This research explored the perspective of foster parents on the educational experiences of foster children and experiences of communication patterns with other key stakeholders (social workers, and teachers). Factors focused on were educational experience of foster children, communication patterns, the impact of communication patterns on the educational experience, and barriers to effective communication. Five individuals who were, at the time of the study, foster parents to at least one child were interviewed. Participants openly shared a variety of positive and negative experiences. This study adopted the theoretical framework of Bronfenbrenner’s cultural-ecological theory. Participant interviews were transcribed verbatim and inductive coding was used for analysis of transcriptions. Central themes that emerged included past experiences of foster child impacts the educational experience, the teacher-student relationship impacts the educational experience, and communication patterns impact the consistency of expectations across systems. Results from the study showed that foster parents are generally satisfied with the communication patterns they experience with key stakeholders. Consistency of expectations and modeling of help seeking behavior were identified as the key impacts communication patterns have on the educational experience of foster children. A unique experience of the impact of communication with biological parents of the foster child was also revealed.

Over the past decade, engaging student voice has emerged as an approach to increasing meaningful student involvement in schools towards meeting adolescents' developmental needs for agency, efficacy, and sense of belonging. Central to student voice work is the re-creation of student-teacher and student-organization relationships, generating student identity roles that are fundamentally different from the roles traditionally allocated to students. Conventional concepts of student roles by both adults and youth can act as barriers to increasing student voice. The goal of this study was to develop a better understanding of student role identity. Applying a critical ethnography approach in the context of participatory action research, a situated description of the student role within the organizational context of a rural high school was developed from the perspectives of students and teachers through the use of an online software platform. Keeping with student voice values and participatory action research protocols, students took a central role in developing and piloting survey questions, interpreting and organizing responses, reviewing the results, and presenting them to the school community. The data revealed both the aspirations and limitations of the student and teacher conceptions of the student role. Conventional notions of student identity dominated the role descriptions, and were generally consistent across student and teacher responses. Significant areas of divergence between student and teacher constructs included the explicit temporal orientation toward the future exclusive to the student responses, the engagement in academics that dominated the teacher submissions and rankings, and the conception of the student as a citizen/community member that was found only in the teacher responses. The results suggested an inclination on the part of both students and teachers to increase opportunities for students to inform and influence policies and practices at all levels of the school organization. Presentations of the study results to the school community by the student researchers have induced some systemic reform toward promoting student voice.

Given the teacher-as-technician view and the instrumentalist values that pervade professional schools, practices, and policy decisions (Kinsella & Pitman, 2012a; Zeichner, 2012) with regard to teacher qualification, evidence-based practices, and scripted curricula, there is growing concern that something of fundamental importance and moral significance is missing from the vision of what it means to be a professional, particularly in the field of education. In order to articulate teacher practical knowledge in a way that reflects the complexities of practice, a framework that captures the complexity of teaching practice and helps to define the type of knowledge beyond content and technique, which enables teachers to make practically wise decisions is needed. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the practical reasoning of highly competent teachers as it is revealed through meaning making about their experiences of pedagogical reasoning. The aim of this study was to provide an interpretive description of teacher pedagogical reasoning, then utilize the construct of professional phronesis as a framework for understanding the dimension of teacher knowledge involved in judgment (Coulter & Wiens, 2002; Kinsella, 2012). In order to develop a detailed, multi-perspectival account of the constructs of pedagogical reasoning and professional phronesis, I employed an interpretive phenomenological case study design (Smith et al. 2009) to examine the experiences of three participants. Analysis of the data revealed the pedagogical reasoning of the participants as a knowledge that continuously develops over time through a corpus of instructional experiences including: purposeful professional development, problem solving and reflection. The pedagogical reasoning of the participants was also found to operate as an instructional decision-making process that occurs in two modes: in deliberate planning and preparation for instruction, and spontaneously as they engage in instruction. Finally, the pedagogical reasoning of the participants was characterized by an orientation towards achieving multiple goals at once. All participants acknowledged the content of her discipline as an established goal; however, they described their decision-making in terms of goals for both themselves as practitioners regarding their role in student learning, as well as goals for student outcomes that extended beyond the development of student content knowledge. Professional/personal and instructional goals are tied to the identities of the individual participants and reflect how the unique dispositions of the participants influences the factors they consider in making instructional decisions, regardless of operational mode. Finally, all participants discussed a personal paradigmatic shift in focus from an early-career focus on content delivery to a focus on the needs of individual students and the necessity of developing relationships with students in order to achieve their personal/professional goals and goals for student growth. These themes regarding the experience of pedagogical reasoning reflected the six features of professional phronesis outlined by Kinsella and Pitman (2012b), which suggests that phronesis is a viable construct within the practice knowledge of highly competent teachers.

