School Psychology Commons^™

Research Based Interventions For Students Struggling With Oral Reading Fluency And Accuracy, Jamie Wredt

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Being able to read proficiently is a key skill that students must learn to be successful in school as well as being able to function in society. Three of the main interventions to help students reach proficiency in reading are repeated reading, listening passage preview, and error correction. Each intervention has been shown to provide some benefit to students who struggle with reading when done independently or combined with repeated reading. However, the current literature on repeated reading, listening passage preview, and error correction is sparse when comparing the three against each other. The current study examined repeated reading, listening …

Parent-Teacher Communication About Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Examination Of Collaborative Problem Solving, Gazi F. Azad, Mina Kim, Steven C. Marcus, David S. Mandell, Susan M. Sheridan Dr.

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Effective parent-teacher communication involves problem-solving concerns about students. Few studies have examined problem solving interactions between parents and teachers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with a particular focus on identifying communication barriers and strategies for improving them. This study examined the problem-solving behaviors of parents and teachers of children with ASD. Participants included 18 teachers and 39 parents of children with ASD. Parent-teacher dyads were prompted to discuss and provide a solution for a problem that a student experienced at home and at school. Parents and teachers also reported on their problem-solving behaviors. Results showed that parents and …

Examining The Perceived Influence Of A Comprehensive Youth Development Program For Promoting Black Male High School Persistence, Richard Gray Walker

Dissertations

Black male youth in the United States drop out of high school at a rate consistently higher than their White counterparts. A lack of academic persistence contributes to lower workforce participation rates among Black Americans, which leads to lower national productivity and unrealized personal prosperity. Youth development research has developed an extensive body of knowledge regarding possible causes and contributing factors of minority high school dropout. Literature shows youth experience higher dropout rates when they grow up in adversity. Adversity risks such as dysfunctional families, cultural discontinuity between home and school, dysfunctional neighborhoods, or low-expectations from teachers contribute to graduation …

The Effects Of Real-Time Visual Performance Feedback Using A Tier Approach For Increasing Behavior Specific Praise On Teachers, Elizabeth Lown

Master's Theses

A number of studies have found behavior specific praise to be effective in increasing academically engaged behaviors and decreasing disruptive behaviors of students. The proposed study evaluated the effects of real-time visual performance feedback as a strategy for promoting teacher use of behavior-specific praise. An ABCBC design was utilized to determine the efficacy of real-time visual performance feedback in comparison to delayed visual performance feedback. The primary dependent variable measured was teacher use of behavior-specific praise. Additionally, student outcomes were assessed to determine the relationship between teacher use of behavior-specific praise and student behavior. The results from the study provide …

Impact Of College Pen Pal Program On Fourth Grade Writing Attitudes And Skills, Gretchen Lorena Roberts, Merilee Mccurdy

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Generalizability Of Multiple Measures Of Treatment Integrity: An Empirical Replication, Elizabeth Wilson

LSU Master's Theses

Treatment integrity is essential for the implementation of interventions in schools as it determines the accuracy or consistency with which different components of a treatment are implemented. There are no current standards regarding the best practices in treatment integrity measurement; however, higher integrity is associated with enhanced student outcomes. At present, there is no database providing information on treatment integrity for practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers to reference for choosing an appropriate level of treatment integrity needed for certain interventions for certain problems. Consequently, there is a need to establish convergent validity among different methods of treatment integrity measurement using multiple …

Diversity Of Diagnoses And Student Learning Experiences In An On-Campus School Psychology Assessment Center: Future Directions And Focus, Nina M. Ellis-Hervey Ph.D., N.C.S.P., L.S.S.P., P.L.P., Ashley Doss B.S., Maio-Cert, Deshae Davis-Gatti M.A., Juliet Aura Bs/P

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

School Psychology Assessment Centers (SPAC) developed at the University-level are crucial in developing competent school psychologists. While many models on how to develop mental health centers are in existence, a new model exists for creating a SPAC on a University campus that is specifically designed to serve the diverse surrounding community and postsecondary students (see Ellis-Hervey et al., 2016). The community’s needs were reviewed, including missing service links in the region, and identification of potential clients who would benefit most from services provided. Senior students who work with clients in the SPAC gain assessment skills and build supervision skills through …

Preliminary Evidence For The Impact Of Combat Experiences On Gray Matter Volume Of The Posterior Insula, Ashley N. Clausen, Sandra A. Billinger, Jason-Flor V. Sisante, Hideo Suzuki, Robin L. Aupperle

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Background: Combat-exposed veteran populations are at an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula have been implicated in both autonomic arousal to emotional stressors and homeostatic processes, which may contribute to cardiovascular dysfunction in combat veteran populations. The aim of the present study was to explore the intersecting relationships of combat experiences, rostral ACC and posterior insula volume, and cardiovascular health in a sample of combat veterans.

