The roles of grandparents, from occasional helpers to custodial adults in their grandchildren's lives, often raise levels of social discomfort among those involved,; especially when the children are still in elementary school. A disproportionate number of custodial grandparents are African American women. This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of 8 custodial African American grandmothers in Delaware regarding the education of their school-aged grandchildren. The theoretical foundation was Carter and McGoldrick's theory of families as interconnected systems, and Sands, Goldberg-Glen, Shin, and Robin's theory that life event changes often lead to stress and coping strategies. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed using open and axial coding to reveal common themes. The grandmothers saw themselves as surrogate parents to their grandchildren and depended on support programs to help with their grandchildren's education. A recommendation is for school districts to build relationships with these African American grandmothers to help facilitate the education of their grandchildren and provide effective and affordable services. Disseminating the findings to educational leaders could lead to the development of more programs to assist custodial African American grandmother families, thus promoting social change.

Previous research has investigated the strategies to develop teacher-parent relationships in preschool programs. However, a gap exists concerning whether or not parents and teachers perceive that their relationships with children directly impact student's learning outcomes. The purpose of this descriptive case study was to determine how teachers and parents perceive the role of professional development, parental involvement, and the teacher-parent relationship on children's achievement. Early childhood experts have suggested that each of these roles contribute to children's learning outcomes. Bronfenbrenner's ecological model served as a framework for this study because it focuses on the connection between home and school that influence children's development and learning. Data collection consisted of 6 parent and 6 teacher interviews from 3 preschools, and were analyzed via inductive analysis for emergent themes. The results findings illuminated the importance of teacher-parent relationships in children's growth and development; the findings also revealed the connection between children's academic skills and teachers' education and training. The study also found that home learning increased children's academic success. These findings are consistent with past research findings that reveal the importance of parents and teachers working together as partners in education to increase children's learning outcomes. This study promotes positive social change by empowering preschool administrators to create policies and procedures that encourage working directly with families and to develop a mission statement to promote increased parental involvement in the early childhood field to support children's achievement.

Although problem-based learning (PBL) is not a new educational teaching method, little is known about the experiences of homeschool teachers who implement this teaching and learning approach with students with special needs. An increase in the number students with special needs being homeschooled made this study necessary and timely. The purpose of this study was to explore how publicly shared PBL experiences of homeschool teachers of students with special needs reflect 21st-century skills. The study was framed using 3 skill areas from a 21st-century skills framework including communication and collaboration, problem-solving and critical thinking, and cross-disciplinary knowledge. Data were collected from 20 blog sites that were each written by a homeschool teacher of at least 1 student with special needs. The sites had a minimum of 3 blog posts that referenced teaching and learning that aligned with the fundamentals of PBL. Deductive-dominant content analysis was completed on 87 blog posts through 2 levels of coding using both a priori and emergent coding. Key findings showed that the blog posts of homeschool teachers of students with special needs most often described (a) sharing, (b) creating inquiry environments and supports, and (c) cross-discipline content. Because the blog posts of homeschool teachers who use a PBL approach with their students with special needs reflect 21st-century skills, this study may encourage more teachers in the homeschool community to implement a PBL approach. The results from this study may contribute to positive social change by providing insights for homeschool teachers interested in purposefully implementing PBL experiences where students with special needs practice 21st-century skills.

The U.S. Latino community is underrepresented among those with college degrees, and high college dropout rates among Latinos have contributed to that underrepresentation. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore why Latinos are at increased risk for dropping out of college compared to their White counterparts. Tinto's theory of student integration and the geometric model of student persistence and achievement were used to guide the study. Data were collected from 12 Latino students at risk for dropping out at a college in the northeastern United States who were enrolled in a degree program but were considering dropping out before completion. through semi-structured individual interviews and from documents that addressed retention efforts to increase students' persistence and degree completion at the study site. Analyses included manual coding, open coding, and computer-assisted coding with NVivo 11. Findings indicated several barriers to college completion: (a) financial difficulties, (b) familial responsibilities and financial support, and (c) lack of dropout prevention programs targeting Latino students. Results and recommendations were compiled as a white paper to distribute to school administrators and stakeholders. Findings may be used by administrators and stakeholders to increase Latino students' retention and graduation rates. The project recommendation was to implement a Latino support program in the northeastern U.S. colleges led by Latino mentors who were college graduates. The possible implications of this support program for Latino students are increased retention rates and opportunities to expand their social network with students going through similar struggles.

