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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Additional advisors: Aaron Kuntz, Aaron Moyana, Andrew McKnight, William Boyd Rogan. Description based on contents viewed June 5, 2009; title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-228).

This project focused on the enhancement of an existing school web page. Schools have jumped on the bandwagon in record numbers in the past couple of years publishing web pages about their schools. Cucamonga Middle School is no exception, having first published a web site in 1995. Utilizing information gathered from a survey, the author/webmaster created a redesign of the existing school webpage. The wants and needs of parents, as noted in the survey were the driving force behind the redesign.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of parental educational involvement, acculturation and self-esteem on the academic performance and academic aspirations of Mexican American adolescents.

No description available.

The objective of the project was to develop an online educational technology tool based on research from multiple disciplines to improve effective communication between students, counselors, teachers, parents, and school staff. The website developed for the project aims to increase the involvement of parents in their child's academic progress. The project also includes discussions concerning the website's field testing at a middle school in Rosemead, California, its evaluation through participant surveys, and final revision. The field test participant instructions, survey questions, and a computer disc of the website accompanies the project.

Advocates of middle grades reform in the United States argue that curriculum and instruction, as well as leadership, organization, and community relationships, should be informed by knowledge of the developmental characteristics of 10 to 15 year-olds within physical, social, emotional, psychological, cognitive, and moral domains. Noticeably absent from their conception of human development are spiritual developmental characteristics of young adolescents. This interdisciplinary research was a critical constructivist (Kincheloe, 2008) inquiry of the following question: What is the educational relevance of spiritual development in middle grades education? To study this question, critical historiographical research methods (Villaverde, Kincheloe, & Helyar, 2006) were used to interrogate the academic discourses of three fields related to the research question: (a) the middle grades concept; (b) spirituality as a developmental domain; and (c) holistic education. Foundational texts from these fields served as sources of data. I present the result of the data analyses as narratives on the paradigms that influenced the (hi)stories of these three academic fields. These narratives were analyzed for common epistemological and ontological perspectives. Amongst the paradigms of the three fields, three meta-paradigms are shared: Ecological Epistemology, Holistic Ontology, and Positivist Ontology. In addition, a discursive interrelationship within each field, a dynamic of paradox, was found between the three meta-paradigms. These results offer encouragement for the relevance of spiritual development as part of the middle grades concept, as they suggest that integration of knowledge of adolescent spiritual development is theoretically supported by commitments to caring relationships in schools and constructivist learning theory. The results also suggest a paradigm revolution (Kuhn, 1996) that might allow for a new discourse of possibility (Giroux, 1981) for spirituality in education. This dissertation research could serve as a basis for further research that focuses on how to integrate knowledge of adolescent spiritual development in public schools in the United States.

The purpose of this study was to describe a Title I inclusion program in a north Texas middle school, to evaluate the degree of its success as a high achieving program, and to analyze how closely it met the requirements of the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994. Data were collected from the learning facilitators and teachers at the middle school with the permission of the school district. This study began with extensive research on the nature of adolescents and the beliefs and characteristics of high achieving middle schools. It addressed the steps which were recommended in the literature to improve middle schools and benefit students that are at-risk of failing to master the curriculum at their grade level. The researcher concluded by reporting effective strategies being used in middle school at-risk programs. These are strategies noted by experts as successful in identified programs. The population for this study was seventh and eighth grade Title I students who attended middle school during the 1992-1993, 1993-1994, 1994-1995 and 1995-1996 school years. The data collected by the researcher are presented in two parts: the description of the Title I inclusion program; and the results of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills tests in reading and math, the Shaw-Hiehle Math Tests, and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. Findings from this study suggest that the program met the requirements of a Title I program established by the federal government. The test scores for the middle school improved during the three years of the program. The Title I inclusion program met the requirements of the Improving America's Schools Act. Finally, the Title I students were successful working in classrooms with other students on challenging curriculum which met the State's content and performance standards. These findings have implications for other middle schools who are developing Title I programs to meet the requirements of the Improving America's Schools Act.

This study focuses on the use of American Invention Kits from the Smithsonian Institute in conjunction with a 3D printer. In conjunction with a large dataset from a study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), this innovative research focuses on the effect the digital fabrication curriculum unit has on gifted and talented students' knowledge and affinity toward the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Students from two rural middle schools in north-central Texas (N = 190) took part in this quantitative study; the students were divided among four subgroups: gifted-contrast (n = 12), gifted-treatment (n = 8), nongifted-contrast (n = 76), and nongifted-treatment (n = 94). The surveys utilized include the STEM Semantics Survey, TIMSS-Limited, and a knowledge assessment for the specific curriculum unit focused on the solenoid. The STEM Semantics Survey is divided into five subsets. Thirty-two separate one-way repeated measures ANOVAs were performed across the surveys and subgroups. Statistically significant results were found on four comparisons. This research holds implications in the areas of advocating for gifted education, collecting field data, utilizing large datasets, and understanding rural schools.

Academic engagement has been found to significantly predict students' future achievement. Among adolescents, the peer context becomes an increasingly important point of socialization and influence on beliefs and behavior, including academic engagement. Previous research suggests that those peers with whom an adolescent spends much of their time significantly predict change in engagement over time (Kindermann, 2007). Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998) postulates that exosystem effects (those influencing factors that are not directly connected to individuals) play an important role in development, and social network theorists have suggested that the position one occupies within the greater network is a key factor that determines one's power of influence (Borgatti, 2005). An individual's own position in a network emerges from his or her own connections, as well as from the structures formed by the connections of his or her affiliates (the exosystem). Utilizing an existing dataset, social networks analysis techniques were used to examine how three different forms of centrality (degree, closeness and eigenvector), which are markers for micro- and exo-system effects, relate to classroom engagement and its change over time. Results showed that although centrality in a network is positively related to academic characteristics at one point in time, students who have large numbers of immediate connections (degree centrality) tend to decrease in engagement over time. In contrast, eigenvector centrality showed a positive interaction with peer group influence on change in engagement over time. For those students who had highly interconnected peers the positive effect of peer group engagement was increased.