The purpose of this study was first and foremost to investigate the storying process used by six middle school students, their teacher, the school administrator and the researcher as they moved through their classroom/school lives. Second, I sought to incorporate the storying process within the larger context of a literate, learning centered classroom community in which storying is integrated with transaction, democracy, culture, and inquiry. Third, I wanted to examine the process of storying from a critical perspective in order to suggest ways to transform educational practices from a reproductionist to a social reconstructionist approach. This interpretive ethnography included the data collection strategies of individual and group interviews and field notes. A theoretical framework for storying was developed using a modified analytic induction method. The categories were constructed and coded using a constant comparative method. The major finding of this study was that storying is a distinct participatory/dialogic process which makes use of narrative elements. This process incorporates the speech mechanisms of mini-monologue, dialogue, and multilogue. Stories are initiated when someone starts to share spontaneously or when invited by a listener. The responses of listener(s) and/or speaker(s) fall into the categories of intermittent responses, ignoring a story starter, listener's tangential comments, popcorn stories, and sustaining a story through extraneous interruptions. The four major purposes for storying are to reflect on and understand experience, to negotiate and evaluate experience, to develop and sustain relationships, and to construct and reinforce knowledge. Storying is a powerful resource which can be employed in curriculum planning and practice to build community, engage in critical thinking, and construct knowledge. Storying is also a research tool for university and teacher researchers to both gather and analyze data through examining current theory and practice so that these can be imagined and structured in new ways.

This study examines a cross-disciplinary curriculum that uses guided imagery and writing warm-ups to enhance student awareness of sensory properties in the teaching of printmaking, book making and memoir writing. I questioned whether implementation of such a course could: (1) increase student motivation? (2) show improvement in student writing? (3) show student comprehension and application of basic printmaking and book making techniques? (4) show evidence of experimentation in student artwork that results from an awareness of the sensory properties? The curriculum was taught to two courses of middle school students during the University of Arizona's SEEK (Summer Education Enrichment for Kids) program. Each course was two weeks' duration for two hours a day. Quantitative and qualitative results indicate an improvement in student writing and a comprehension and application of printmaking and book making techniques, in addition to experimentation in art as a result of awareness of the sensory properties. Evidence also suggests that both subjects enhance one another when taught together.

Today, a large number of multicultural publications and resources are available for elementary classroom use. The purpose of the study was to examine existing multicultural elementary art curricula and resources to evaluate their adequacy and availability to the classroom art teacher, according to criteria, methods, and materials recommended by scholars in art education. The examination included price range and adaptability of material, audiovisual resources, art production, art criticism, art history, aesthetics, sequential organization, developmental appropriateness, cultural integrity, and multicultural content level. Upon completion of this study, two of the five curriculum publishers proved to consistently produce multicultural art education curriculum at a high quality level. Crizmac and Crystal Publications offer a number of curriculum settings that comply with current NAEA standards as well as the criteria set forth in this paper. Supplementary resources and the future of multicultural art education in respect to curriculum and classroom implementation are also discussed.

<p> Attitudes toward patient safety are the foundation of patient safety culture. Nursing students begin to formulate their attitudes toward patient safety while in educational programs. Nursing faculty have been challenged in their efforts to enhance the patient safety culture of students because there is a lack of empirical evidence as to which teaching strategies positively affect student attitudes toward patient safety. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between a 50-minute teaching module based upon the concept of medical error recovery and 9 dimensions of patient safety culture as measured by the Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire. The guiding framework for the study was the reciprocal interactive theory of patient safety culture in nursing. The conceptual model used to illuminate the role of nurses in recovering medical errors in the educational intervention was the modified Eindhoven model of near-miss events. The sample comprised 4 student cohorts (N = 142) enrolled in an accelerated bachelor of science in nursing (ABSN) program at one university, with 4 participants lost to follow-up (n = 138). A quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group, pretest/posttest design was used to compare mean attitude scores between the control (n = 75) group and the intervention group (n = 63) after statistically controlling for the pretest. ANCOVA revealed statistically higher mean attitude scores for the intervention group in 5 of 9 dimensions of patient safety culture with a small-medium effect size associated with the intervention: patient safety training, error inevitability, professional incompetence as error cause, patient's role in error, and importance of patient safety culture in curriculum. The results supported the use of a short-duration educational session on medical error recovery to enhance a subset of patient safety culture dimensions among ABSN students.</p>

<p>This researcher had two purposes. The investigator's purpose in this action research was to develop a working prototype of a music teacher digital portfolio within the Moodle environment, which included artifacts, as they relate to New York State's Annual Performance Review (APPR) legislation. The regulation on teacher evaluation is New York State Code &sect;3012-c. In order to develop the prototype, a first step involved working collaboratively with a panel of instructional leaders in music education to determine what a music teacher digital portfolio template should contain as per this new APPR Legislation. To achieve this goal in an open source course management system, Moodle was used to collaborate digitally with music education leaders from New York State. This researcher did not seek to establish rubrics for assessment. At the same time, however, by presenting artifacts as they relate to the APPR legislation, &sect;3012-c, the investigator presented prototypical evidence of quality teacher performance in student growth and student achievement, and these data entries may be used as a point of reference by supervisors who evaluate professional music educators. The report of this study took two forms: there is a report of the collaborative efforts that constitute action research and there is the presentation of the portfolio prototype. </p><p> The subjects were 12 instructional leaders in music education from Long Island, New York. Upon completion of the action research, the subjects completed a questionnaire designed to measure their perceptions of the action research study method of instruction and the use of a course management system (Moodle) as a tool for the construction of digital portfolios. </p><p> The results of the questionnaire showed that both purposes were achieved. Furthermore, a consensus was developed that the use of action research study is a valuable method of learning and a course management system, Moodle, is an effective and useful administrative tool for school administrators. </p>

