The goal of this study was to describe the factors that influence education for sustainable development (ESD) in American universities. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) was employed as the theoretical lens to analyze the activity of ESD (Engeström & Miettinen 1999). Data were collected by focusing on two university professors through a series of interviews, classroom observations, and artifacts. The findings of the study demonstrated that both professors encountered serious contradictions in their activity of ESD. These contradictions were both contextual and personal in origin and caused the professors to reshape the object of their teaching activity. The contextual contradictions originated from rules of the professors' institution, their inner and outer communities, and the division of labor in their work environment. The thematic analysis of the data revealed that the contextual contradictions included demanding work responsibilities, emphasis on research over teaching, and lack of community to consider teaching in general and specifically for ESD. The personal contradictions arose from the professors' personal philosophies, perspectives, and visions of sustainable development. Again the thematic analysis revealed the personal contradictions arose from the professors' conceptions of teaching and learning, fear of indoctrination, and again lack of community to support the consideration of teaching. Due to these contradictions in their activity systems, both professors narrowed their sustainability objects to address only one side of sustainability paradigm (the science component), changing the outcomes of their teaching activity to that of preparing environmentally informed citizens. While one professor focused on his new object of delivering environmental knowledge, the other professor adopted a mitigation strategy of focusing on the dual object of sustainability and delivering environmental knowledge. The study offers several strategies to resolve the personal and contextual contradictions identified in this study. Specifically addressed are strategies to alleviate their fear of indoctrination and to access surrounding teaching communities. It also offers strategies focusing on contextual contradictions: establishing ESD communities inside the university and changing faculty incentive and reward structures within the university. / A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Middle and Secondary Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2005. / September 30, 2005. / Education For Sustainable Development, University Level, Personal And Contextual Contradictions, Activity Theory / Includes bibliographical references. / Sherry Southerland, Professor Directing Dissertation; Frederick Davis, Outside Committee Member; Penny J. Gilmer, Committee Member; George Bates, Committee Member.

It is argued that teachers must experience inquiry in order to be able to translate it to their classrooms. The National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Research Experiences for Teachers (RETs) offer promising programs, yet scant empirical support documents the effectiveness of these programs. In this study, ten experienced, secondary science teachers were followed back to the classroom after a five-week, marine ecology RET, addressing the questions: How do teachers' conceptions and enactment of classroom inquiry change after the program?; What are the program's goals?; What accounts for these differences?; and What do these findings imply for future RETs? Data collected includes pre and post program questionnaires, audiotapes and videotapes of pre and post program teaching, post program STIR instrument responses, interviews, and field notes. The study found that an extensive, reflective program model, conducted by scientists who are teacher-centered, successfully conveyed the program model of inquiry. Post program, teachers' conceptions of inquiry were more student centered, focused less on assessment and classroom management and more on authentic content, questions, and presentations, and incorporated program language. Question patterns during enactment shifted to fewer teacher questions, more student questions, and increased higher order questions by students and teachers. More procedural questions indicated role shifts. The STIR instrument fostered understanding of enactment and, with critical incidents analyses, highlighted underlying teacher value structures. Teachers with more theoretical sophistication and who had Rationalistic and Egalitarian value structures applied inquiry throughout their teaching and moved beyond contextual constraints. Implications suggest that those who develop and implement RETs need to be masterful "bridge builders" to help transition teachers and their learning back to the classroom. Reflection holds promise for illuminating teachers' underlying values and goals and in gaining an understanding of teachers' enactment. Curriculum materials and theoretical readings can assist teacher change. Assimilation of new knowledge does not necessarily lead to transformation of practices. Rather, this study found that teachers with values and goals that were compatible to the RET, as well as an accompanying high level of theoretical sophistication, moved toward transformational change. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Middle and Secondary Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2006. / June 14, 2006. / Professional Development, Teacher Values, Teacher Change, Inquiry, Inquiry-Based Teaching / Includes bibliographical references. / Nancy T. Davis, Professor Directing Dissertation; J. Anthony Stallins, Outside Committee Member; Penny J. Gilmer, Committee Member; Sherry A. Southerland, Committee Member.

