Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Education Studies'

This is a multiple case study of the ways middle grades social studies teachers, as curricular-instructional gatekeepers, may make decisions to provide their gifted students with purposeful differentiated instruction. More specifically, this study explores what teachers believe they should do to instruct gifted students, in what ways teachers prepare and adapt curriculum and instruction for gifted students, and how instruction for gifted learners can take place in a middle school social studies classroom. Through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and supportive visual evidence, six middle grades (6-8) social studies teachers disclosed in what ways they differentiate their middle grades social studies curriculum and instruction for their gifted adolescent learners. Through Hatch's (2002) Inductive Analysis model, findings were recorded and presented in the form of individual teacher observation and thematic cross-case analysis.

Findings suggest that middle grades social studies teachers take into consideration factors that influence their curricular-instructional beliefs, directly affecting the decisions they make in terms of curriculum selection, instructional delivery, and the methods of differentiation employed to meet the needs of their gifted students. Much of what teachers planned, prepared, and adapted was often influenced by the needs of their students, but also addressed mandates of their school and district agendas. This conflict between meeting the needs of both students and administration resulted in gatekeeping that often favored administration, while reducing the frequency of best practices for middle level gifted students in social studies classrooms.

Implications for the study include how teacher confidence, or the lack there of, effects instructional practices. Time constraints in middle level curriculum pacing and increased assessment also limited opportunities for rigorous, relevant, and differentiated social studies instruction for gifted students. Middle level social studies teachers of gifted call for clearer and more illustrative descriptions of what the academic ceiling for gifted social studies might look like in general. There are distinctive contrasts between models of differentiation and neighboring concepts of individualized and personalized learning. While in theory differentiation is meaningful, middle level social studies teachers find it difficult to implement methods of differentiation in their classroom with desired frequency. There is a distinctive bond between the fields of social studies, English Language Arts, and research skills. Middle level social studies teachers of gifted seek greater opportunities for meaningful professional development options. Lastly, there is a call among middle level social studies teachers for the inclusion of gifted initiatives in teacher education programs.

Topics that could be explored for future research include a continued effort to expound applicable gatekeeping practices, the provision of purposeful professional development and learning for teacher populations, continued application and practice of differentiation in the field of social studies education, increased inclusion of social studies in the elementary classroom, the awareness and servicing of gifted learners in the middle school social studies classroom, and the increased inclusion of gifted populations with undergraduate and graduate social studies education programs.

American colonization of the Hawaiian Islands has brought about generations of Native Hawaiian learners being subjected to educational practices that are incompatible with core Indigenous beliefs. Consequently, Native Hawaiian learners have lower academic achievement than other ethnic groups in the islands. The lack of success is not confined to academics since Native Hawaiians are also underrepresented in material-economic, social-emotional, and physical wellbeing. Hawaiian culture-based education (HCBE) can be used to decolonize educational practices by increasing cultural relevancy and compatibility within schools. This study was conducted within a school founded explicitly for the education of Native Hawaiian children. The selected campus has approximately 80 teachers and 650 Native Hawaiian learners (age eleven to fifteen). The purpose of the study was to better understand implementation of the HCBE framework components and data was collected through surveys and semi-structured follow-up interviews. The findings showed that although there was a range of the extent the teachers at the school understood and implemented the various HCBE components, there was commitment to using Hawaiian language, knowledge, and practices as the content and context for student learning. The data also showed though teachers have a high level of understanding of the importance of relationship building, that building family and community relationships remains an area of challenge. Additionally, teachers pride themselves on delivering meaningful personalized learning experiences and assessments to their students, and would like their own professional development to be grounded in the same educational practices. This study provides baseline data to inform further growth.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

Detracking is an often misunderstood and ill-characterized education reform movement in the United States. Yet, as public educational spaces become more diverse, the relevance of detracking as a viable solution increases. However, secondary education teachers today are often ill-prepared to implement detracking. The purpose of this study was to better understand how secondary education social studies teachers develop perceptions of detracking. In this study, I collected four secondary education social studies teachers’ life stories. These life stories were synthesized into case study narratives and a cross case analysis to understand how these teachers developed perceptions of detracking. I found a teacher’s orientation towards social studies influenced their perceptions of detracking, but was limited by external factors such as training in heterogeneous instruction, misconceptions of detracking, and critical reflection. I also reaffirmed detracking as a complex/complicated concept and call to the field of education to expand discipline specific critical reflection and training in heterogeneous instruction.

Keywords: Detracking, Social Studies, Secondary Education, and Narrative Inquiry

This study explored the current state of secondary social studies in Western New York (WNY) through the lens of social studies orientations, specifically the traditional, disciplinary, and progressive strands (Fallace, 2010), and their alignment with the K-12 Social Studies Framework , approved by NYS’s Department of Education in 2014, with new NYS Regents assessments to begin in 2019. It was, therefore, important to collect baseline data on secondary social studies teachers’ social studies purpose, practices, and knowledge of NYS reforms.

