<p> This study examined the construct of teacher buy-in (TBI) during a grading policy reform effort in a high school. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe teachers' perceived value to the grading reform. Additionally, the researcher studied teacher behavior by identifying the teachers' actual practice of the policy. The study finally compared the identified reported values of the participants with their actual grading practices to determine the convergence of values and practice. </p><p> The research provided empirical evidence for a new way to study TBI and its relationship to a reform implementation. This study addressed a school-site policy reform effort and described TBI contributing to, and perhaps challenging, current practices in school reform and teacher grading policies. This study described the extent to which teacher bought into the grading policies and provided a framework for studying TBI and grading policies in the context of Standards-Based Reform in the future. The findings and discussion highlight how grading policies are a critical element of the student evaluation process in the increasing movement towards national learning standards and testing. </p>

<p> This study examines how implementing ethnographic tools and techniques into an international cultural immersion program (ICIP) curriculum specifically influences group members' intercultural competency. For this study, an ethnographic inquiry curriculum is introduced to participants of three different World Challenge Exp edition (WCE) courses. Ethnographic tools and techniques included photo elicitation interviews, structured journaling and taking field notes, and observational activities. WCEs is an international cultural immersion organization based out of the United Kingdom with branches in Australia, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, the United States,and Hong Kong and runs programs eight to 28-days in length. To gauge the effects the tools and techniques have on each group member's intercultural competency pre and post expedition surveys, and end-of-expedition interviews were employed. Literature on experiential education, ethnography, ethnographic tools and tech niques, and intercultural competencies support the overall project. Additionally, the results, data analysis, discussion of the findings, and recommendations for future studies are presented to summarize and solidify the overall research study. The study results showed that approximately half of the total study population increased their capacity to listen and observe because of the implementation of ethnographic tools and techniques. Additionally, the implementation of ethnographic tools and techniques may have provided insight into how the host culture, and family life are more similar than different to theirs back home. The group member's qualitative answers to the interview questions provided interculturally competent answers and looks in part to be due to the use of ethnographic tools and techniques.</p>

<p>This study examined how teachers perceive Free Primary Education had influenced access, retention and progression of marginalized students in primary schools in Kisii County, Kenya. A critical pedagogy framework was used to unpack and shed light on teacher and school practices that affected access to basic education of at risk students. Data was collected through 217 surveys given to teachers from 28 purposefully selected primary schools in Kisii County, 3 administrator interviews, and 4 focus group interviews comprised of a total of 30 classroom teachers from 14 schools in a sequential mixed methods design. Four research questions that guided this research were: a) How do teachers perceive Free Primary Education in Kenya has influenced access to primary education for marginalized students? b) What do teachers perceive to be at risk categories for marginalized students? c) How do teacher practices influence the retention of marginalized students in education in Kenya? Finally, d) to what extent do teacher beliefs influence their desire to differentiate instruction for marginalized students? Findings from this study indicated that Free Primary Education had led to increased access to basic education through reduction of fees paid by parents to schools, provision of instructional materials, open admission policy, and construction and/or renovation of existing educational facilities. The study also revealed roadblocks that hinder access to basic education for marginalized students such as extra fees levied by schools to parents, poverty, high teacher pupil ratio, lack of skills to equitably educate at risk students in classrooms, and poor health. The participants identified orphans, students with low incidence disabilities, children from extremely poor families, children from single parent households, children engaged in child labor, and children from negligent parents as categories of students who were at risk for marginalization. Moreover, the study revealed some of the teacher and schooling practices with regard to handing marginalized students which included teacher care, professional development, accommodations, remedial teaching, and guidance and counseling. There was a significant correlation between teacher philosophies and teacher willingness to differentiate instruction (<i>r_s</i>= 0.43, <i>p&lt;0.05</i>), and also a significant correlation between teachers&rsquo; philosophies and their willingness to give various accommodations to marginalized students in their classrooms (<i>r_s</i>=0.34, <i>p&lt;0.05</i>). Further analysis of data revealed that, a) access to basic education as a class issue, b) access to basic education as a gender issue, c) national tests and measurements as instruments for marginalization, and d) access to education as a teacher critical consciousness issue. </p>