This study analyzes the qualitative and quantitative patterns of notetaking by learning disabled (LD) and nondisabled (ND) adolescents and the effectiveness of notetaking and review as measured by the subjects' ability to recall information presented during a lecture. The study also examines relationships between certain learner characteristics and notetaking. The following notetaking variables were investigated: note completeness, number of critical ideas recorded, levels of processing information, organizational strategies, fluency of notes, and legibility of notes. The learner characteristics examined pertained to measures on achievement, short-term memory, listening comprehension, and verbal ability. Students from the 11th and 12th grades were randomly selected from four senior high schools in Dade County, Florida. Seventy learning disabled and 79 nondisabled subjects were shown a video tape lecture and required to take notes. The lecture conditions controlled for presentation rate, prior knowledge, information density, and difficulty level. After 8 weeks, their notes were returned to the subjects for a review period, and a posttest was administered. Results of this study suggest significant differences (p<.01) in the patterns of notetaking between LD and ND groups not due to differences in the learner characteristics listed above. In addition, certain notetaking variables such as process levels, number of critical ideas, and note completeness were found to be significantly correlated to learning outcome. Further, deficiencies in the spontaneous use of organizational strategies and abbreviations adversely affected the notetaking effectiveness of learning disabled students. Both LD and ND subjects recalled more information recorded in their notes than not recorded. This difference was significant only for the ND group. By contrast, LD subjects compensated for their poor notetaking skills and recalled significantly more information not recorded on their notes than did ND subjects. The major implications of these findings suggest that LD and ND subjects exhibit very different entry behaviors when asked to perform a notetaking task; hence, teaching approaches to notetaking must differ as well.

No description available.

Although there is a considerable body of research examining the effects of teacher written commentary on second language writers' revision processes, scarce attention has been given to examining the larger pedagogical context in which multiple instructional, linguistic, and cognitive factors interact and affect the way students react and use varying kinds of feedback (e.g., teacher, tutor, peers) in the revision of their texts. The purpose of this ethnographic case study is to document the kinds of strategies used by two ESL students enrolled in a first-year rhetoric course at a Midwestern university when revising different writing assignments. I explore the larger pedagogical context and its influences on the students' revision processes. In this in-depth, long term exploration of the philosophical perspectives and instructional practices of Rhetoric instructors, I document the feedback provided by a writing tutor and analyze the patterns that characterize the focal students' revisions while also illuminating the focal students' perspectives concerning the varying kinds of feedback they receive. I present the findings in the form of a case study and analyze the data searching for key themes that emerged from data sources that include class observations, interviews with teachers, students, and key administrative staff. I audiotaped tutoring sessions, recorded students' revision think-aloud protocols, collected and examined copies of the students' writing for discourse analysis, collected course handouts and department philosophy statements, kept fieldnotes and a journal to record my observations and reflections. The results suggest that ESL college students exhibit important rhetorical, cultural, and linguistic differences that may stand in the way of academic success. Rhetoric/composition teachers need greater preparation in order to effectively address these differences. The study also highlights the important role played by writing center tutors in helping ESL students cope with the demands of rhetoric classes and improve their writing skills. Through individualized instruction and specific instructional approaches (e.g., questioning, modeling, and cognitive structuring), the tutor in this study proved successful in stimulating the focal students' analytical and critical skills in the resolution of different tasks thus enhancing the ESL students' chances for academic success.

No description available.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how using different IRT calibration methods may affect student achievement growth pattern recovery. In this study, 96 vertical scales (4 × 2 × 2 × 2 ×3) are constructed using different combinations of IRT calibration methods (separate, pair-wise concurrent, semi-concurrent, & concurrent), lengths of common-item set (10 vs. 20 common items), types of common item set (dichotomous only vs. dichotomous and polytomous), and numbers of polytomous item (6 vs. 12) for 3 simulated datasets which differ in sample size (500, 1000, 5000 per grade). Three criteria (RMSE, SE and bias) are used to evaluate the performance of these calibration methods on proficiency score distribution recovery over 40 replications. The results suggest that for data used in this study, when parameters of interest are related to measuring students' growth (i.e., proficiency score mean and effect size), pair-wise concurrent calibration overall produced the most accurate results. When parameters of interest are related to performance variability (i.e., standard deviation), concurrent calibration in general produced the most stable and accurate estimates. When the emphasis is to classify students' performance accurately, with the increase of sample size, taken collectively, pair-wise concurrent and semi-concurrent calibration outperformed concurrent and separate calibration. Overall, pair-wise concurrent was more effective than the other methods in constructing a vertical scale and use of either separate or concurrent calibration to create a vertical scale seems least warranted. In addition, it is observed that (1) Larger sample size stabilized estimation results and reduced error; (2) Compared to tests containing 10 common items, errors and biases were in general smaller for tests with 20 common items; (3) Compared to tests containing a mixed-format common-item set, errors and biases were usually smaller for tests containing a dichotomous-only common-item set; (4) For tests containing a mixed-format common-item set, errors and biases were in general smaller for tests containing more polytomous items; and (5) For tests containing a dichotomous-only common-item set, increasing the number of polytomous items did not necessarily either reduce or increase errors and biases.

Technology in agriculture has changed more in the past hundred years than in the previous thousand, and the rate of change seems to be accelerating. No longer can one farm successfully for the duration of a lifetime with the same knowledge, understanding and skill which he possessed as a young farmer (1). Senators and representatives recognized the need for the continuous preparation of farm people for proficiency in their chosen field and in 1917 introduced and passed the Smith-Hughes Act. This enabled school administrators to offer vocational instruction in agriculture to young and adult farmers by providing additional funds to local districts for classes in vocational education. The act also provided for agriculture education in the high school curriculum (15).