Method: Twenty-four male combat veterans completed clinical assessment of combat experiences and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Subjects completed a magnetic resonance imaging scan and autosegmentation using FreeSurfer was …

The Nyc Board Of Education Mandates Pledging Allegiance [Poem], Kate Abell

Occasional Paper Series

Kate Abell shares a poem following September 11. It is a criticism of the requirement of pledging allegiance to the flag in school.

Social-Emotional Development Assessment: Scale Development For Kindergarten Through Second Grade Youth Universal Screening, James F.M. Brenchley

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this project was to address a significant gap in the research literature with regard to available screening tools that allow young children to self-identify needs related to their social-emotional development. A review of current evidence-based social-emotional tools led to the identification of seven domains most frequently utilized: self-regulation, emotional regulation, social skills, self-concept, school connectedness, social responsibility, and optimism/positivity. To accomplish this endeavor, two studies were conducted to develop a screening measure that demonstrated adequate psychometric properties, but also minimized cost related to time for implementation. The first study was a review of 105 pilot scale items …

The Effect Of Text Color And Text Grouping On Attention And Short Term Recall Memory, Emily Haynes

Honors College Research

This study sought to discover whether there was a connection between the attentional draw of a word, as represented by text color and grouping, and the likelihood of it being transferred into short term recall memory. College students at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas were given one of six timed memory test scenarios and asked to recreate the list to the best of their ability. The students were then asked to complete a series of post-test questions designed to measure their perception of their own performance on the test. The students were also asked to complete a demographics questionnaire that …

Teaching My Child To Resist In Kindergarten, Christine Ferris

Occasional Paper Series

Ferris describes how she taught her son to resist in his kindergarten classroom while drawing on her own experiences as an educator. Their experience draws attention to common teaching methods that do not promote socialization or free thinking. This also highlights the issues that can arise when the value system of a school does not align with a family's own beliefs - especially when alternative schools are not a viable option.

The Power Of More Than One, Jane King

Occasional Paper Series

Jane King reflects on her experiences as a preschool teacher eager to use methods outside of the norm. She resists activities that encourage homogeneity and strives to promote autonomy and free thinking in her students. After transitioning from teacher to parent, she still uses this philosophy to make small changes in her daughter's classroom and encourage her children to engage in acts of resistance and critical thinking both in and out of school.

Adversity And Academic Performance Among Adolescent Youth: A Community-Based Participatory Research Study, Sukhdip Purewal Boparai, Tiffani Marie, Eduardo Aguayo, Jordan Brooks, Estefany Juarez, Sheana Soriano, Alasia Waters, Jaquez Donaldson, Joseph Reagans, Gracee Anguiano, Allison Ipsen

Journal of Adolescent and Family Health

Researchers and youth stakeholders devised a survey on 27 adversities based on youth expertise, clinical practice, and adversity literature. The aim of the study was to understand the prevalence of individual and cumulative adversities, and association of adversities to age, gender, race/ethnicity and academic performance among a community sample of urban high school students. All participants experienced two or more adversities and experienced greater overall adversity than youth in population-based studies. Youth-proposed stressors were among the most prevalent, and females, older youth, and African American youth reported disproportionately greater number of adversities. Specific types of adversities were endorsed differentially based …

Effectiveness Of Repeated Reading And Error Correction Strategies On The Reading Fluency Skills Of Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Regina Martin Guthrie

Dissertations

As the incidence rate of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) appears to increase, the need for evidence-based reading interventions for these students, which are important for the reading development of students with ASD, also increases. Unfortunately, there has been little research on evidence-based strategies to effectively improve the reading fluency skills of students with ASD. Repeated reading and error correction methods have been effective for children in improving their reading fluency. This study used a single subject multiple baseline design to investigate the effectiveness of the evidence-based strategies of repeated reading and error correction strategies on the reading fluency …

When The Books Hit Back: Perceived Stress In University Students, Henry Stoddard

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

University students are a particularly high-risk population for mental illness due to high-stress levels. The university students of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa are no exception to that trend. This study surveyed and interviewed university students, and interviewed various mental health professionals from the Durban region of South Africa. The data was analyzed and used to better understand the current status of South African university students’ perceived stress, as well as the causes of their stress levels. Results showed no significant differences among demographic groups and perceived stress levels, but further research is needed to draw more reliable conclusions. In the …