This Master's thesis deals with financial education and its place in school education. The thesis is separated into four main parts. The first chapter defines the concept of financial literacy, historical evolution of financial education in pedagogical reflection and factors affecting individuals in the process of financial education. The second chapter deals with the place of financial education in school education, which is an analysis of selected education policy documents of the Czech Republic and the activities of the actors involved in the development of financial literacy of the population of the Czech Republic. The theme of the third chapter is defining areas of financial education in school education in the private sector. The fourth chapter discusses the role of the teacher in the process of financial education and presents some recommendations.

This study addressed the perceptions of teachers, parents, and students in a suburban middle school about the effects of implementation of the middle school concept on instruction, peer group interaction, teacher attitudes and practices, and school culture. A qualitative approach was used for this study. Interview questions were developed to determine perceptions about effects in the areas identified in the research questions. Interviews were conducted with selected teachers, parents, and students who had exposure to the school before and after planned changes were implemented. Documents were examined for evidence of perceptions in the four areas identified. In addition, an existing data set (a student survey} was examined and the same survey was administered to a more recent group of students to identify possible patterns in student perceptions.

Middle school is discursively positioned as a problem to be solved, largely because middle school students are fixed with a gaze that produces them as at-risk, and in need of advice, guidance, and role models to ensure a healthy and productive adult future. Middle school students, as “early adolescents,” are positioned as youth at a particular stage of development that has fundamental needs, linked to assumptions about their bodily, cognitive, and emotional development. Middle school teachers come to embody the hopes and fears positioned on and through middle school students, and are discursively produced themselves as “bodies of knowledge” who are said to know the bodily needs of middle school students—in turn, positioned to all be rooted in the “nature” of their development. This study seeks to trace and open up the “rhizomatic assemblage” of “middle school,” particularly as it makes certain practices, knowledges, and discourses (un)available or (im)possible to “middle school teachers.” It does so by exploring through a qualitative study of three independent school middle school teachers, along with the auto-biographical “sketches” of the author, ways in which particular bodies come to know and be known as “middle school teachers.” As the bulk of the data was being collected in the 2019–2020 school year, the global COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning in the United States that emerged from the murder of George Floyd both provided important new contexts to explore in terms of implications for intersectional, embodied experiences of “middle school” after March 2020. Consequently, the study explores discursive shifts and (in)stabilities across pre-pandemic and “early” pandemic contexts, particularly in remote teaching and calls to embrace and embody anti-racist practice as middle school educators. It is hoped that the exploration of discourses, discursive practices, and embodiment of “middle school” open up space and possibility in middle schools, for middle school teachers and students alike.

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Thesis advisor: Latrica Best / This research project examines the sociological factors that contribute to how Boston College undergraduate students choose their majors. Based on previous research, parental influence has typically been a major factor when students choose their majors. Using rational choice theory, I expand on previous research by examining how parental influence and other sociological factors, such as perceptions of the job market and high school education socialization, impact the selection of college majors. In order to conduct this study, I interviewed twenty three Boston College undergraduate students (freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors). All participants were from four Boston College undergraduate schools: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences, Carroll School of Management, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, and Connell School of Nursing. Results show that parental influence is the primary factor in the selection of majors by students. However, within parental influence, the influence that parents have is not so much about whether students are enjoying their subject and finding passion, but the influence of the job market has been still a huge factor in the way students feel about their education. As we live in a more volatile economy and live in a competitive world where individuals strive to be the best, this study provides important insight into how college students choose their majors and how external factors outside of the college environment affect students’ decisions regarding careers. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

