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Although standards-based IEP goals have been mandated in many states for almost a decade, their effectiveness is unknown. Standards-based IEP goals were first created to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind and Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, which increased accountability for all students as well as those with disabilities, while providing targets for state standardized test scores and ensuring access to, and progress in, the general education curriculum for students with disabilities. Factors, such as teacher training, collaboration, and accountability may influence teachers’ perceptions of aligning IEP goals to grade level expectations. Using a survey, this study examined teachers’ perceptions of the efficacy of standards-based IEP goals. One hundred prekindergarten and kindergarten female teachers responded to the survey. Calculations from a linear regression indicated that a relationship existed between the usage of standards-based goals and curriculum-based measures. Results also indicated that teachers may choose to ignore standards-based IEP goals at times to focus on individual students’ needs. Overall, teachers reported that they wrote or gave input into the development of IEPs. However, not all teachers recognized the benefits of students with disabilities in general education classrooms, despite indicating that accommodations and modifications were generally defined. Future research suggestions include investigating perceptions regarding standards-based IEP goals in terms of type of disability of the student. Additionally, a review of personnel preparation programs could provide additional information about the training that teachers receive regarding standards-based IEP goals.

This study concentrated on word problems in Grades Kindergarten-3 and the application of the Standards for Mathematical Practice and the Content Standards. The study also included an analysis of focus, coherence, and rigor in the materials. The textbooks used were among the first editions to be published after the acceptance of the Common Core State Standards in more than 40 states. The study analyzed the presence of the Common Core Standards in each series and how the three textbook series compared to each other in their word problem solving. The correlation of materials in the three textbook series relied on publishers’ descriptions in the Lesson Openers where the usages of the Standards for Mathematical Practice and the Content Standards and the principles of focus, coherence, and rigor are listed. The publishers’ descriptions were analyzed and compared to the individual evaluation criteria. Using an evaluation criterion, the study examined how Standards for Mathematical Practice were implemented in the textbooks. With the exception of a few grades in two textbook series, the texts displayed low percentages in their adherence to the Standards. The textbook series were similar in their development of word problems labeled with Standards for Mathematical Practice and word problems not labeled with the Standards. In this comparison, the only difference between the two types of word problems was in the verbiage. The Content Standards were used to determine the textbook series alignment with the Standards. The three textbook series showed low implementation of word problem Content Standards when compared to the total number of Standards. In two series, only one Content Standard was listed multiple times rather than a combination of comparable Standards. Relying on the publishers’ descriptions, the study showed how publishers implemented focus, coherence, and rigor in their materials. Of the three publishers, one publisher did not list coherence and rigor in its materials. The other two publishers adhered to focus and coherence in most or all of their materials. All of the publishers fell short in the application of rigor in their textbook series.