A mixed-method study began in the spring of 2017, which collected data from the WNY S4 survey and two focus groups. Survey participants totaled n = 136, representing six counties in WNY; focus group members totaled n = 9. The WNY S4 replicated survey items from a nationwide instrument, Survey on the Status of Social Studies–S4 (Fitchett & VanFossen, 2013) and analyzed data with descriptive and inferential statistics. The researcher developed a semi-structured interview guide to collect focus group data, which were analyzed by the long-table approach (Krueger & Casey, 2009).

Major survey findings were: (1) 99% reported an unawareness of their state/district standards; (2) 100% reported developing critical-thinking skills, while 64% reported content knowledge as primary goals; and (3) top-ranked instructional practices were 87% teach political history; 83% teach social history; and 82% examine sources. Analyses of t-tests indicate gender and grade level-band indicators are influential to instructional practices. For example, female and high school teachers seem to engage students more often in non-history content emphases, such as diversity of religious views, economics, and historiography while also de-emphasizing the lecture; hence aligning more with the disciplinary strand and less with the traditional strand.

Focus group results pinpoint a struggle between participants’ intentions versus actual practice which may impact alignment to NYS social studies reforms. Misalignment attributed to teacher’s purpose being overshadowed by their own instructional choices or outside factors, such as assessments, time, and other school district issues. Five out of nine focus group participants associated with the hybrid disciplinary-progressive approach, suggesting that secondary social studies teachers do not situate themselves to a single social studies orientation; and also consistent with past studies (Long, 2017; Vinson, 1998).

Overall, WNY S4 data suggests when purpose and practices are more closely aligned to the disciplinary and progressive approaches, secondary social studies instruction may find greater success with NYS social studies education reforms. In addition, gender and identified grade level-band (middle school and high school) differences provide insights for developing and tailoring professional development for different groups of teachers.

Two recommendations for policy and practice include: (1) refine the social studies orientation model into a continuum, and (2) apply the Social Studies Purpose Compass developed by the researcher to guide instructional alignment with NYS social studies reforms.

It is not known why the chronic mis-education of Black students has neither been adequately investigated nor treated as the most significant, widespread phenomenon of twenty-first century pedagogy. To attempt to understand this quandary, it was urgent to ask: How do Black educators understand the education of Black students? Are they able to incorporate the tensions and varied experiences they have had as students into their professional repertoire? This study described how Black educators’ unique cultural perspectives might enable increased insight into the problem of mis-education. Critical race theory framed this study with an emphasis on narrative inquiry and transformative learning. I interweaved narrative/counter-narrative and critical event research methods as both theoretical and methodological frameworks. I engaged in multi-part interviews and observations of 5 educators to explore their unique biographical narratives and analyze how their lives and teaching practices might better inform the success of Black students. Findings indicated (a) educators uniquely experienced the vestiges of mis-education as they faced insidious forms of racism during the course of their academic journey, (b) educators sought to interrupt the racism that their White teachers’ and peers exhibited, (c) educators encouraged students to use their voices and various platforms to effectively counteract their oppression, and (d) educators engaged transformative pedagogies in overt and covert ways depending on both the social and the teaching context(s). Based on the findings of this study, a liberation-based pedagogy is recommended to ensure the empowerment, increased performance, and well-rounded education of Black students.

Increasing complexity and rapid change associated with globalization and the knowledge economy have diminished the relevance of traditional linear models of leadership. Researchers have begun to view leadership not in terms of individuals and hierarchal exchanges but as a collective influence process among members of a group to achieve shared objectives that focus on enabling learning and adaptation in organizations rather than predicting outcomes and controlling behaviors. Complexity theory and its central phenomenon, emergence, are particularly well-suited to study both new leadership approaches and how to manage social systems at a time when prediction and control are elusive.

At the same time, institutions of higher education have come to play an increasingly important role in knowledge-based economies and as important actors in economic and human development. Leadership research and practice in higher education have not kept up with this trend, and require a new approach in order to meet the demands of a highly dynamic and disruptive environment. Generative leadership, which focuses on constructing the rules, conditions and constraints for interaction, collaboration and experimentation throughout organizations, fostering innovation and adaptation, and may be particularly well-suited for the creation, dissemination and application of knowledge in higher education. In this context, a qualitative, multiple case study design was used to explore how generative leadership might foster emergence in four initiatives designed to increase the ability to create, disseminate and apply knowledge in an institution of higher education.

Two major findings resulted from this study. The first relates to the increased incorporation of generative leadership, emergence, and complexity theory into the existing research and practice on teams. The second major finding relates to the role that the study’s results, along with the notions of generative leadership and emergence, can inform higher education pedagogy for continued transition into the knowledge age and beyond. The researcher hopes that this study, its results and findings promote a continued shift towards complexity- and emergence-based thinking to solve some of our most pressing knowledge challenges as we continue to move through a time of change and disruption. Ultimately the results and findings of this study could promote additional research on generative leadership, emergence and knowledge capacity in higher education for the benefit of local, regional and global social and economic ecosystems.