Matching Items (10)
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- All Subjects: Educational leadership
- Creators: Fischman, Gustavo
- Status: Published
Description
This study investigated the current state of the U.S. and Chinese urban middle school math teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for the topic of functions. A comparative, descriptive case study was employed to capture the PCK of 23 teachers in Arizona and of 28 teachers in Beijing, regarding their instructional knowledge, understanding of student thinking and curricular knowledge--three key components based on Shulman's conceptualization of PCK--related to functions. Cross-case comparisons were used to analyze the PCK of teacher groups across countries and socio-economic statuses (SES), based on the questionnaire, lesson plan, and interview data.
This study finds that despite cultural differences, teachers are likely to share some commonalities with respect to their instructional decisions, understanding of student thinking and curricular knowledge. These similarities may reflect the convergence in teaching practice in the U.S. and China and the dedication the two countries make in improving math education. This study also finds the cross-country differences and cross-SES differences regarding teachers' PCK. On the one hand, the U.S. and Chinese math teachers of this study tend to diverge in valuing different forms of representations, explaining student misconceptions, and relating functions to other math topics. Teachers' own understanding of functions (and mathematics), standards, and high-stakes testing in each country significantly influence their PCK. On the other hand, teachers from the higher SES schools are more likely to show higher expectations for and stronger confidence in their students' mathematical skills compared to their counterparts from the lower SES schools. Teachers' differential beliefs in students' ability levels significantly contribute to their differences between socio-economic statuses.
This study finds that despite cultural differences, teachers are likely to share some commonalities with respect to their instructional decisions, understanding of student thinking and curricular knowledge. These similarities may reflect the convergence in teaching practice in the U.S. and China and the dedication the two countries make in improving math education. This study also finds the cross-country differences and cross-SES differences regarding teachers' PCK. On the one hand, the U.S. and Chinese math teachers of this study tend to diverge in valuing different forms of representations, explaining student misconceptions, and relating functions to other math topics. Teachers' own understanding of functions (and mathematics), standards, and high-stakes testing in each country significantly influence their PCK. On the other hand, teachers from the higher SES schools are more likely to show higher expectations for and stronger confidence in their students' mathematical skills compared to their counterparts from the lower SES schools. Teachers' differential beliefs in students' ability levels significantly contribute to their differences between socio-economic statuses.
ContributorsZou, Hui (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Berliner, David (Committee member) / Sloane, Finbarr (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The experiences of lesbian and gay (LG) administrators in school and district-level positions are different than their heterosexual counterparts, not just because their social lenses are different, but because the policies and climates of the communities where they work has a significant impact on their relationships with stakeholder groups in the schools/offices. In this qualitative study I document and analyze the stories of LG educators, how they navigate their professional relationships, how they evolve as leaders, and their understanding of how their choices to be out or not have influenced their careers and professional relationships. The study also explores how performativity and sexuality relate to the professional relationships of the participants. Finally, the leaders' stories provide insight into the experiences of marginalized groups of professionals whose stories are often absent from the professional and research literatures on school administration. These eight school and district administrators live in the Southwestern and Northwest, many of them are out at work and a few are not. They range in age from mid-20s to late 50s, and their experiences as educational leaders spans from just one year to over 25 years. The participants sat for two to three interviews each over the course of approximately four months. The names of the participants, institutions, and specific communities have been changed to maintain confidentiality. I found that all the participants' relationships with stakeholders groups and individuals were impacted to varying degrees by fear - specifically the fear that results from the heteronormative rules, biases, and expectations of the public school system. The heteronormativity of the public education system is often a reflection of its community's belief system, as well as a reflection of the larger, more unconscious heteronormative belief system that shapes schools and educational leadership, a leader's professional capacity, and the relationships that are critical to being an effective leader. Essentially, the heteronormative fear reflected in the policies and practices of a community, an educational institution, and its members has a dramatic effect on the decisions and relationships that educational leaders have with key stakeholder groups on both an unconscious and conscious level.
ContributorsAnderson, Shannon (Author) / Powers, Jeanne (Thesis advisor) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, David Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Universities have been increasingly engaged in international collaborations with peer institutions overseas. In recent years, Confucius Institutes have emerged as a new model of collaboration between American universities and Chinese universities. In an attempt to identify factors contributing to successful international university collaborations, this study used the case study method and focused on one Confucius Institute between MMU, an American University, and ZZU, a Chinese university, and intended to identify factors leading to the success of the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration. The study investigated the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration within the framework of the MMU-ZZU institutional partnership. Based on data collected from the institutional documents, interviews, site visits and news reports, this study examined the experiences and perceptions of the university's stakeholders involved in creating and sustaining this particular Confucius Institute, including stakeholders at the program level, at the college level, and at the institutional level both at MMU and ZZU. Using the glonacal agency heuristics framework, the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration was a result of joint forces of stakeholders at the program level, at the college level, and at the institutional level from ZZU and MMU. Stakeholders, no matter what level they are and which institution they are affiliated with, had to navigate through the significant differences between them to develop synergy to be successful. Synergy, including vertical synergy developed among stakeholders within each institution and horizontal synergy developed among stakeholders between institutions, turned out to be critical to the success of the MMU-ZZU CI. The study concluded that synergy in leadership, organizational contexts, stakeholders' resources, and the synergy in the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration and the MMU-ZZU institutional partnership, led to the success of the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration.
