This project inserviced teachers for grades fourth through sixth on water conservation activities that they could implement with their students. Project Wet (Water Education for Teachers) was used as the basis for the workshops. All selected activities correlated with the California State Content Standards.

This project is designed for junior high school teachers who wish to initiate environmental issues-based education in Taiwan. It addresses the current education at junior high schools and important environmental issues in Taiwan, presenting instructional strategies for teaching controversial environmental issues. The appendix of the project is an original design for a systematic environmental issues curriculum, including student-centered and teacher-centered activities that could be integrated into curricula on related subjects. Lessons include the environmental awareness, ethics, skills for analyzing issues, research skills, debate practice, negotiation practice, and projects.

The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of special needs students in technical educational programs.

This thesis examines how intercultural awareness education can be taught to kindergarten through fourth grade children. The concept of what it means to be interculturally aware and what is needed for teachers to instinct awareness in young students is examined. Literature research and data gathered from teachers through interviews and surveys is used to create a framework for teaching intercultural awareness education. In addition a set of recommendations for instruction and a bibliography for professional development around intercultural education are presented.

The purpose of this study is to examine the programming of religious education in Southern Baptist institutions of higher education, including a comparison of current religious education programs, the articulation between college and seminary religious education programs, and the identification of future trends that these programs may follow. From these findings, the following conclusions were drawn: Religious education is apparently considered important enough to be included in the curriculum of Southern Baptist colleges. The evaluation of the role of the institution in training students for careers in religious education has been a vital factor in changes that have been made in the programs. Programs designed to grant credit for work done prior to seminary enrollment are being favorably, although not unanimously, received. Additional undergraduate religious education programs appear to be likely, should programs granting credit for previous work develop. Exploration into the development of other means for the granting of credit would bring improvement in the cooperative relationships between the colleges and the seminaries. From these conclusions, the following implications were derived: Southern Baptist schools will continue to train persons for church-related vocations. Attitudinal changes must occur, both among the college and the seminary leaders, before major changes will be made. If changes in the articulation of the college and seminary programs are to be made, seminary leaders are in the best position to lead in such changes. The designing of a prerequisite program for entry into a seminary master's degree program in religious education might be considered as a key to the articulation between graduate and undergraduate programs.

Students of accredited social work programs are expected to demonstrate ten core competencies, including the ability to "engage in policy practice to advance social and economic well-being and to deliver effective social work services" (Council on Social Work Education, 2008). Despite this expectation, almost half of licensed social workers surveyed disagreed with the notion that they were adequately prepared for political engagement by their social work education (Ritter, 2007). Because social welfare policy courses are the primary curricular means for preparing generalist social workers for political advocacy, this study explores how undergraduate students respond to social welfare policy instructors' efforts to prepare them for political engagement. Quantitative and qualitative data from social work students in two distinct social welfare policy courses support the idea that participation in such a course can contribute to an increase in political interest and internal political efficacy. Based on surveys (n=31), focus groups (n=28), and interviews (n=11) with students, a model for social welfare policy instruction is proposed, which includes 11 recommended teaching methods and 7 key aspects of the students' learning experience. By listening to the voices and experiences of social work students, this study begins to fill a gap in the social work education and policy practice literature. The final conclusions of the study help clarify for social work educators methodologies by which they can more effectively support students in the development of political interest, internal political efficacy, and ultimately policy practice.

