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Description
First-year alternatively certified teachers face significant challenges as they attempt to address the complexities of classroom teaching, particularly when they are assigned to teach in urban school settings. As the number of alternatively certified teachers continues to increase, it is important to provide them with professional development opportunities that address

First-year alternatively certified teachers face significant challenges as they attempt to address the complexities of classroom teaching, particularly when they are assigned to teach in urban school settings. As the number of alternatively certified teachers continues to increase, it is important to provide them with professional development opportunities that address the challenges that they encounter in their first year of teaching. This action research study was conducted to examine a professional development model designed to support the development of a small group of first-year alternatively certified teachers in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (MLFTC) at Arizona State University. As first-year teachers within the Induction, Masters, and Certification (InMAC) program, their professional learning needs were unique. They had an immediate need to effectively acquire knowledge and apply it in their teaching practice as they concurrently completed coursework to obtain their master's degree and certification while serving as the teacher of record. This study provided the opportunity for five first-year alternatively certified teachers to participate in a project that provided professional development to meet their specific needs. This two-pronged professional development model included two components: (a) a mentoring component provided by a recently retired master teacher, and (b) a learning community that included opportunities for observation, collaboration, and reflection with National Board Certified teachers. This study was designed to improve teaching practices and increase teaching self-efficacy among the first-year alternatively certified teacher participants. Results from the mixed-method study provided evidence that the model benefited the participants by improving their teaching practices and increasing their teaching self-efficacy. In the discussion, the importance of non-evaluative feedback provided by the mentors was emphasized. Further, highly developed interpersonal relationships, effective communication processes, and helpful collaborative procedures were useful in understanding how alternatively certified teachers benefited from mentor feedback and guidance. Finally, implications for future practice and further research were offered.
ContributorsPreach, Deborah (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Barnett, Joshua (Committee member) / Gasket, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
In this dissertation I employed a culminating cycle of action research following two earlier ones to facilitate the creation of a professional learning community (PLC). My research took place at an elementary school in an urban area of the American southwest. As principal of this school I had

In this dissertation I employed a culminating cycle of action research following two earlier ones to facilitate the creation of a professional learning community (PLC). My research took place at an elementary school in an urban area of the American southwest. As principal of this school I had initiated the policies and procedures that were often recommended to create PLCs. However, observations of teachers in PLC meetings indicated that conversations focused on logistical planning issues, rather than on the in-depth pedagogical discussions that characterize high functioning PLCs. To address this problem I introduced a form of peer observation into the PLC meeting. This was achieved by showing short video recordings of teachers in their classrooms. I used a mixed methods approach to investigate how this innovation influenced three constructs associated with PLC meetings: professional learning, the sharing of tacit teaching knowledge, and collaboration in the PLC.

Quantitative data consisted of responses to a survey given as a pre-, post-, and retrospective pre-test. Results showed significant gains for all three constructs between the retrospective pre-test and the post-test, but no significant gain between the pre- and post-test. Analysis of qualitative data produced four assertions. First, the process of peer observation during a PLC meeting benefitted the personal learning of teachers. Second, peer observation benefitted teacher teams' abilities to demonstrate the critical behaviors of a true PLC. Third, the process of facilitating peer observation through video recordings evoked negative emotions. Fourth, the degree to which teachers were able to learn from a video was influenced by their perceptions of the video's authenticity and similarity to their own classrooms.

In the discussion, complementarity of the quantitative and qualitative data was described and results were explained in terms of previous research and established theory. Additionally, practical lessons that were learned, limitations, and research implications were described. In a concluding section, I discussed my personal learning regarding leadership, innovation, and action research; the purpose of the doctorate in education; and strengthening connections between research and practitioners.
ContributorsMacKinney, Bennett (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Zucker, Stanley (Committee member) / Haghighat, Ibi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University recently adopted a "technology infusion" approach to prepare teacher candidates (TC) to integrate technology into their instruction and meet the International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Teachers (ISTE Standards*T) by infusing technology integration approaches into methods courses. At the

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University recently adopted a "technology infusion" approach to prepare teacher candidates (TC) to integrate technology into their instruction and meet the International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Teachers (ISTE Standards*T) by infusing technology integration approaches into methods courses. At the onset of the technology infusion approach, one important ISTE Standard-T was neglected in the curriculum--that is, digital citizenship (DC), i.e., the responsible, legal, and ethical use of technology. To address this problem of practice, a suite of teaching materials and support services was created, the Technology Infusion Support System (TISS), to help instructors effectively teach DC. The suite consisted of four online modules on essential DC topics including copyright/fair use, digital footprint/social media, acceptable use policies, and responsible student behavior. The support component consisted of ongoing just-in-time support from a technology integration specialist, an instructor's guide, and a resource folder.

This mixed methods action research study was conducted to examine: DC instruction by those who used the TISS and the influence of DC instruction on TC's intention to promote and model DC in their future classrooms. With respect to the second objective, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) guided study efforts.