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / Across the nation, most states are implementing a new set of standards- and accountability-based reforms: the Common Core State Standards and their accompanying assessments. Unfortunately, the perspectives of school-based educators are largely missing from policy and implementation decisions about the Common Core. To address some of the gaps in previous research, the purpose of this dissertation—a comparative case study of two middle schools on the East Coast of the United States—was to describe and analyze school-based educators’ perceptions of and responses to the Common Core and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Exam. Data analysis revealed that educators in the two schools generally worked from an inquiry stance on teaching, learning, and schooling (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) in that they collectively and critically analyzed the intentions of educational policy and practice based in part on their beliefs about student-centered, constructivist teaching and learning. Consistent with this perspective, they made sense of the Common Core and SBAC based on the degree of alignment they perceived between their own educational values and beliefs, on the one hand, and the values and beliefs that animated the policies, on the other hand, which I conceptualized as “principled sensemaking.” How the educators actually implemented the Common Core and SBAC was the result of the intersection of their principled sensemaking of these standards-based reforms and the degree of agency they had over policy implementation. I termed this type of response to policy “principled implementation.” Four types of principled implementation were identified: principled adoption, principled neglect, principled compliance, and principled resistance. New understandings of school-based educators’ unique, critical, and nuanced perceptions of the Common Core and SBAC and how they believe the Common Core and SBAC influence teaching and learning have the capacity to inform decisions about the future of the Common Core in schools, and contributes to a broader understanding of how school-based educators take up and respond to standards- and accountability-based reforms. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / Since 2010, many states in America have implemented the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. Yet there is a gap in the research when it comes to ELA teachers’ experiences with the CCSS. This dissertation uses narrative thematic analysis (Reissman, 2008) to explore how eight public school, grade 6-12 ELA teachers make sense of the CCSS. The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute a more complex picture of how educators make sense of national policy in light of their curricular choices, motivations for teaching, and their beliefs about the purposes of ELA education. Narrative thematic analysis revealed that the eight teachers in this study have conflicting views about the CCSS and its impact on their teaching and beliefs. Many of the teachers described significant worry regarding the CCSS during their initial involvement. However, as time progressed, teachers described a growing sense of excitement about the CCSS. Issues such as school climate, process of implementation, and amount of pressure were significant factors contributing to the teachers’ experiences. Regarding the specific shift prescribed by the CCSS towards more nonfiction in the curriculum for ELA classes, teachers discussed fear, confusion, and, eventually, enthusiasm as responses to this initiative. An outlier among the data set described feelings of loss and sadness regarding creative content that was lost due to the CCSS. In concert with narrative thematic analysis (Reissman, 2008) I utilized the conceptual framework of sensemaking theory (Weick, 1995; 2005), to contextualize the stories teachers shared in this study. Social and relational emphases emerged as dominant ways teachers made sense of their work and their responses to the CCSS. Experiences with the CCSS are far more complex than typically reported. More inclusion of teacher voices and experiences has immense power to shape future policy and implementation. Additionally, inclusion of teacher narratives can significantly contribute to the research on creating supportive cultures and contexts in which standards and educational expectations are both created and utilized. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

As teachers modify their instruction to meet English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards (CCSS), how do these modifications influence literacy instruction and learning opportunities afforded to students? While the CCSS standardized objectives for literacy instruction, the enacted curriculum is uniquely shaped by teachers and their students (Coburn, 2001; Datnow & Castellano, 2000; Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson 2002). This study describes how two elementary school teachers in one school: (a) perceived the ELA CCSS and their influence on instruction and the enacted curriculum; (b) adapted and aligned literacy instruction to respond to implementation of the CCSS; and (c) created instruction and literacy learning opportunities influenced by the ELA CCSS. To investigate the rich, nested levels of context in which teachers used the ELA CCSS to construct literacy instruction and learning opportunities for children, I applied a sociocultural framework and Engeström’s third generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) model to create a theory-driven description of how teachers approached CCSS implementation and literacy instruction. I analyzed data from interviews, observations, and documents through constant comparative analysis (Charmaz, 2006) to identify activities for CHAT analysis (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). Findings from this study provide information about the implementation of the ELA CCSS in literacy instruction and the enacted literacy curricula. Findings suggest that multiple levels of context influenced the ELA CCSS implementation, including teachers’ perceptions (Coburn, 2001; Maloch & Bomer, 2012), and that while teachers may teach from a standardized curriculum, the literacy learning opportunities differ in each class (Pacheco, 2010).

The Common Core State Standards for mathematics and English language arts were released in June of 2010 and have been adopted by a majority of U.S. states. The authors of these standards have claimed that they are internationally benchmarked -- that is, that they are as rigorous, focused, and coherent as the standards and expectations used in high-performing countries -- but have not provided evidence to back up these claims. Singapore, whose students have scored at the top of recent international assessments, is frequently touted as a leader in mathematics education. To test the claims of international benchmarking for the Common Core, this paper uses the methodology of the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum to compare the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics to the Singapore Mathematics Framework in terms of rigor, focus, and coherence. The Common Core State Standards and the Singapore Mathematics Framework do call for similar levels of conceptual understanding, mathematical reasoning, and problem-solving. However, the content expectations outlined by the Common Core are somewhat more rigorous than those outlined by the Singapore Mathematics Framework. / text

