminate between high and low responders? De-identified data was collected from 171 struggling readers in 1st through 3rd grade who participated in the Reading Skills project. After controlling for English proficiency level, high and low responders were …

Fortifying The Pipeline: An Exploratory Study Of High School Factors Impacting The Information Literacy Of First-Year College Students, Jennifer L. Fabbi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Information literacy—the ability "to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (American Library Association [ALA], 1989, para. 3)—has been widely and increasingly cited as an essential competency for college success, for the workplace, and for life (Bruce, 1997; Eisenberg, 2008; Fitzgerald, 2004; Johnston & Webber, 2003; National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, 2007; Obama, 2009; Rader, 2002). Information literacy best practice and standards state that students optimally develop this skill set through immersion in the research process—often and over time—and this proposition is also supported in …

In Quest Of A Dropout Theory: Examining The Utility Of An Ecological Approach Through Survey Research, Tiffany G. Tyler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined the utility of Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory as a metatheory of dropout. Using the NELS: 1988 dataset, the present study examined the relationship between dropout attributions and Bronfenbrenner's construct, the microsystem. Attention was given to accounting for students' attributions regarding their identity (e.g., demographic and profile characteristics) with environmental and regional contexts as possible moderators. In particular, the present study examined the responses given as reasons for dropout in view of how those responses could be categorized with Bronfenbrenner's theoretical structure and the extent to which the resulting categorization could predict dropout, considering related demographic variable.

This study …

Ready For Life — An Evaluation: Factors Relating To Truancy And Promising Practices, Clayton Nichols, Shenita Harper, Maria Thomas, Mikaela Louve, Christina Vela

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Truancy has been linked to serious delinquent activity in youth and to significant negative behavior and characteristics in adults. Truancy is one of the most common factors leading to dropout and students not meeting graduation standards. Nevada has arguably the highest high school dropout rate in the nation. This evaluation was prepared for Ready for Life: A movement created by Nevada Public Education Foundation (NPEF), to connect youth to school and work by age 25, but can be of use to several audiences. Practitioners who work with struggling students, court representatives and parents, teachers and administrators, and anyone who has …

Cyberbullying In Schools: A Research Study On School Policies And Procedures, Brian Wiseman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A mixed-methods research design first using quantitative then qualitative data was used in order to explore what cyberbullying policies are being employed by principals in the state of Nevada. Electronic surveys were given to all 118 middle school principals in Nevada. Middle school was chosen because it is the age where cyberbullying behaviors are most prevalent. Out of the 118 surveys that were deployed, 66 principals responded. A series of independent t-tests and a chi-squared analysis was conducted using the survey data. The survey concluded by asking principals if they were willing to participate in a one-on-one interview regarding the …

Analyzing The Relative Efficiency Of Nevada Secondary Schools, Jesse Welsh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A definitive answer to how to allocate school-level expenditures to yield the greatest "bang for the buck" has continually eluded education finance researchers. With increased regulation, oversight, and sanctions resulting from the No Child Left Behind Act, paired with financial strains on states' education budgets, measuring schools' production and efficiency has become urgent.

The methodology for this study was comprised of two phases. Phase I analyzed the per-pupil expenditures of middle and high schools over a three-year period and developed descriptive statistics that revealed the expenditure patterns by category. Phase II used a micro-level economic approach, data envelopment analysis, to …

A Mixed Methods Exploration Of Principal Communication And School Climate, Reece Oswalt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Mixed methods triangulation research design was used in order to explore the relationship between principal communication and school climate. The Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire for Elementary Schools (OCDQ-RE) and interview protocols on principal communication were administered to principals and teachers at three elementary schools each having between 700-1000 students in an urban school district consisting of approximately 300,000 students. Each school had between 80-100% Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL), was designated Adequate according to No Child Left Behind Act (2001) as published in the 2009-2010 School Accountability Reports, and had a principal that had been assigned to that school for …

The Multiple-Choice Concept Map (Mccm): An Interactive Computer-Based Assessment Method, Ioan C. Sas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research attempted to bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and educational measurement (Mislevy, 2008; Leighton & Gierl, 2007; Nichols, 1994; Messick, 1989; Snow & Lohman, 1989) by using cognitive theories from working memory (Baddeley, 1986; Miyake & Shah, 1999; Grimley & Banner, 2008), multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001), and cognitive load (Chandler and Sweller, 1991, 1992; Cerpa, Chandler, & Sweller., 1996) to identify potential design weaknesses of traditional select-and-fill-in (SAFI) concept map assessment and then to guide the design of the new and improved multiple-choice concept map (MCCM) assessment method. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the …