The goal of environmental education (EE) has always been to increase knowledge about the environment and to foster positive environmental attitudes. Increasingly, as the call for integrating EE programs into mainstream science curriculum intensifies, it is important to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs not only through measures of change in knowledge and attitudes, but through the additional criteria of meeting the needs of different gender and ethnic groups. The purpose of this research was to identify whether a watershed education program was meeting the needs of diverse learners within the context of a year-long, integrated, sixth-grade science curriculum. This study specifically sought to answer the following questions: 1) Do differences exist between genders and ethnic groups in regards to change in environmental knowledge after participation in an environmental education program? and 2) Do differences exist between genders and ethnic groups in regards to changes in environmental attitudes after participation in an environmental education program? A mixed-methods approach consisting of a pre/post-test survey, interviews, and observational data was used to evaluate these questions. The quantitative results of the survey data suggests that, overall, students had statistically significant (p < 0.01) gains in environmental knowledge, but no change in attitude towards the environment after participation in the program. When subpopulations are broken down into gender and ethnic groups, however, there is statistically significant support for the idea that ethnic groups--and, to a lesser extent, gender groups--were affected differently by the program. One important finding was that Hispanic and Native American students had significantly less gain in knowledge than their White, Asian and African-American peers. Qualitative interviews and observations shed light on these findings and illustrate the experiences of students during the year-long program. Other findings, trends, observations, and opportunities for future research are also discussed.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Marc Prensky’s digital natives theory became popular, because it supplied teachers with answer as to why students were unresponsive to their curriculums. In essence, Prensky’s theory asks: what has changed? In most cases, it is not the teachers’ curriculums that have changed, so it has to be something else. Prensky points to digital technologies, because teachers are now having to teach students who never knew a world without digital technologies—Prensky, of course, asserting that this changes the way students think, which naturally transfers over to how they learn. In short, it is the students that have changed due to digital technologies. According to Prensky, students, within the digital natives generation, would value their courses more if teachers utilized digital technologies in their classroom. However, critics of the digital natives theory assert that Prensky has not considered many variables that could have an effect on how students use digital technologies, such as socio-economic factors, gender, education, and geographic location, and ultimately there is no empirical evidence to support the use of digital technologies in Prensky’s pedagogy (see Sue Bennett and Karl Maton, Chris Jones et al., Anoush Margaryan et al., and Neil Selwyn). Although, I mostly agree with the critics evaluations of the digital natives theories, I believe that there are larger economic variables, such as Gee et al.’s new capitalism, that influence how students value digital technologies as well as literacy and learning. This concept was reflected in the survey that I conducted in order to examine how students value W131 in general, the writing done in W131, and writing done in social digital technologies. The survey demonstrated that students do not understand social digital writing to be writing; therefore, utilizing digital technologies in the writing classroom, as Prensky suggest, would not be beneficial, because it would take a great deal of class time for students to come to the understanding that social digital writing is writing. More importantly, the survey indicated that students are highly career motivated, which influences how students value their courses. For students, a course’s value is determined by how applicable it is to students’ career goals. The survey results suggest that while students recognize that first-year composition (FYC) has value, they do not necessarily see it specifically valuable to their primary goals. Although I believe it is important for students to be able to find value in a course, I am not suggesting that FYC should be tailored to cater to students; on the contrary, I believe that the ideal FYC course would acknowledge the values of the field of study that it pertains to, and attempt to demonstrate to students how those values relate to their own. This is ideal—however, by using the Writing about Writing pedagogy, designed by Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, this kind of value system may be possible. Downs and Wardle’s pedagogy also has the potential to bridge the value systems of the students, and writing studies, because Downs and Wardle’s pedagogy focuses on students gaining a better understanding of writing studies as a field of study, by engaging and exploring texts that represent writing studies’ central beliefs and important works. Through texts that come out of the writing studies discipline students can gain a better understanding of concepts that come out of writing studies, as well as build a bridge between students’ values and the values of the writing studies discipline. Texts such as chapter six (“The Means of Production: Literacy and Stratification as the Twenty-First Century) of Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives, James Paul Gee’s “The New Literacy Studies and the ‘Social Turn,’” and Harvey Graff’s “The Literacy Myth at Thirty,” offers students a new perspective on the economic climate that effects the job market, as well as provide a meaningful way into writing studies. In this chapter, I will discuss Downs and Wardle’s Writing about Writing pedagogy, how I would implement their pedagogy in a FYC course, and what would be the ideal learning outcomes for this course.

“Under Wendy Bishop’s Eye” examines the teaching, learning, and social environment of a graduate student in an American creative writing MFA program in the early years of the 21st century. This dissertation is a work of autofiction; it is both an autoethnography and a fictionalized story written in the form of a novel. The project uses the scholarship of writing studies’ leader Wendy Bishop to discuss and analyze the dynamics of graduate student learning in creative writing courses, undergraduate learning in creative writing courses, graduate student teaching in creative writing courses, and graduate student teaching in expository writing or first-year composition courses at a four-year college. The project addresses the limitations of the “workshop method” for teaching creative writing, while supporting the benefits of writing pedagogy that includes cross-genre writing exercises in all university-level writing courses, specifically bringing “personal writing” and creative non-fiction into both creative writing and first-year composition course.

The literature suggests that work values and attitudes are just as important, if not more so, than cognitive and psychomotor skills. However, there is little data in the literature which actually describes the work values and attitudes that trade and industrial instructors teach and the pedagogical techniques they employ to teach them. The primary objectives of this study were to identify the work values and attitudes that trade and industrial instructors teach and to describe the pedagogical techniques they use to teach these skills. Another objective of this study was to deter mine whether work values and attitudes are taught incidentally with cognitive and psychomotor skills, or via targeted learning activities. This study utilized the face-to-face interview technique to collect data. The sample for this study was composed of 5O secondary trade and industrial instructors who were nominated by their administrators as successful in teaching work values and attitudes. Because of the qualitative nature of this study, the analysis explored relationships between the specific occupational area of trade and industrial instructors and the work: values and attitudes they reported teaching. In addition, relationships were explored between the occupational area of the instructors and the pedagogical techniques they employed to teach the work values and attitudes. During analysis, examples and behavioral events provided by the instructors were examined. The major conclusions of this study were: (1) Instructors directly and indirectly teach numerous types of work: values and attitudes to their students. However, the most emphasized work values and attitude clusters were Ambitious, Cooperative/Helpful, Accurate/Quality of Work, Dependable/ Reliable/Responsible, and Dedicated/Devoted/Honest/ Loyal/Conscientious. (2) Instructors teach work: values and attitudes that have been identified in the literature as most important. Though it became evident that instructors emphasized some work values and attitudes more than others, all the identified work values and attitudes have been recognized in the literature as important. (3) The instructors reported using several different pedagogical strategies to teach work values and attitudes. The most frequently identified pedagogical strategies were: reward structure, group discussion, one on one counseling, role modeling, and role playing. (4) The majority of these secondary trade and industrial instructors taught work values and attitudes incidentally with cognitive and psychomotor skills. (5) These secondary trade and industrial instructors used both democratic and indoctrinational pedagogical techniques extensively to teach work values and attitudes. / Ed. D.