Researchers have stressed the importance of addressing the social/emotional needs of early childhood (EC) children, including the development of resilience; however, some U.S. school personnel focus more on academics than on these needs. When young children possess these skills, they can handle social/emotional challenges later in life. The purpose of this qualitative bounded case study was to explore school social workers' (SWs) perspectives about resilience in EC settings. Research questions focused on knowledge of existing programs, participants' perceptions of the successes and challenges of working with EC students, and their recommendations to improve EC students' education. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and O'Neill's and Gopnik's work on needs of young children informed this study. Five elementary school SWs with at least 6 years' experience from 5 districts in the U.S. Midwest participated in 2 semistructured individual interviews. Interpretive phenomenological analysis, involving first-cycle, transition, and second cycle coding, was used to identify themes. SWs' experiences indicated a need for a clear definition of resilience, and needs of young children, including EC programs that develop psychological resilience of children's thoughts and an increase in adults to promote resilience. Additional research may expand and enhance educators' and families' understanding of resilience and help develop research-based preventive programs and strategies to foster psychological resilience in young children. These endeavors may enhance positive social change by adding components of psychological resilience to EC programs for school personnel and students and in parent/family workshops, which may result in sound mental health practices that enable them to become productive members of society.

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether conducting a short-term online review of college algebra prerequisite skills at the start of a college algebra course concurrently with the normal course instruction and assignments would have a significant influence on student success. When failure rates in an entry-level college course such as college algebra can range from 20% to 60% or higher, it could present problems for the student and the institution (Burd & Boser, 2009). Research indicates that students who cannot pass entry-level college math courses have decreased chances of obtaining a college degree and it can limit the students' course of study (Adelman, 1999; Thiel, Peterman, & Brown, 2008). While several factors have been found to influence college algebra success, such as instructional practices, students' attitudes toward mathematics, and level of math anxiety, a secondary purpose of this study investigated whether students' gender and number of prior attempts at taking a college algebra course were factors that might interact with student performance. A quantitative study was conducted in the researcher's college algebra class at the University of South Florida in the fall semester 2010. The design included a treatment group and control group; participants in both were given a pretest and posttest before and after the 4-week treatment period, and all participants took the required departmental final exam. Of the original 187 participants in the study, the final statistical analyses were computed using data from the 165 students who completed the pretest, posttest, and final exam. Participants who were randomly assigned to the treatment group received an online review of college algebra prerequisite skills using the program, MyMathTest (Pearson Education, n.d.b), which included interactive instruction and practice with a minimum requirement of 3 hours per week for the 4-week treatment period; participants who were randomly assigned to the control group received an alternative assignment based upon their college algebra coursework using the online program, MyLabsPlus (Pearson Education, n.d.a) that accompanied the class textbook, with a comparable weekly time requirement. After the four-week treatment period, the remaining 11 weeks consisted of the normal course of study and concluded with a comprehensive departmental final exam not prepared by the course instructor. No significant differences in achievement on the final exam were found between the two groups. Also, there were no interaction effects and no main effects for gender and performance on the final exam. Number of prior attempts at college algebra similarly had no impact upon final exam. However, student achievement in the researcher's class was observed to be higher than that found in the other college algebra classes in the department (i.e. the researcher's students performed higher on the departmental final exam and had a lower failure rate than the overall departmental failure rate). The fact the researcher's college algebra students had greater success when compared to the other college algebra students would suggest other possibilities for future regard. For example, studies comparing use of alternative instructional strategies and/or grading practices may reveal factors that influence college algebra performance. Investigations comparing alternative placement procedures and/or advising strategies might also contribute findings helpful to promoting student success in college algebra.

With recent calls for teacher education programs to increase both the quantity and quality of field experiences (NCATE, 2010), it is important for teacher educators to understand how pre-service teachers create meaning from those experiences. Reflection is a mode of thought historically associated with creating "warranted assertabilities" (Dewey, 1938, p.15) from experience. Therefore, reflection is a common component of many teacher education programs (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Despite the abundance of research that has been conducted about reflection and teacher education, little is understood about the process of supported reflection as it is experienced by pre-service teachers. In this hermeneutic phenomenology, I explored the described experience of reflection for one pre-service teacher with whom I worked. Findings from this study created new understandings about reflection which include: (dis)positions may be tendencies toward temporary places rather than static, pre-determined qualities, dissonance appears to be present throughout the reflection process, judgment and knowledgeable others play key roles in the reflection process, and coding, note-taking, and writing appear to be ways for pre-service teachers and university supervisors to create texts that can be juxtaposed to create dissonance and dialectic tension.