Workforce Well-Being: Personal And Workplace Contributions To Early Educators' Depression Across Settings, Amy M. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gallagher, Alexandra Daro, Iheoma Iruka, Susan Sarver

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

Building on research demonstrating the importance of teachers' well-being, this study examined personal and contextual factors related to early childhood educators' (n =1640) depressive symptoms across licensed child care homes, centers, and schools. Aspects of teachers' beliefs, economic status, and work-related stress were explored, and components of each emerged as significant in an OLS regression. After controlling for demographics and setting, teachers with more adult-centered beliefs, lower wages, multiple jobs, no health insurance, more workplace demands, and fewer work-related resources, had more depressive symptoms. Adult-centered beliefs were more closely associated with depression for teachers working in home-based settings compared …

Toward A Cleaner Whiteness: New Racial Identities, David Ingram

David Ingram

The article re-examines racial and ethnic identity within the context of pedagogical attempts to instill a positive white identity in white students who are conscious of the history of white racism and white privilege. The paper draws heavily from whiteness studies and developmental cognitive science in arguing (against Henry Giroux and Stuart Hall) that a positive notion of white identity, however postmodern its construction, is an oxymoron, since whiteness designates less a cultural/ethnic ethos and meaningful way of life than a pathological structure of privilege and narrowminded cognitive habitus.

Flint’S Children: Narratives On Hope, Christin L. Carotta, Amy E. Bonomi, Karleigh Knox, Morgan C. Blain, Brianna F. Dines, Jaquan Cotton

The Qualitative Report

Hope plays an important role in resiliency, well-being, and buffering against adversity. To explore children’s experiences with hope while developing in low-income communities, we conducted interviews with twenty-one children residing in Flint, Michigan, ages 9-12 years. Research questions focused on the specific hopes children have, the importance they ascribe to different hopes, and their experiences of feeling hopeful or less hopeful about desired outcomes. Children expressed interrelated hopes across multiple social-ecological domains, including hopes for themselves, hopes for their interpersonal relationships, and hopes for the community. Children placed particular importance on their hopes of helping others, which included providing for …

Giving Students The Finger, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Does academic freedom protect giving students the finger? On August 25, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore Kaitlyn Mullen set up a table on campus outside the student union to promote Turning Point USA, a campus-based libertarian/conservative organization. TPUSA is known for its Professor Watchlist, which seeks to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Before long, there were people demonstrating against her. Ultimately, Mullen was harassed and intimidated by several individuals employed to teach at UNL, with the apparent intent of suppressing her intellectual freedom. One of them labeled her a …

Narrating The Future: Understanding How Student Narratives Relate To Outcomes In Community College, Tanzina Ahmed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Community colleges are an increasingly important entry point into higher education for adults in the United States (21^st-Century Commission, 2012). Students often hold diverse opinions on and engage in complex meaning-making around the community college institution (Daiute & Kreniske, 2016; Deil-Amen, 2016). Furthermore, students’ varied interpretations of community college might influence and predict their academic performance. To investigate that assumption, this study asked 104 students to write about community college within three genres (i.e. types) of narratives that afford different author-purpose-audience opportunities for meaning-making. In the Letters genre, students wrote a letter to a close partner about their …

Fitting The Fractional Polynomial Model To Non-Gaussian Longitudinal Data, Ji Hoon Ryoo, Jeffrey D. Long, Greg W. Welch, Arthur Reynolds, Susan M. Swearer

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

As in cross sectional studies, longitudinal studies involve non-Gaussian data such as binomial, Poisson, gamma, and inverse-Gaussian distributions, and multivariate exponential families. A number of statistical tools have thus been developed to deal with non-Gaussian longitudinal data, including analytic techniques to estimate parameters in both fixed and random effects models. However, as yet growth modeling with non-Gaussian data is somewhat limited when considering the transformed expectation of the response via a linear predictor as a functional form of explanatory variables. In this study, we introduce a fractional polynomial model (FPM) that can be applied to model non-linear growth with non-Gaussian …

The Construction Of “Discomfort Psychological”: An Exploration Of Italians Teachers' Reports, Antonio Iudici, Matteo Fabbri

The Qualitative Report

Although there are several studies on youth problems in school, there are few studies on how teachers report psychological discomfort of the students and on what criteria does their procedure. Considering that schools increasingly make such reports to social or neuropsychiatry services, we wanted to find out whether it is flawless (bias, etc.) and how it can affect a student's career. This research presents an investigation on how the practice of signaling "psychological discomfort" at school is set up. Objects of the survey are the procedures used by the teachers to submit the psychological problems. The research subjects were Secondary …