<p> This study investigates the relationship among students' autonomy, agency and emergent learning interests in two open democratic private K-12 schools. Surprisingly, I find that these innovative schools sometimes promote sometimes suppress student agency. I suggest that we need a new means to define education, as our current means seems to constrain even innovative projects.</p><p> I begin by tracing the historical path of liberal arts education down two paths for student agency. Historical classical liberal arts education concerned itself with the student as a thinker, while modern conventional education concerns itself with the standardization of students' acquiring content. This has lead to a split the means to empower students' agency. The first is agency-as-capacity in academic subjects, the second is as personal agency and relates to the first, as students are viewed as becoming more able as they master more subject material, but also expresses agency as students' ability to be self-determining, voice their ideas, and reflect critically on their own and other's ideas. I argue that the first path has taken over conventional education and leads education to be outcome based and focused on credentialism. In reaction to the loss of emphasis on personal agency in learning, innovative educators, progressives, democratic educators, free-schoolers, and unschoolers, have sought to return autonomy to students for their own learning decision and deeper meaning making in their learning. The democratic schools in this study follow a distinct line of innovation that departs from progressive educators in that they endeavor to protect and promote the development of students' political and epistemic autonomy through shared student and staff governance of the school and by underlying strong philosophical commitments against imposed curriculum. Out of this study came three findings. First, in spite of the seemingly chaotic environment with little culturally recognizable learning practices at both schools, I observed that children are learning and transforming in their abilities in culturally valued practices primarily through play. I suggest that the individual and cognitive notions of learning coupled with a Industrial Age work architectonic underpinning schooling practices makes it difficult for the students' learning at these schools to be visible to outsiders and sometimes to the staff as well. Student's play and other free choice activity revealed that learning can be evidenced through students' changing genres of participation.</p><p> Second, I found that in spite of the belief that students in autonomy supportive environments will find it easy to be engaged in their learning, middle school students, in one school struggled to develop their learning interests. Contrary to the schools' philosophy about the role of student interest in their learning, I found that student inquiries or even their interest is not necessarily the beginning of learning, and questions the notion that students self-determined autonomy is sufficient for their learner agency. </p><p> Third, in the second school, in spite of the autonomy afforded students and the ongoing critical dialogue that form a large part of the second school's culture and matching historically classical concerns for the student as a thinker, students experienced a suppression of their agency. The form of critical dialogue the school engages in I define as positive and modernist drawing on the work of Isaiah Berlin (1969) and define a second negative and postmodern critical dialogue rooted in the work of literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin. </p><p> Finally, I suggest that we need to move beyond the current Industrial Age work architectonic of conventional schooling. I recommend a playful/cultural architectonic based on the work of Marjanovic-Shane (2010) as a means to capitalize on the social nature of learning. A play/cultural dynamic can act as a counter force to the reification of knowledge, meaning making, and hierarchical roles in education that tend to suppress the development of students' personal and epistemic agency. This play/cultural architectonic of learning, in my view, better matches the kinds of transformation of agency that students' make in these autonomy-valuing environments. I suggest that schooling, if based on a play/cultural genre of interaction would support both students becoming more capable in culturally valued practices and support students' present and increasing capacity in enacting their personal agency. My conclusion i that we are still realizing students as co-participants and co-creators of the culture.</p>

Matrices are important mathematical tools that facilitate the process of organizing and manipulating data. In this work, the matrix operations of addition, subtraction, scalar multiplication, and matrix multiplication are built logically from the intuition of the students and their knowledge of real numbers. From this knowledge, the concepts of inverses, determinants, and consistency and inconsistency of linear systems of equations are formed. Interesting applications of matrices in the areas of Markov chains, curve fitting, and eigenpairs are included and are not beyond the comprehension of pre-calculus students when they are presented carefully. Pre-calculus students can also appreciate many of the numerical challenges that can be encountered when real-world problems are solved; therefore, we include a discussion of some of these topics.

<p> This study explores the responses of twelve fifth graders to Japanese pictorial texts&mdash; manga (Japanese comics), anime (Japanese animations), kamishibai (Japanese traditional visual storytelling), and picture books &mdash; and their connections to Japanese culture and people. </p><p> This study took place Ca&ntilde;on Elementary School in Black Canyon City in Arizona. The guiding research questions for this study were: How do children respond to Japanese pictorial texts? and What understandings of Japanese culture are demonstrated in children's inquiries and responses to Japanese pictorial texts? The study drew on reader response theory, New Literacy Studies, and multimodality. Data collection included participant-observation, videotaped/audiotaped classroom discussions and interviews, participants' written and artistic artifacts, ethnographic fieldnotes, and reflection journals. Results revealed that children demonstrated four types of responses including (1) analytical, (2) personal, (3) intertexual, and (4) cultural. These findings illustrate that the children actively employed their popular culture knowledge to make intertextual connections as part of meaning making from the stories. They also showed four types of cultural responses including (1) ethnocentrism, (2) understanding and acceptance, (3) respect and appreciation and valuing, and (4) change. This study makes a unique contribution to reader response as it examines American children's cultural understandings and literary responses to Japanese pictorial texts (manga, anime, kamishibai, and picture books).</p>