ContributorsLi, Mengying (Author) / De Los Santos Jr., Alfredo G (Thesis advisor) / Wiley, Terrence (Thesis advisor) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
I conducted a qualitative, comparative study on the nursing education systems in the United Kingdom and the United States, focusing on two universities—Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona and Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, England. The goals of my thesis included comparing the educational, economic, and cultural aspects of the countries and how those aspects impact nursing students on both sides of the pond. The educational and economic aspects were compared by utilizing existing literature and open data sources such as the university websites and publications from comparative education journals, while the cultural differences were evaluated by conducting short, one-on-one interviews with students enrolled in the Adult Health courses at both universities. The findings from the interviews were transcribed and coded, and findings from the sites were compared. While there is an extensive amount of research published regarding comparative education, there has not been much published comparing these developed countries. While there is a significant difference in the structure and cost of the nursing programs, there are more similarities than differences in culture between nursing students interviewed in the US and those interviewed in the UK.
ContributorsTahiliani, Shreja (Author) / Hagler, Debra (Thesis director) / Allen, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University. College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Employing Queer Intersectionality, this study explored how undocuqueer activists made sense of, interacted and worked within the intersection of their LGBTQ and undocumented experience. Participants ascribed three overarching self-meanings: Vulnerability, Complexity, and Resilience. These self-meanings describe the ways participants perceived the interplay of their gender, sexuality and immigration status within the current sociopolitical context of the U.S. Recognizing their vulnerability within a state of illegibility, participants described a sense of exclusion within spaces of belonging, and wariness managing relationships with others; opting for more complex self-definitions, they resisted simplistic conceptions of identity that rendered their social locations invisible (e.g., homonormativity, heteronormativity, DREAMer); and describing themselves as resilient, they described surviving societal as well as familial rejection even when surviving seemed impossible to do so. Interacting and working within the intersection of gender, sexuality and immigration status, participants described identity negotiation and coming out as a form of resistance to institutionalized oppression, and resilience amidst simultaneous anti-immigrant, xenophobic and heterosexist power structures. Participants learned to live in multiple worlds at the same time, and embrace the multiplicity of their undocuqueer identity while seeking to bridge their communities through stories, activism and peer education. This study has implications for further understanding the way that queer politics and identity interact/ relate with various axes of inequality.
ContributorsCisneros, Jesus (Author) / Ott, Molly (Thesis advisor) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Kate (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Minority mental health patients face many health inequities and inequalities that may stem from implicit bias and a lack of cultural awareness from their healthcare providers. I analyzed the current literature evaluating implicit bias among healthcare providers and culturally specific life traumas that Latinos and African Americans face that can impact their mental health. Additionally, I researched a current mental health assessments tool, the Child and Adolescent Trauma Survey (CATS), and evaluated it for the use on Latino and African American patients. Face-to-face interviews with two healthcare providers were also used to analyze the CATS for its’ applicability to Latino and African American patients. Results showed that these assessments were not sufficient in capturing culturally specific life traumas of minority patients. Based on the literature review and analysis of the interviews with healthcare providers, a novel assessment tool, the Culturally Traumatic Events Questionnaire (CTEQ), was created to address the gaps that currently make up other mental health assessment tools used on minority patients.
ContributorsAldana, Lauren Michelle (Author) / Sullivan-Detheridge, Julie (Thesis director) / Allen, Angela (Committee member) / Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
The purpose of this action research was to work with Brazilian trained educators in a Community of Practice (CoP) to explore how teachers collectively define and talk about critical thinking (CT). The research also examined how past teaching experiences shaped their attitudes toward emphasizing CT in teaching. In addition, the research studied how participation in a CoP focused on CT changed classroom planning. The study is grounded in Community of Practice and Social Constructivism. As an international school, this study examined related research conducted in Jordan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Pakistan. This qualitative action research was 12 weeks in length with six participants who were all from Brazil and worked at a private bilingual international secondary school. Participants completed an initial interview and final interview. They also completed online journals, which were assembled weekly for 45 minutes, and maximized their efforts constructing a unit plan utilizing the Understanding by Design method. The results of the study describe the teachers’ definition of critical thinking, and also present an understanding of how the CoP shaped their attitudes. This, in turn, resulted in members’ updated classroom planning, which was due to participation in the cohort. Further issues and credibility, contextualization, and transferability as well as researcher positionality were discussed.