<p> Educational leaders have many choices of organizational, curricular, and instructional interventions for academically underprepared high school freshmen. In the past decade, doubled instructional time in core subjects has become an increasingly popular intervention in large public school districts. Results so far have been mixed and there are no studies investigating the effects of this strategy in the private school sector. The purpose of this retrospective, pretest-posttest quasi-experiment with nonequivalent groups was to examine whether significant differences existed in the academic achievement gains of academically underprepared Catholic high school freshmen who received double-dosed mathematics and/or English instruction during ninth grade compared to equally underprepared peers who did not. The study used a dataset of 493 cases from an urban Catholic diocese in the San Francisco Bay Area. Academic achievement data consisted of archived mathematics and reading scores from two standardized, norm-referenced batteries with a published predictive validity metric of <i>r</i> = .83 (pretest: HSPT, posttest: PLAN). Independent <i>t-</i>test, ANCOVA, and ANOVA analyses were conducted to identify differences between group means and variances. Analyses revealed no statistically significant differences in posttest scores in mathematics or reading between the groups, challenging existing assumptions from previous effectiveness findings in the public school sector. The results indicate that, as a stand-alone intervention, doubled instructional time in the core subjects does not accelerate achievement gains for academically underprepared freshmen at urban Catholic high schools.</p>

<p>My study suggests by adding cultural relevant material to a curriculum does not alter the way a teacher teaches, it changes the "why." By selecting material that connects students in regards to their social, cultural or historical experience a teacher adds to the creditability of the lesson. The selection of a culturally relevant subject changes the detached "Why I am drawing this" to a subject that has a deeper meaning. The study of culturally relevant material provides students with cultural "depth" that becomes a part of their visual experience. Cultural depth is a necessary component in developing critical thinking skills and becomes a foundation for a student's creative expression. </p><p> A necessary goal of art education is visual literacy. Visually literacy requires no tactile skill, it is the critical thinking component of art. The tactile skill component of art used to express ideas in a creative way varies from those with talent (the ability to draw well) to those with very little or none. Visually literacy transcends talent. Little talent is need to develop the ability to put in context and frame visual and written information allowing one to discern the fiction from the non-fiction. </p><p> African-American art and artist were selected for my case study but the subjects studied do not need to be limited to demographics or ethnicity. There are many social and political issues within and outside the students' community that would have relevance. The key to improving visual literacy is connecting subject relevance to the students, in order to develop critical thinking skills and to have students think about what they see. The goal is always is to improve students' learning and achievement. </p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of linguistic knowledge in spelling by analyzing spelling errors made by 220 students in the fourth, fifth, and seventh grades. A 25-word researcher-designed spelling test with considerations of word frequency, word familiarity, and word type (based on morphological complexity) was administered. An error coding system was established based on the Triple Word Form theory. Each misspelling was coded based on its linguistic features and scored cumulatively in 3 categories: Phonological Representation, Orthographic Legality, and Morphological Legality. The error coding system revealed the linguistic profiles of misspellings and allowed the comparisons among subgroups matched on grades, reading, and spelling ability levels. </p><p> The results of profile analyses supported the Overlapping Waves Model, which advocates that spellers use their phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge in spelling simultaneously regardless of age, reading, or spelling levels. On the other hand, the study did not find evidence supporting the stage-specific theory, which defines each stage by observations of the consistent use of one strategy in spelling. The linguistic profiles revealed the competition between Phonological Representation and Orthographic Legality, which provided little evidence supporting the specific phonological deficit hypothesis. On the contrary, the researcher found that the key to becoming an average speller is to be able to effectively apply sufficient phonological knowledge in spelling. For students with poor reading ability, they do not just suffer from limited phonological knowledge but also from the lack of other linguistic knowledge. For any two students with average reading ability, it is the one who can apply sufficient phonological knowledge that benefit in spelling and perform at the level that matches his or her reading ability. Educational implications are discussed.</p>

<p> This study describes police officers&rsquo; perspectives of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training. Ethnographic interviews were used to gather data, and Transformational Learning Theory guided this study. Implications of CIT training indicate that CIT officers are a part of a subculture within police culture, and respond differently to mental health calls differently than their non-CIT counterparts. Outcomes of these different response styles include decreased criminalization, decreased injury to officers/consumers, decreased use of force, and increased confidence in responding to mental health calls for officers who are CIT trained. Implications of this study are discussed in relation to sustainability of partnerships between law enforcement officers and mental health professionals.</p>

This study attempted to replicate the findings of one such case of far transfer by Fong and Nisbett (1986) in order to support the position that far transfer can be reliably achieved. The requirements for transfer, in terms of superficially and structurally similar elements, are stated, leading to a hypothesis that interactive training will lead to higher rates of transfer. Ninety-four undergraduate students from Rice University were assigned to three training groups, a non-interactive Expository group, an interactive Interactive-Simulation group, and an observational, Passive-Simulation group. A one-week delay was also used. Transfer of training was found, although Interactive training did not lead to higher scores than Expository training. Several factors that influenced the likelihood of transfer are identified and discussed. Additional considerations are also made regarding features of training that emphasize generalizability.