Participants included teacher education faculty members who taught DC in technology-infused methods courses, their students, and the technology infusion specialists who provided ongoing support to instructors throughout the duration of the study. Data gathered included survey data, observations, focus group interviews, instructor interviews, and researcher journal entries. Results suggested the TISS was a useful intervention in a college using a technology infusion approach. Course instructors provided consistent instruction on a topic outside of their area of expertise. Further, there was a significant increase in the students' intention to promote and model DC in their future classrooms. The discussion focuses on explaining: the effectiveness of DC instruction; how instruction in DC changes students' intentions to promote and model DC; and the usefulness of the TPB model in understanding how attitudes toward DC, and perceived behavioral control, i.e., efficacy, influence intention to promote and model DC.
ContributorsLindsey, LeeAnn (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Zucker, Stanley (Committee member) / Fritschi, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Online teacherpreneurs are current and former PreK-12 teachers who share their original classroom resources in online marketplaces where teachers download them for a small fee. Online teacherpreneurs’ resources are becoming prolific in classrooms today. Meanwhile, online teacherpreneurs stand to gain financially and professionally. This exploratory study drew on conceptual frameworks

Online teacherpreneurs are current and former PreK-12 teachers who share their original classroom resources in online marketplaces where teachers download them for a small fee. Online teacherpreneurs’ resources are becoming prolific in classrooms today. Meanwhile, online teacherpreneurs stand to gain financially and professionally. This exploratory study drew on conceptual frameworks from entrepreneurship and teacher leadership to describe the practice of online teacherpreneurship in terms of the characteristics of the people who participate, the school environments in which they work, and the possible impacts they experience. An exploratory sequential mixed methods design was used. In phase one, 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with online teacherpreneurs who ranked in the top 1% of sellers on TeachersPayTeachers.com for profits earned. In phase two, the results of the interviews were used to develop a quantitative survey, which was distributed to an international sample of 412 TeachersPayTeachers.com sellers with various levels of experience and sales success. Results from both phases were analyzed separately and together, indicating that online teacherpreneurs viewed themselves as helpful, hard-working, creative, and organized. While some online teacherpreneurs worked in supportive school environments, others worked in unsupportive or ambivalent schools. Most online teacherpreneurs kept their online business and classroom teaching separate. They reported that online teacherpreneurship involved a variety of practices including creating educational resources, collaborating with teachers, collaborating with fellow teacherpreneurs, and engaging in entrepreneurial endeavors such as marketing. They also believed they experienced impacts including improvements to teaching practice, teacher leadership opportunities, and some professional stressors. Implications for online teacherpreneurs and other stakeholders including teachers, school and district leaders, and teacher educators are considered.
ContributorsCrane, Catharyn Carisa (Author) / Archambault, Leanna M (Thesis advisor) / Buss, Ray R (Committee member) / Savenye, Wilhelmina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
One of the major issues confronting education in Arizona and across the United States has been the consistent low performance of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in comparison to their peers as evidenced by the disparity of the achievement gap at every level in the educational pipeline. A contributing

One of the major issues confronting education in Arizona and across the United States has been the consistent low performance of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in comparison to their peers as evidenced by the disparity of the achievement gap at every level in the educational pipeline. A contributing factor has been the lack of teacher preparation focused on teaching CLD students. Preparation focused on a culturally responsive curriculum about dispositions and pedagogical knowledge and skills as well as field experience placement with CLD students have been previously identified areas to consider when training preservice teachers (PSTs). Therefore, this study examined how a Culturally Responsive and Linguistic Teaching (CRLT) Framework would raise preservice teacher’s critical consciousness about teaching CLD students. The CRLT Framework focused on two specific areas; (a) a culturally responsive curriculum and (b) a team-based service-learning experience. The CRP curriculum included lessons designed to increase PSTs understanding about how their sociolinguist views influenced their pedagogical knowledge about teaching CLD students. In addition, the team-based service-learning approach, as a community of practice, provided experiences for PSTs to apply theory to practice. A mixed method analysis was employed to collect and analyze the quantitative data (surveys) and qualitative data (interviews and photovoice). Results from this study suggested increases in PSTs’ knowledge, self-efficacy, and perceptions of usefulness of CRP in their future practices. The team-based, service-learning component, which was based on a community of practice framework, enhanced the learning experience by allowing students to move from theory to practice and served as an important contributing factor to the overall results. Given the findings of this research study, it appeared that an introductory course focused on a culturally responsive and linguistic teaching influenced PSTs’ dispositions, knowledge, and skills. Thus, providing an introductory course, earlier rather than later, has the potential to change the trajectory of preparing PSTs so they were more prepared to teach CLD students as they continued through their program of study. Results showed effective work with CLD students was about so much more than ‘just good teaching.’
ContributorsAlsen, Beth Ann (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Jimenez-Silva, Margarita (Committee member) / Spink Strickland, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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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.