Secondary Students’ Writing Achievement Goals: Assessing The Mediating Effects Of Mastery And Performance Goals On Writing Self-Efficacy, Affect, And Writing Achievement, Meryem Yilmaz Soylu, Mary G. Zeleny, Ruomeng Zhao, Roger H. Bruning, Michael S. Dempsey, Douglas F. Kauffman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The two studies reported here explored the factor structure of the newly constructed Writing Achievement Goal Scale (WAGS), and examined relationships among secondary students’ writing achievement goals, writing self-efficacy, affect for writing, and writing achievement. In the first study, 697 middle school students completed the WAGS. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed a good fit for this data with a three-factor model that corresponds with mastery, performance approach, and performance avoidance goals. The results of Study 1 were an indication for the researchers to move forward with Study 2, which included 563 high school students. The secondary students completed theWAGS, as …

Addressing Common Mental Health Issues Prevalent Among Honors College Students, Steven Pham

Honors Theses

The prevalence and severity of mental health disorders on college campuses has been increasing nationwide. This review aims to address some of the prevalent mental health issues that continuously plague college students today. Recent trends in college student mental health are analyzed as well as literature regarding common disorders including depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. A comparison of honors and non-honors students is provided to contribute to an otherwise lacking area of research surrounding honors student populations. Effective practices and policies for colleges and universities to incorporate into their counseling services are also considered, with viable goals centering on the …

Military Lifestyle’S Impact On Children’S Adjustment, Ashley N. Doss

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Military families are an understudied population and the majority of research that does exist focuses on the effects of deployments on the family system. This study aims to answer the following questions: 1) “to what degree does the relationship with parents (mother and father) and military lifestyle (number of transfers and number of deployments) predict the variance in military children’s self-esteem?”, 2) “To what degree does the relationship with parents (mother and father) and military lifestyle (number of transfers and number of deployments) predict the variance in military children’s social belongingness?”, and 3) “To what degree does the relationship with …

Measuring Student Well-Being In The Context Of Australian Schooling : Discussion Paper, Julian Fraillon

Julian Fraillon

This report was commissioned by the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services as an agent of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). The report constitutes Phase 1 of a planned two phase process. Specifically this report defines a measurement construct for student well-being; outlines a methodology for measuring student well-being; and provides recommendations for ongoing work in the measuring, reporting and monitoring of student well-being (Phase 2).

Tootling With A Randomized Independent Group Contingency In A High School Setting, John Dylan Ken Lum

Dissertations

Tootling is a procedure where students report their classmates’ positive and prosocial behavior. The present study examined the effects of tootling on students’ disruptive and academically engaged behavior in three general education high school classrooms. An A-B-A-B withdrawal design was used to assess the effects of the intervention. Students wrote tootles anonymously on paper slips and placed them into a marked container. Unlike previous tootling studies, a randomized independent group contingency procedure was used to reward the students to reduce the number of steps required to implement the intervention. At the end of the class period, teachers randomly drew three …

Predicting Academic Performance On High-Stakes Tests: Development Of The Brief Behavior, Academic, And Social Screener (B-Bass), Trisha Danielle Franklin

Doctoral Dissertations

In order to develop the Brief Behavior, Academic, and Social Screener (B-BASS), an experimental measure for identifying students at risk for academic underachievement and for predicting performance on high-stakes tests, data were obtained from elementary teachers for 198 third- through fifth-grade rural elementary students in the Southeastern United States. Teachers provided ratings on items within the following global domains: cognitive ability, social/emotional traits, socioeconomic and family characteristics, and executive functions using a brief, practical, contextually appropriate format, one sensitive to local norms. Results reveal strong test-retest correlations (r indices > .95) and moderate to high inter-correlations among the items. Based …

Comparing Group Contingencies: An Investigation Of The Role Of Group Size In A First-Grade Classroom, Katelyn Crabtree Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

Group-oriented contingencies are often used in the classroom as a means to enhance academic performance. Randomization of contingency components and group size have important implications for the effectiveness of these contingencies. The current study was designed to extend research on group contingencies by evaluating and comparing a randomly-selected small group dependent contingency with a large group interdependent contingency in a first-grade classroom. In this classroom, students sit at tables consisting of four students. Percentage correctly completed on daily independent math assignments represented the dependent variable. Class-wide averages, small group averages (i.e., tables), and individual student data was collected. Researchers also …