ContributorsJaramillo, Kevin Lee (Author) / Dorn, Sherman (Thesis advisor) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Buss, Ray (Committee member) / Johnston, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The School of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (SEBI) student’sengagement with SEBI support services has been a matter of concern since the
establishment of the School in 2017. Of the fifteen hundred (1500) students registered at
the School, approximately 40% of them use the student support services offered to
increase retention, enhance performance, reduce uncertainties, and guide students to
success. The literature showed that student engagement is important for the greater
achievement of student outcomes, maintaining retention, as well as to offset any
ambiguity and challenges within the learning environments. The practitioner used Astin’s
Theory of Student Involvement and Tinto’s Student Integration Theory to discuss the
phenomenon of infrequent engagements of students with student support services SEBI.
The research used a mixed-method approach to investigate the current framework of
student support services at SEBI and student's engagement with these services. The
findings suggest that the students' perception of the support services offered by SEBI is
that the services are inadequate, and that their success is as a result of peer support and
their individual persistence. The practitioner proposes a student support strategy
prototype that will involve a collaboration between students and faculty members for a
more effective and efficient student support service.
ContributorsAlves, Tracy (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Stephanie (Committee member) / Eardley, Trisha (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This study explores the impact of a professional development (PD) activity conducted for teachers of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) at 15 American-curriculum international schools. The intervention involved teachers utilizing the 3D-PAST screening tool to systematically evaluate the alignment of teacher-designed assessments with the constructs of the NGSS and best practices in science instruction. Data about the way the intervention enhanced or challenged teachers’ understanding of the NGSS were collected via a multiple methods approach. The New Framework of Science Education Survey of Teacher Understanding (NFSE-STU) was used in a retrospective pretest-posttest fashion to assess changes in teachers’ understanding of NGSS constructs. Subsequently, interviews were conducted with participants which provided data that expanded upon the NFSE-STU findings. The Refined Consensus Model of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (RCM-PCK) was used to interpret the findings and situate the study within the extant literature on teacher PCK. The intervention was found to have a statistically significant effect on teachers’ understanding of the NGSS in all areas measured by the NFSE-STU. Additionally, data suggest that the intervention elicited changes in teachers’ classroom practices and improved collaborative professional practices. Also highlighted in the analysis was the significance of the relationship between the intervention moderator and the participants as a strong predictor of the way the intervention was perceived by teachers. The findings strongly support the suggestion that international school administrators seeking to maximize the impact of science teacher professional development should consider PD activities that train teachers in the use of aids to align NGSS assessments, because doing so simultaneously enhances teacher understanding of the NGSS while encouraging meaningful changes to professional practice. The study contributes to the nascent body of literature utilizing the RCM-PCK to situate understanding of science-teacher PCK, and fills a void in literature examining PD in American curriculum international schools, and highlights issues with potential to serve as foci for additional cycles of action research in the areas of international schools, science teacher and NGSS-related professional development, and the use of tools similar to 3D-PAST within other teaching disciplines.
ContributorsWilcox, Wyatt (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Graves Wolf, Leigh (Committee member) / Droese, Shirley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
The purpose of this study was to understand Black students within the Class of 2023 at Cleveland Heights High School (CHHS) motivation for pursuing a post-secondary education through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) and Counter-storytelling. CHHS is identified as a comprehensive high school where students have access to a rigorous, engaging curriculum that will prepare them for college and career. CHHS is located on the East side of Cleveland and has a predominately Black student population. Despite the district and CHHS efforts to cultivate a college going culture, the college enrollment rate is around 46 percent. This study utilized a qualitative Critical Race Methodology (CRM) as a guiding framework in order to negate the deficit thinking stereotype that U.S society has unjustly placed on Black students in their pursuit of higher education. CRM in education challenges biological and cultural deficit stories through counter-storytelling, oral traditions, historiographies, etc., (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p.37). Utilizing this framework allowed Black students to see their life experiences as a source of value and a beneficial asset. By understanding students’ motivations for pursuing a postsecondary education will in turn help build systems of support as they prepare to tackle perceived post-secondary barriers. Study participants are a part of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program (GEAR UP). The students that participated in the study met the following criteria: participate in Gear Up, Black male or female, and first or second-generation college student. This study utilized an action research framework. In order to gain a better understanding of how college and career readiness workshops impacts students understanding and motivations to pursue a postsecondary education; students participated in a five-week long college and career readiness summer program. Students created personal narratives through the lens of counter-narrative storytelling. Counter-narratives are important means to document and share how race influences the educational experiences of people of color (Miller et al., 2020, p.273). The findings were analyzed using verbatim participant responses and four major themes emerged. The implications of this findings and recommendations for future research are provided in the final chapter.
ContributorsDaniel, Carmen C (Author) / Fischman, Gustavo (Thesis advisor) / Graves-Wolf, Leigh (Committee member) / Tefera, Adai (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021