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.
ContributorsLeyson, Timothy Paul (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Brown, Matthew (Committee member) / Shapiro, Cory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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Description
Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, rural students have lower college enrollment rates. Despite many school and community benefits including small class sizes, close student-teacher relationships, and strong connections among community members, many rural high school students’ post-secondary educational opportunities are constrained by factors such as: fewer college

Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, rural students have lower college enrollment rates. Despite many school and community benefits including small class sizes, close student-teacher relationships, and strong connections among community members, many rural high school students’ post-secondary educational opportunities are constrained by factors such as: fewer college preparatory courses, narrow school curriculums, geographic isolation, high poverty rates, and limited access to college and career counseling. This action research study was conducted to examine how and to what extent underserved rural high school students constructed college-going capital through their participation in an English class designed to supplement their school’s limited college-access services. The study took place over a 19-week semester at Seligman High School, a small rural school comprised of approximately 55 students. To support their construction of college-going capital, students’ junior- and senior-level English class curriculums blended traditional college preparation activities with college-level reading and writing assignments focused on the U.S. educational system and its college-access inequities. The theoretical perspectives that framed this study included: social cognitive career theory, sociocultural theory, and critical literacy. Further, research on perceived post-secondary educational barriers and supports, dialogic discourse, and college access informed the study. By using a concurrent, transformative mixed methods research design, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected simultaneously. Then, while maintaining an advocacy stance, the data were analyzed separately and brought together to determine convergences and divergences. Drawing data from student surveys, student and researcher journal entries, student and college coach interviews, dialogic discussion transcripts, and an image elicitation process, this study showed that, through their participation in an English language arts college-going class, students developed college-going skills, knowledge, self-efficacy, and critical literacy. The study also revealed the following: students acquired varying levels of critical consciousness; students benefited from adult mentors coaching them about college-going; and students did not experience significant changes in their perceptions of barriers to and supports for college-going during their participation in the course.
ContributorsMorrison, Carissa (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Zucker, Stanley (Committee member) / Boreen, Jean (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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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

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.
ContributorsWann, Patti Ann (Author) / Marley, Scott C. (Thesis advisor) / Buss, Ray R (Committee member) / Ewbank, Ann D (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
The United States is facing an unprecedented teacher shortage. With many studies estimating that 17-33% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years of starting a career, something needs to change to keep new teachers in the classroom. This study evaluates the effectiveness of peer observation as a

The United States is facing an unprecedented teacher shortage. With many studies estimating that 17-33% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years of starting a career, something needs to change to keep new teachers in the classroom. This study evaluates the effectiveness of peer observation as a learning tool to supplement the training of preservice teachers on an elementary campus. Observational learning theory and adult learning theory created the lens through which peer observations were implemented and evaluated in this study. Specifically, this study aimed to answer the following research questions: (a) How do conversations about teaching practices evolve over time between the preservice teacher participant and the researcher within the context of discussions following peer observations? and (b) How do peer observations influence the teaching practices of preservice teachers?

This study found that the preservice teachers who participated in the peer observation intervention improved in their teaching practices over the course of the semester, valued the experience of peer observation visits, and increased their ability to talk about teaching and learning in more sophisticated and complex terms.
ContributorsSchenk, Matthew D (Author) / Bertrand, Melanie (Thesis advisor) / Buss, Ray R (Committee member) / Hacker, Stacie C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
This study was conducted to assess the performance of 176 students who received algebra instruction through an online platform presented in one of two experimental conditions to explore the effect of personalized learning paths by comparing it with linearly flowing instruction. The study was designed around eight research questions investigating

This study was conducted to assess the performance of 176 students who received algebra instruction through an online platform presented in one of two experimental conditions to explore the effect of personalized learning paths by comparing it with linearly flowing instruction. The study was designed around eight research questions investigating the effect of personalized learning paths on students’ learning, intrinsic motivation and satisfaction with their experience. Quantitative results were analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and split-plot ANOVA methods. Additionally, qualitative feedback data were gathered from students and teachers on their experience to better explain the quantitative findings as well as improve understanding of how to effectively design an adaptive personalized learning platform. Quantitative results of the study showed no statistical difference between students assigned to treatments that compared linear and adaptive personalized instructional flows.

The lack of significant differences was explained by two main factors: (a) low usage and (b) platform and content related issues. Low usage may have prevented students from being exposed to the platforms long enough to create a potential for differences between the groups. Additionally, the reasons for low usage may in part be explained by the qualitative findings, which indicated that unmotivated and tired teachers and students were not very enthusiastic about the study because it occurred near the end of school year. Further, computer access was a challenging issue at the school throughout the study. On the other hand, platform and content related issues worked to inhibit the potential beneficial effects of the platforms. The three prominent issues were: (a) the majority of the students found the content boring or difficult, (b) repeated recommendations from the adaptive platform created frustration, and (c) a barely moving progress bar caused disappointment among participants.
ContributorsBicer, Alpay (Author) / Bitter, Gary G. (Thesis advisor) / Buss, Ray R (Committee member) / Legacy, Jane M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015