Agricultural education, originally the province of land grant institutions, has recently entered the liberal arts curriculum. This represents a profound shift from the origins of agricultural education, when it was intended primarily as vocational training for future farmers, and has important implications for the future of the American food system. The first chapter of this thesis addresses the history of agricultural education: what was it originally like, and why did it come to be heavily criticized in the late twentieth century? Formal agricultural education changed significantly in response to these criticisms, making it more environmentally sustainable and bringing it into liberal arts institutions. The Pomona College Organic Farm is representative of a broader student farm movement that has gained momentum since the late 1990s, and offers the chance to evaluate agricultural education in the liberal arts. This thesis includes a curriculum in sustainable agriculture that was led as a group independent study at the Pomona College Organic Farm in fall 2013 and reflections on the process of curriculum design and implementation.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:35:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3048.pdf: 1915874 bytes, checksum: 962a55044bd6a20d81cc5f613820507a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-22 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / This thesis was developed with the objective of elucidating the factors that has caused the low academic performance in public schools. To make possible this achievement of this job was used to reconstruct the history of education with reference to public school in the municipalities of São Bernardo do Campo, Diadema and São Paulo state; dedicated special attention to curriculum and teaching program between 1930 and 2008. Analyzing the primary and secondary sources, was identified and marked the influence of two meaningful theoretical perspectives on the composition of the curriculum: one the one hand the traditional teaching influenced by many currents of humanism, and others, the New School, influenced pragmatism, more recently the ideas of the New School was revived by constructivism. To be properly exposed the results of this research and analysis developed the thesis has been separated into five chapters that is concerned with the exhibition of historical facts and analysis the documents founded relative to the current model of education and education policy accomplish between the decade of 1930 and 1990, and to expose the theoretical analysis for the ideal that guided reforms in educational policy in the period portrayed analysis of philosophical principles of pragmatism and constructivism and the facility of taking a critical parameter as the basis of humanism and purpose of new positivism. In conclusion it was emphasized the predominance of pragmatist ideal in education policy under slopingly the pedagogy sphere and reflect professional development in prejudice of scientific, cultural and humanistic development, as a cause of low quality of education. / Esta tese foi desenvolvida com o objetivo de identificar os fatores que têm provocado o baixo rendimento escolar nas escolas públicas. Para tornar possível a realização desta tarefa, recorreu-se à reconstituição da história da educação, tomando-se como referência a rede pública de ensino dos municípios de São Bernardo do Campo e Diadema e do estado de São Paulo, dedicando atenção especial ao currículo e aos programas de ensino entre 1930 e 2008. Ao se analisar as fontes primárias e secundárias, verificou-se a influência bem marcante de duas correntes teóricas na composição do currículo: de um lado, o ensino tradicional, influenciado pelas diversas correntes do humanismo, e de outro, a Escola Nova, influenciada pelo pragmatismo. Mais recentemente, o ideário desta última foi revigorado pelo construtivismo. Para serem expostos adequadamente os resultados desta pesquisa e análises desenvolvidas, a tese está dividida em cinco capítulos, nos quais realizamos a exposição dos fatos históricos e análise dos documentos encontrados, referentes ao atual modelo de educação e às políticas educacionais realizadas entre as décadas de 1930 e 1990. Além disso, também realizamos análises teóricas referentes ao ideário que norteou as reformas nas políticas educacionais no período retratado análise dos pressupostos pragmatismo e do construtivismo e desenvolvemos uma reflexão crítica tomando como parâmetro as bases do humanismo e os propósitos do neopositivismo. Na conclusão foi ressaltada a predominância do ideário pragmatista nas políticas educacionais, sob o viés da pedagogia das competências e da formação do profissional reflexivo, em detrimento da formação científica, cultural e humanística, como uma causa da baixa qualidade do ensino.

This study focused on the experiences of Black male student-athletes in Division I sports and used critical race methodology to present counter narratives. These narratives highlighted successes and heightened awareness about the needs and concerns of an extremely important, but often silenced, population. The purpose of this research was to examine the experiences of Black male student-athletes in the Division I revenue-generating sports of basketball and football. This study examined how Black males perceived the effectiveness of the NCAA supports in place for their academic success, degree attainment, and postcollegiate leadership and career opportunities. This dissertation also sought to understand the extent to which the legacy of racism in the United States has impacted the collegiate experience of these athletes. This research utilized critical race theory to frame the counter narratives of Black male student-athletes participating in this study. Through counter stories, the researcher offered suggestions that more effectively serve NCAA Black male student-athletes during their transition into and beyond Division I university sports participation as a strategy to achieve social justice for a historically marginalized group.

Epistemological development and its relationship to critical thinking has been postulated in educational psychology since the 1970’s. By empirically examining epistemological development in relationship to thinking critically, a richer understanding of overall student development and instructional needs could be achieved. By taking into account a student’s epistemological development, issues unique to these stages could inform how to most effectively work with students to promote critical thinking development. The purpose of this study was to explore the potential relationship between collegiate epistemological development and critical thinking skills by examining differences in critical thinking skills at different levels of epistemological development. The hypothesis of the study was that students reporting an epistemological level of either Absolutist or Evaluativist would have higher critical thinking scores than students reporting a Multiplist level. The instruments employed were the Cornell Critical Thinking Test (CCTT) and the Kuhn epistemological instrument. The study population of 157 students was taken from a medium-sized private institution in the southeastern United States. The data indicated that the majority of the study population, 87%, identified as the Multiplist level of epistemological development, according to Kuhn’s definitions. Overall critical thinking scores for the sample was lower than expected but still within reported ranges. Analysis of variance tests were performed on the data and failed to indicate a statistically significant relationship in overall epistemological developmental level and four of the five individual epistemological judgement domains. This finding was not anticipated, challenges current theoretical understanding of this relationship, and indicates a need for further investigation of the nature of the relationship between critical thinking and epistemological development in the higher educational setting.