Education Policy Commons^™

Teachers’ Perceptions Of Junior Secondary Education And Student Academic Performance In Central Ethiopia, Mulugeta Haile

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite Ethiopia’s rapid economic growth and its attempts at different educational models, there is a significant problem with junior secondary school education and student academic performance. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of junior secondary school education in central Ethiopia and what innovative academic approaches are necessary to increase student academic performance. The study used self-determination theory as its foundation. The main research question was focused on junior secondary school education, current policies, and students’ academic performance. A nonprobability purposive sampling method was used to select 10 teachers from two schools. The study used semi structured …

Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions Of Active Shooter Drills In Early Childhood Classrooms, Melissa Joy Racioppa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The threat of an active shooter is something early childhood educators need to prepare for, but a literature review regarding active shooter drills indicated a gap in the research focused on the perceptions the early childhood educators. Using a conceptual lens based on developmentally appropriate practice and the developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, this qualitative case study aimed to explore the perceptions of early childhood educators on the current model of active shooter drills and the developmental appropriateness of these drills when used with an early childhood population. The participants were early childhood educators familiar with their school’s emergency …

Transforming Campus Climate For Diversity: Accreditation Liaison Officer Perceptions And Beliefs Regarding The Impact Of Regional Accreditation On Institutional Change, David H. Sundby

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Despite attention given to the increasing diversity in higher education, greater barriers to college access and degree attainment exist for many minoritized groups in comparison to dominant groups. Research illustrates that campus climate for diversity, a systemic concept, plays a critical role in the success of minoritized groups. Additionally, institutional accreditation is a critical process, and it may be a catalyst for systemic change. However, there is little research on the relationship between the regional accreditation process and institutional change, with even less research on the impact of accreditation on campus climate for diversity.

To address this gap in literature, …

Promoting Privilege: Selecting Students For A Public Gifted School, Douglas G. Wren

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Point of view: I am a cisgender, White male in my sixties. I retired recently after working with children in a professional capacity since the mid-1970s. During my education career, I was an elementary school teacher, gifted teacher, research specialist, and director of research and evaluation in a historically White school district that became majority African American during my tenure.

Value of submission: Numerous educational policies and procedures in the United States benefit children from privileged families over their traditionally underserved counterparts, which include students of color and low-income students. This piece describes a public school district’s inequitable practices related …

The International Student Experience At U.S. Community Colleges At The Onset Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Melissa Whatley, Heidi Fischer

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

This study’s purpose is to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students who were studying at U.S. community colleges at the onset of this public health crisis. While previous work has explored the impact of the pandemic on international students generally, we argue that community college international students deserve focused attention due to their potentially marginalized status on their campuses. Using a mixed methods research approach, we analyze survey and interview data provided by community college international educators. Our results speak to two overarching themes: the supports provided to students at the onset of the pandemic (and …

Impact Of Intersectionality Of School Discipline And Race On Boys Of Color, Melvin Lewis Shepard

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Disciplinary practices in California result in minority boys receiving a high rate of disproportionate discipline in the public-school system requiring those students to decide whether to return to school to achieve their high school diploma. The purpose of this case study was to explore what impacts the expelled student’s education decisions from the perspective of individuals who have experience with the California disciplinary system and counseling students who were expelled. The theoretical foundation used was critical race theory by Derick Bell and a conceptual framework of intersectionality and race context developed by the Combahee Initiative and Crenshaw. The study used …

Catalyzing Change In Higher Education: Social Capital And Network Leadership In The Competency-Based Education Network, Bruce William Haupt Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Collaborative inter-organizational networks can be effective at catalyzing and supporting the generation and diffusion of new models and practices. With shared purpose, structure, and resources, network organizations can facilitate knowledge exchange and the growth of inter-organizational relationships. In this study, I sought to better understand how network organizations influence social capital and the spread of innovative practices. Of particular interest were the roles of national network and sub-national network organizations (sub-networks), and the interactive learning processes of network newcomers. I focused on the diverse array of colleges and universities involved in the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), and their efforts to …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Parents’ Awareness And Perspective Of School Choice Scales: Development, Revision, And Validation Using The Rasch Model, Katherine Leung Robershaw

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Parents want the best for their children. But for those who also believe in equal educational opportunity, they struggle with the moral dilemmas raised by school choice. To investigate where parents stand in this dilemma, this study is devoted to the creation of the Parents’ Awareness and Perspective of School Choice (PAPSC) scales, a survey instrument capturing a continuum of conversations surrounding parental school choice, from parents’ awareness of school choice policies or programs to debates surrounding parental freedom of school choice. This study also emphasized the use of well-developed, validated survey tools in educational policy and school choice …

Strategic Educational Leadership Within The Policy-Making Arena: The Promulgation, Passage, And Practice Of Tennessee's High Performing School Districts Flexibility Act Of 2013, Robert Lawrence Hullett Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

In 2010, Tennessee’s 106th General Assembly passed the First to the Top Act (2010), a companion legislation for the federal Race to the Top Act (2009) program launched by the Obama Administration. A provision of this state law required that half of teacher and principal evaluations be based upon student achievement, which included a component of required continuous academic growth. For school districts whose students scored at the highest academic performance levels, the continuous growth component would negatively impact their teachers’ and principals’ annual evaluations. In 2012, the Williamson County Schools (WCS) superintendent requested mitigation for relieve from the Tennessee …

Nudging Parents To Improve Children's Oral Health: A Field Study, Deborah Marciano, Ariel Tikotsky, Merav Kynam Orenstein, Hadas Goldberg, Yuval Vered

Social Policy Institute Research

This brief presents the results from a field experiment that tested strategies for improving parental participation in an oral health promotion workshop.