<p> This study explored the opinions of teachers regarding use and effectiveness in the use of graphic organizers in their classroom instruction. Data collection and analyses sought to determine if participating teachers used graphic organizers in their classrooms and how effective teachers perceived graphic organizers to be in the areas of English/language arts, social studies, science, and math. </p><p> A descriptive statistical study was conducted using a survey emailed nationwide. Quantitative methods of data collection, including a questionnaire, were used to gauge teachers' attitudes and uses of graphic organizers in their classrooms. The majority of teachers surveyed indicated they were aware of graphic organizer use and effectiveness in the classroom. Future research topics and recommendations were summarized regarding the use of graphic organizers by teachers in the high school content classrooms.</p>

<p> School administrators at the research site, which is a public school district, had been under pressure to improve low reading state scores of Grade 11 students as measured by Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests. A web-based reading software called Study Island was integrated into the literacy curriculum for students to increase their reading proficiency and pass PSSA state tests. The research problem was that the integration of Study Island had not been evaluated and students were not meeting adequate yearly progress (AYP). The purpose of this study was to provide research-based evidence on whether Study Island helped students to improve their reading proficiency. This nonequivalent, quasi-experimental study was based on Tomlinson's differentiated instruction theory and Marzano's intelligence theory. Archived PSSA scores were collected for 2 cohorts of Grade 11 students (<i>N</i> = 800), before and after the curricular integration of Study Island between the academic years 2009&ndash;2011 and 2011&ndash;2013. An independent samples <i> t</i> test showed that students' reading proficiency scores were significantly higher after receiving the Stony Island software than they were before the software. These findings can be used by school and district administrators regarding the integration of Study Island into other academic subjects. Implications for positive social change may include professional development (PD) for high school teachers to use Study Island in the academic subjects they teach. PD on Study Island for high school teachers may help students pass PSSA testing, meet AYP, and graduate from high school.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to better understand districts' responses to curriculum audit findings and to determine the role the audit plays in school reform. Questions to guide this understanding include (1) How do school districts implement recommendations from Curriculum Management Audits?; (2) What processes do districts use to facilitate change based on audit recommendations?; (3) What timelines are established to implement these changes?; (4) What personnel is involved in the implementation?; and (5) Why, if any, were some recommendations not implemented? This study then followed a phenomenological research design. Four districts that consented to participation were contacted and interviews were conducted. The data generated by the interviews was analyzed using QSR NVivo 10. Prejudgments about the data were bracketed and the data was coded looking for emerging themes or nodes in each of the transcripts. These nodes were then classified based on their similarity into the four common themes that emerged as being important during the implementation process. These themes are: Changes in curriculum take (1) time and effort, (2) communication and collaboration, (3) a structured plan for implementation, and (4) consistency of leadership.</p>

<p> This action research study investigated the effectiveness and impact of instructional uses of computer gaming on student comprehension of major themes and concepts in United States history. A concurrent embedded experimental mixed method design (Creswell, 2009; Creswell &amp; Plano Clark, 2007; Greene &amp; Caracelli, 1997) was used to determine what impact gameplay has upon student learning as well as student perceptions of the gaming experience upon their learning using Sid Meier's <i>Civilization IV: Colonization</i> in an eleventh grade high school United States History class. This study addressed key issues concerning computer gameplay in an educational setting, asking what impact does computer gameplay have on student understanding and academic performance, and what impact does social interaction surrounding computer gameplay have upon student understanding of content. The quantitative phase of this study focused on the relationship between computer games and academic performance. The qualitative phase of the study focused on student understanding and comprehension of historical content, perceptions of computer gameplay and the social interaction surrounding gameplay. </p><p> Students were randomly assigned to one of two classes: one class engaged in gameplay utilizing <i>Civilization IV: Colonization</i> and served as the experimental group, the other class engaged in traditional research and served as the control group. Quantitative data was collected from a pretest administered at the beginning of the semester as well as a posttest administered at the end of the semester. Additional quantitative data was collected from term project presentation grades from both groups at the end of the semester. Scores from the pretest/posttest and student presentations were analyzed to determine if there was a significant difference in learning between the two groups. </p><p> Qualitative data was collected at multiple points throughout the study from the experimental group utilizing observation, teacher-researcher reflections, individual interviews, focus group interview, and student data sheets to explore student understanding of the exploration and colonization of North America as well as perceptions of the gaming experience. The qualitative data was analyzed to inform and better understand the impact of computer gaming on student learning. </p><p> The findings of this study indicated students who engaged in gameplay with <i>Civilization IV: Colonization</i> scored significantly higher on the postest and presentation scores as well as developed a deeper understanding of major themes, concepts and content in United States History than students who conducted traditional research. The findings of this study also supported and built upon previous research concerning computer game-based learning, specifically within social studies education, as well as addressed a specific void in the research &ndash; what impact does computer game-based learning have upon student academic performance?</p>