Matching Items (4)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Housing
- All Subjects: Teachers--In-service training--United States.
- Creators: Buss, Ray R
- Status: Published
Description
Colleges and universities have continued to refine their understanding of engagement, affinity, and retention. At Arizona State University (ASU), the goal has been to continually retain first-year students at a 90%+ retention rate. At ASU, two key aspects of the first-year experience have been employed to foster retention. First, ASU has grouped on-campus students so they lived in residential colleges, housing students with others in the same college, to aid retention of first-year students. Second, ASU has required first-year students to take a 101 class, an orientation to ASU resources (library, advising, etc.) and its community (student organizations, clubs, etc.). The residential college living experience has afforded students opportunities to intentionally engage in campus events, connect with other students, and develop a vision for success. The 101 class has provided students with opportunities to learn about resources and community that have enriched their first-year experiences. Together, these two key approaches have offered students pathways to building initial engagement at the institution. The current research study was conducted to examine the ways in which students became engaged during their initial semester at ASU. Student participants in this study all lived in the W. P. Carey (WPC) Residential College Community in Hassayampa Academic Village (HAV) and were enrolled in WPC 101—Student Success in Business. WPC 101 was focused on helping students navigate college and learn about campus resources.
In the study, the researcher infused three Engagement Workshops into the WPC 101 curriculum alongside pre-existing assignments to afford students learning opportunities for a richer, deeper exploration and reflection on their first-semester experience. Students participated in a pre- and post-intervention survey, contributed written narratives and reflections, and six students completed individual interviews.
Results of the study, particularly the qualitative results, indicated (a) quality of relationships, (b) ASU community, and (c) campus environment emerged as variables that served as the ‘roots of engagement’ for these first-semester students Thus, the current work extended previous research on engagement by identifying the initial developmental aspects of engagement among first-semester, university students. The discussion included detailed explanations of the results, limitations, implications for research and practice, lessons learned, and conclusions.
In the study, the researcher infused three Engagement Workshops into the WPC 101 curriculum alongside pre-existing assignments to afford students learning opportunities for a richer, deeper exploration and reflection on their first-semester experience. Students participated in a pre- and post-intervention survey, contributed written narratives and reflections, and six students completed individual interviews.
Results of the study, particularly the qualitative results, indicated (a) quality of relationships, (b) ASU community, and (c) campus environment emerged as variables that served as the ‘roots of engagement’ for these first-semester students Thus, the current work extended previous research on engagement by identifying the initial developmental aspects of engagement among first-semester, university students. The discussion included detailed explanations of the results, limitations, implications for research and practice, lessons learned, and conclusions.
ContributorsLeyson, Timothy Paul (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Brown, Matthew (Committee member) / Shapiro, Cory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
A core reform area of President Obama’s Race to the Top (RTT) framework, the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program, offered funding to states for the development of their own data systems. As a result, Arizona received funding to build a longitudinal student data system. However the targeted audience—teachers—needed training to move from a state of ‘data rich but information poor’ to one of developing actionable knowledge.
In this mixed methods action research study, six teachers from three schools participated in job-embedded data-informed decision making (DIDM) and root cause analysis (RCA) professional development to improve their abilities to employ DIDM and RCA strategies to determine root causes for student achievement gaps. This study was based on the theories of situated learning, specifically the concept of communities of practice (CoP), change theory, and the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM). Because teachers comprise most of the workforce in a district, it is important to encourage them to shift from working in isolation to effectively implement and sustain changes in practice. To address this concern, an online wiki provided an avenue for participants to interact, reflect, and share experiences across schools as they engaged in the application of new learning.
The results from this ten-week study indicated an increase in participant readiness levels to: (a) use and manage data sources, (b) apply strategies, and (c) collaborate with others to solve problems of practice. Results also showed that participants engaged in collaborative conversation using the online wiki when they wanted to share concerns or gain further information to make decisions. The online collaboration results indicated higher levels of online discussion occurred when participants were attempting to solve a problem of practice during the learning process.
Overall, participants (a) used collaborative strategies to seek, create, and/or utilize multiple sources of data, not just student learning data, (b) worked through implementation challenges when making changes in practice, and (c) sought further types of data collection to inform their decisions about root causes. Implications from this study warrant further investigation into the use of an online CoP as an avenue for increasing teacher collaboration across schools.
In this mixed methods action research study, six teachers from three schools participated in job-embedded data-informed decision making (DIDM) and root cause analysis (RCA) professional development to improve their abilities to employ DIDM and RCA strategies to determine root causes for student achievement gaps. This study was based on the theories of situated learning, specifically the concept of communities of practice (CoP), change theory, and the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM). Because teachers comprise most of the workforce in a district, it is important to encourage them to shift from working in isolation to effectively implement and sustain changes in practice. To address this concern, an online wiki provided an avenue for participants to interact, reflect, and share experiences across schools as they engaged in the application of new learning.