Despite 21st Century technology, our nation’s high schools deliver a print-centric curriculum driven by high-stakes tests. A majority of states have adopted Common Core State Standards that incorporate producing and consuming multiple media texts. Some teachers have begun to include multimodal activities but few are exploiting the affordances of multimodal composition specifically for the benefit of English learners. Public high school teachers hold deficit views of English learners and fail to offer them challenging, creative tasks. Framed by the complementary sociocultural theories of ecological linguistics (van Lier, 2004), multimodality (Kress, 2010), and identity (Gee, 2001; Norton, 2000), this qualitative case study examined the process and product of high school English learners composing multimodally with digital video. Four questions guided the study: 1) What can we learn from adolescent English learners engaged in composing with video? 2) What identities do adolescent ELs explore while engaging in multimodal communication? 3) What processes do ELs engage in as they compose multimodally? 4) How do their multimodal compositions contribute to our understanding of ELs? Participants were enrolled in an elective English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class at a public high school during Spring semester of 2012. Data included student generated lesson artifacts, audio/video recordings, researcher journal, and participants' video compositions. Data were analyzed through an ongoing, recursive cycle to determine themes, categories, and trends. Visual and video data were examined through visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007b; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) and multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2004). Addressing the process and product of learning to read and compose visual and video texts, this dissertation examines 3 pairs of student participants and their video compositions. It reveals English learners working collaboratively and creatively, exploring imagined identities, showing investment in learning, engaging in critical analysis, and effectively communicating through multiple modes. Multimodal analysis of three student videos revealed four patterns of multimodal design; less is less, layered modes, less is more, and overlapping modes. The study redefines English learners as multilingual, multimodal communicators. It illustrates the complexity and reveals the benefit of incorporating multimodal activities and provides a model for fostering multilingual, multimodal communicators.

The most recent phase of curriculum reform in the era of accountability is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) which have essentially reshaped the landscape of public education. Its objective of preparing K-12 students for college and career upon high school graduation have prioritized English language arts, mathematics, and science over social studies, which is not part of widespread high-stakes testing for elementary students. This qualitative case study investigated eleven intermediate elementary teachers’ perceptions of alignment between CCSS and the elementary social studies curriculum. Data gathering analysis included two semi-structured interviews and an archival analysis of the mandated curriculum. The data revealed that perceptions of alignment vary among teachers and were influenced by the perceived effects of inadequate instructional time and resources, lack of content knowledge, and insufficient district levels of professional support. Teachers perceived some similarities between the methods of thinking skills, such as historical thinking and higher-order thinking, and the English/Language Arts standards of the Common Core and their district social studies curriculum. Despite perceived inadequate instructional time and resources, teachers believed that elementary social studies must be an instructional priority and found ways to include social studies through interdisciplinary approaches. Recommendations include district-level professional development focused on an integration between CCSS and social studies modeled in classroom practices. These approaches may improve use of instructional time and resources and reduce the marginalization of elementary social studies.

The purpose of this feasibility study is to provide evidence of how integrating reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills into eighth-grade social studies instruction facilitates student understanding of content material and ability to write about social studies content. In thiswithin-subjects paired-samples research study, 197 eighth-grade participants received instruction in a social studies content area and in argumentative writing. Data from a criterion-referenced social studies pre and posttest and data from pre and post instruction writing samples were analyzed to evaluate the influence of the integration of literacy tasks in middle school social studies classrooms oncontent area knowledge acquisition and argumentative writing quality. Analysis of the Criterion Referenced Test (CRT) data usingregression analysis showed that there was a statistically significant increase in the students’ performance on the CRT after the students engaged in literacy tasks emphasizing reading, writing, speaking, and listening during the social studies instruction. Analysis of the writing rubric scores using Cohen’s d showed statistically significant differences exist between the students pre and post essay scores. These results suggest that having students engage in reading, writing, speaking, and listening tasks and in explicit writing instruction and production during a social studies unit facilitates their content knowledge acquisition, improves the overall quality of students’ argumentative writing, and more specifically, improves the organization and development of that writing. It is recommended that further research be conducted to determine the best way to group students for collaboration when incorporating reading, writing, speaking, and listening tasks within content area instruction.