In this study, daycare centers, in which a team of dental hygienists provided oral health workshops for parents, were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions.

Specifically, daycare centers were randomly assigned to introduce the Teeth Brushing Board (TBB)—i.e., an interactive poster board to report whether parents brushed their child’s teeth the previous day—into daycare classrooms in the two weeks before the oral health workshop. Further, parents were randomly assigned to receive invitation letters to the workshop …

Increasing Successful Completion Of Practical Engineering Diploma Programs, Naomi Gershoni

Social Policy Institute Research

This brief summarizes the results from an experiment that focused on increasing the percentage of college students who submitted and successfully defended their final projects and thus were eligible to earn a professional degree from a technical college.

The experiment focused on three study fields: architecture, electrical engineering, and software engineering.

In the study, a random group of college departments introduced pre-specified deadlines for the final project submission and defense, as well as sent students personalized text messages that provided reminders, encouragements, and additional information on the benefits of completing program requirements in a timely manner.

Study findings show that …

[Withdrawn], Social Policy Institute, Washington University In St. Louis

Social Policy Institute Research

This paper was withdrawn per the request of the authors, May 23, 2024.

Research article available at Jabbari, J., Jackson, J., Roll, S., & Grinstein-Weiss, M. (2024). Pinching Pennies or Money to Burn? The Role of Grit in Financial Behaviors. Social Psychology, 55(2). https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1864-9335/a000545?journalCode=zsp

A Gender And Race Theoretical And Probabilistic Analysis Of The Recent Title Ix Policy Changes, Jordan Wellington

Scripps Senior Theses

On May 6th, 2020, after extensive public comment and review, the Department of Education published the final rule for the new Title IX regulations, which took effect in schools on August 14th. Title IX is the nearly fifty year old piece of the Education Amendments that prohibits sexual discrimination in federally funded schools. Several of these changes, such as the inclusion of live hearings and cross examination of witnesses, have been widely criticized by victims’ rights advocates for potentially retraumatizing victims of sexual assault and discouraging students from pursuing a Title IX claim. While the impact of the new regulations …

Parents’ Perceptions On The Impact That Sros Have On School Safety, John Mayfield

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

School Resource Officers (SROs) are an essential element in school safety and an even more critical component in the field of community-orientated policing. While numerous research studies have examined SROs from many different lenses, none have examined the impact that SROs have on school safety through a parents' lens. The purpose of this quantitative nonexperimental study was to examine parents’ perceptions on the impact that SROs have on school safety through an online survey accessible to parents through SurveyMonkey. The research question's goal was to answer two fundamental questions, to examine the degree that parents support the presence of SROs …

Enhancing The National Assessment System To Improve Learning Outcomes In Bhutan: Case Study 2020-2021, Anu Radha Sharma, Anannya Chakraborty, Arjun Kumar Gurung

Assessment and Reporting

To measure the efficacy of school sector interventions, Bhutan Council for School Examinations and Assessment (BCSEA) partnered with Australian Council for Educational Research (India) to strengthen its National Education Assessment (NEA) for obtaining evidence on learning, monitoring the progress of learning outcomes, understanding associations between context and achievement, and differences in achievement between groups. Eventually, the assessment reform will support measuring learning at the key stages of grades 3, 6, and 9. This case study report presents an overview of this project.

Culturally Responsive Curriculum Implementation Of Middle School Principals In Southern Texas, Caroline Wendy Narine

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although culturally responsive curricula are designed to educate students to be both socially and culturally successful, the curriculum implementation leadership practices middle school principals have used to support such curricula have been unclear. This study explored how middle school principals in southern Texas were supporting their teachers with implementing a culturally responsive curriculum in their schools. This basic qualitative study employed the applied critical leadership conceptual framework to explore the culturally responsive curriculum implementation leadership practices of middle school principals in southern Texas. The criteria for the selection of participants were 2 to 5 years’ experience as a principal in …

Principals’ Perspectives Regarding Their Leadership Roles In Smart Board Technology Integration, Donna Faith Nelson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractSmart Board Technologies (SBTs) are prevalent in K–6 schools and teachers are expected to use them to enhance student learning. The Smart Board (SB) may not be used effectively in the classroom. The effective use of the SB increases student engagement and performance. To ensure the effective use of the SB, the principal’s role is crucial. While the teachers’ perspectives about SBT use in pedagogy have often been researched, the literature concerning principals’ perspectives in SBT integration is scarce. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand principals’ perspectives regarding their leadership roles in SBT integration. Bass’s theory …

Marginalisation: Practitioner Level, Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

Education Analytics Service

This Practitioner level module is designed to ensure staff members who engage with and lead policy dialogue with international and domestic partners understand the patterns of marginalisation in education and the policies, strategies and structures that can be put in place at the national, school and community level to reduce marginalisation. It is recommended that staff complete the Marginalisation: Foundation level module as background information to this Practitioner level module.

Gender Parity In Science: The Intersection Of The National Education Policy 2020 And The Draft Science, Technology, And Innovation Policy, Jyoti Sharma

Teacher India

With International Women’s Day observed on 8 March, Jyoti Sharma’s review of the National Education Policy 2020 and the draft Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy through the lens of gender parity is a timely reminder of the need to support improved participation of women in science.