The thesis describes insects (class insecta) as an important group of organisms living in almost all ecosystems. It investigates the importance of insects for humans not only from a human point of view. First part focuses on the positive impact of insects for humans and their use in many areas of human life, such as agriculture, insect products, forensic entomology, medicine and others. The following part focuses on insect pests, parasites and synanthropic species a human being can encounter during one's life. Next parts describe the possibilities of including insects in lessons at schools; a content analysis of textbooks for elementary schools and high schools from the viewpoint of benefits of insects for humans; and a questionnaire survey of popularity of insects, their breeding and entomophagy focused on pupils of elementary schools. KEYWORDS insects, importance of insects, useful insects, insect pests, insect parasites, types of insects, textbook

Currently, most students with disabilities (SWDs) receive a majority of their education in the general education classroom (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). This inclusive practice reflects educational and accountability requirements described in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). To address these requirements, schools seek service delivery models that support SWDs and close achievement gaps (Murawski & Goodwin, 2014). In this study, the researcher investigated the lived experiences of highly effective middle school teachers using co-teaching as a service delivery model to support SWDs in the general education classroom. The researcher used a phenomenological qualitative approach for this study. The research was conducted in a large urban district in the western United States. The researcher conducted face-to-face interviews with individual teachers with three pairs of co-teachers assigned to a co-teach model in a middle school mathematics classroom. The researcher was also able to observe one planning session between one pair of co-teachers. Using a spiral analysis procedure, three themes emerged from the interview and observation data as well as six subthemes. The three themes were (a) collaboration of lesson development, (b) student learning, and (c) parity. The researcher described the themes using thick, rich descriptions, provides a connection between research and the findings, and suggests recommendations for future research.

This corpus-based, qualitative descriptive study examines the vocabulary in digital science resources for middle school students in the United States. In brief, two corpora, each of approximately 2.7 million tokens, were assembled: the Digital Science Corpus (DSC) and the Digital Fiction Corpus (DFC). The 3,456 digital science resources included in the DSC were selected based on the findings of a detailed survey of 91 U.S.-based middle school teachers. In this study, AntWordProfile (Anthony, 2021), AntConc (Anthony, 2019), and WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2020) were used to (a) lexically profile the corpus to determine the vocabulary load of vocabulary in the corpus, (b) lexically profile the corpus to estimate the extent to which a combination of well-known word lists (GSL+AWL+ EAP Science List, the top 570 AVL word families, GSL+MSVL for Science) might help students to reach text coverage that could result in reasonable comprehension of the texts in the corpus (i.e., lexical coverage), and (c) create a Digital Science List (DSL) that captures the most frequent words types in the corpus. The word types in the DSL were validated with the Digital Fiction Corpus (DFC), a corpus formed from an approximately equal number of tokens as the DSC but gathered from fiction novels. The findings of this study show that the top 570 word families in the AVL (Gardner & Davies, 2014) provide 75% more lexical coverage in the digital corpus than the 570 word families in the older AWL (Coxhead, 2000) (10.07% vs. 5.76%). To reach a threshold of 95% coverage that is conventionally deemed to facilitate minimal reading comprehension (Laufer, 2020), middle school (MS) students must recognize the first 6,000 most frequent BNC/COCA (Nation, 2012) word families plus proper nouns or the first 11,000 most frequent BNC/COCA word families without proper nouns. Furthermore, to reach 98% coverage for optimal reading comprehension of digital science texts requires recognizing words within the 19,000 most frequent word families in the BNC/COCA plus proper nouns. In contrast, the GSL, AWL, and EAP Science List with far fewer word families ( < 3,000) offer a striking 88.35% lexical coverage across the corpus, while the GSL and the MSVL for Science with fewer than 2,500 word families offer a remarkable 87.79% lexical coverage across the corpus. The DSL produced from this research identified 412 types based on seven corpus-based and judgment-based criteria. The lexical profiling analysis of the DSL across the DSC revealed that the DSL provides 8.64% lexical coverage. While the DSL can be used as a teaching and learning tool in middle school classrooms, this list is specifically helpful for second language (L2) because it contains 136 general high-frequency types with a specialized meaning (e.g., dating, work, etc.). The study addresses methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical implications so that middle school learners can gain better support in their science vocabulary development and achieve better science reading comprehension of digital science texts.