The results from this ten-week study indicated an increase in participant readiness levels to: (a) use and manage data sources, (b) apply strategies, and (c) collaborate with others to solve problems of practice. Results also showed that participants engaged in collaborative conversation using the online wiki when they wanted to share concerns or gain further information to make decisions. The online collaboration results indicated higher levels of online discussion occurred when participants were attempting to solve a problem of practice during the learning process.
Overall, participants (a) used collaborative strategies to seek, create, and/or utilize multiple sources of data, not just student learning data, (b) worked through implementation challenges when making changes in practice, and (c) sought further types of data collection to inform their decisions about root causes. Implications from this study warrant further investigation into the use of an online CoP as an avenue for increasing teacher collaboration across schools.
ContributorsWann, Patti Ann (Author) / Marley, Scott C. (Thesis advisor) / Buss, Ray R (Committee member) / Ewbank, Ann D (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Data and the use of data to make educational decisions have attained new-found prominence in K-12 education following the inception of high-stakes testing and subsequent linking of teacher evaluations and teacher-performance pay to students' outcomes on standardized assessments. Although the research literature suggested students' academic performance benefits were derived from employing data-informed decision making (DIDM), many educators have not felt efficacious about implementing and using DIDM practices. Additionally, the literature suggested a five-factor model of teachers' efficacy and anxiety with respect to using DIDM practices: (a) identification of relevant information, (b) interpretation of relevant information, (c) application of interpretations of data to their classroom practices, (d) requisite technological skills, and (e) comfort with data and statistics.
This action research study was designed to augment a program of support focused on DIDM, which was being offered at a K-8 charter school in Arizona. It sought to better understand the relation between participation in professional development (PD) modules and teachers' self-efficacy for using DIDM practices. It provided an online PD component, in which 19 kindergarten through 8th-grade teachers worked through three self-guided online learning modules, focused sequentially on (a) identification of relevant student data, (b) interpretation of relevant student data, and (c) application of interpretations of data to classroom practices. Each module concluded with an in-person reflection session, in which teachers shared artifacts they developed based on the modules, discussed challenges, shared solutions, and considered applications to their classrooms.
Results of quantitative data from pre- and post-intervention assessments, suggested the intervention positively influenced participants' self-efficacy for (a) identifying and (b) interpreting relevant student data. Qualitative results from eight semi-structured interviews conducted at the conclusion of the intervention indicated that teachers, regardless of previous experience using data, viewed DIDM favorably and were more able to find and draw conclusions from their data than they were prior to the intervention. The quantitative and qualitative data exhibited complementarity pointing to the same conclusions. The discussion focused on explaining how the intervention influenced participants' self-efficacy for using DIDM practices, anxiety around using DIDM practices, and use of DIDM practices.
This action research study was designed to augment a program of support focused on DIDM, which was being offered at a K-8 charter school in Arizona. It sought to better understand the relation between participation in professional development (PD) modules and teachers' self-efficacy for using DIDM practices. It provided an online PD component, in which 19 kindergarten through 8th-grade teachers worked through three self-guided online learning modules, focused sequentially on (a) identification of relevant student data, (b) interpretation of relevant student data, and (c) application of interpretations of data to classroom practices. Each module concluded with an in-person reflection session, in which teachers shared artifacts they developed based on the modules, discussed challenges, shared solutions, and considered applications to their classrooms.
Results of quantitative data from pre- and post-intervention assessments, suggested the intervention positively influenced participants' self-efficacy for (a) identifying and (b) interpreting relevant student data. Qualitative results from eight semi-structured interviews conducted at the conclusion of the intervention indicated that teachers, regardless of previous experience using data, viewed DIDM favorably and were more able to find and draw conclusions from their data than they were prior to the intervention. The quantitative and qualitative data exhibited complementarity pointing to the same conclusions. The discussion focused on explaining how the intervention influenced participants' self-efficacy for using DIDM practices, anxiety around using DIDM practices, and use of DIDM practices.
ContributorsNelson, Andrew (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Preach, Deborah (Committee member) / Buchanan, James (Committee member) / Mertler, Craig A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
To investigate the impacts of an energy efficiency retrofit, indoor air quality and resident health were evaluated at a low‐income senior housing apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona, before and after a green energy building renovation. Indoor and outdoor air quality sampling was carried out simultaneously with a questionnaire to characterize personal habits and general health of residents. Measured indoor formaldehyde levels before the building retrofit routinely exceeded reference exposure limits, but in the long‐term follow‐up sampling, indoor formaldehyde decreased for the entire study population by a statistically significant margin. Indoor PM levels were dominated by fine particles and showed a statistically significant decrease in the long‐term follow‐up sampling within certain resident subpopulations (i.e. residents who report smoking and residents who had lived longer at the apartment complex).
ContributorsFrey, S.E. (Author) / Destaillats, H. (Author) / Cohn, S. (Author) / Ahrentzen, S. (Author) / Fraser, M.P. (Author)
Created2015