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- Creators: Department of Marketing
- Creators: Patel, Mookesh
Description
The development of literacy abilities in young children has been a major concern for authorities and teachers in the USA for the last two decades. Significant effort has been devoted to ensure that preschool settings allow and motivate children to engage in literacy activities before entering kindergarten. Research has found that a rich classroom environment in preschool settings enables teachers to encourage literacy interest in children at a young age. While a large amount of research has concentrated in testing the effect of prescriptive modifications in the classroom environment, few have focused on studying the design process and tools that teachers follow to design their classrooms. Public policy and research studies in the United States, mention the design of the classroom environment among teacher's responsibilities, but they do not include practical or methodological guides for them to use. The purpose of this research was to study the design process and tools that teachers use to design literacy rich classrooms in preschool settings. A case study was conducted at the ASU Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Preschool at Arizona State University. This setting provides a unique opportunity for an exploratory study of this nature because it is a private child development laboratory with a flexible curriculum. Participant observation sessions and in depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the design process used and experienced by the teachers. Findings revealed an iterative and cyclic design process that is repeated over time adjusting to the influence of numerous factors. Results also suggest that teacher's knowledge and beliefs highly influence the organization of their classrooms. Considering these factors as a standpoint allows for further exploration to determine a design process suitable for teachers when designing their learning environments. The use of a structured yet flexible design process, can be a potential tool for educators to design their classrooms, collaborate, document and transmit their knowledge. Although the findings correspond to a specific site studied, the implications are wide reaching as problems and opportunities expressed by the staff are common to other educational settings with similar characteristics.
ContributorsCortes, Catalina (Author) / Patel, Mookesh (Thesis advisor) / Heywood, William (Committee member) / Christie, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This is an evaluation of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law learning environment project which involved 120 participants (32 faculty and 88 students). In 2016, the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law moved their main building to the newly built Beus Center for Law and Society building at the downtown Phoenix campus in order to bring the law students and faculty closer to the legal community that is present in downtown Phoenix. Prior to this move surveys regarding the Tempe campus were administered to the law students and faculty along with classroom observations and focus groups in order to conduct an evaluation of the environment. This evaluation examines the following six areas about the Tempe campus: the physical classroom environment; the instructional strategies used by instructors in the classroom; technology utilized in the classroom; frequency of technical difficulties by the instructor; and interactions between faculty, students, and the legal community. This evaluation only analyzed the quantitative data that was provided from the survey questions and not the qualitative data from classroom observations and focus groups. Within this evaluation is an explanation of the project that was conducted in part with the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and an overview of the participants involved in this evaluation. Additionally, this report will describe the methodology that was used to conduct the evaluation. Lastly, this evaluation includes the findings based off of the survey given to the evaluation participants and the recommendation for the new Beus Center for Law and Society based on the findings of the evaluation.
ContributorsLippincott, Megan Marie (Author) / Barnard, Wendy (Thesis director) / O'Donnell, Megan (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12