<p> This study explored factors thought to affect college students&rsquo; selection and experience of instructional materials by utilizing general procedures of Giorgi&rsquo;s (2012) descriptive phenomenological psychological method and Spradley&rsquo;s (1979) approach to interpretation. Twenty-five undergraduate students were asked to study finite mathematics materials after selecting from four sets of options, with the same content but different visual designs and formats. The entire process was observed, and students were interviewed about their experience. As a result of the analyses, students were found to select instructional materials that met their expectations, and such expectations had been defined or impacted by their various previous experiences. For example, students who believed that instructional materials should effectively deliver content selected materials based on the ease of navigation. Meanwhile, students who believed that instructional materials should attract them and engage them into learning selected materials based on the attractiveness of the materials. Students made decisions regarding which materials met their expectations almost immediately after looking at the materials. In addition, opinions regarding which materials allowed easier navigation or which materials appeared to be attractive were diverse. Furthermore, many students felt that the number of words was different in the materials although every word on the four materials was the same. One student even thought that the tone of the language was different in different materials. Students&rsquo; difference in perception regarding the content of the materials across different visual designs suggests that the affective perception of the visual design was powerful enough to influence students&rsquo; cognitive perception of the content. Overall, students&rsquo; difference in visual perceptions suggests that instructional content should be displayed in multiple different forms to comply with students&rsquo; diverse visual needs.</p><p>

<p> This quantitative descriptive comparative study compared test scores from the Ohio Achievement Assessment of students who were taught reading in ability grouped classrooms with those who were taught in non-ability grouped classrooms. The purpose of this quantitative descriptive comparative study was to determine if a statistically significant difference existed between reading scores on the Ohio Achievement Assessments Test (OAA) of third grade students who are ability grouped and third grade students who are not ability grouped with regards to gender and ethnicity. The theories examined for this quantitative descriptive comparative study were the constructivist theory and the theory of multiple intelligences. The primary research question was whether or not there was a significant statistical difference in student test scores for the Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA) in reading in ability grouped and non-ability grouped classrooms, with regard to gender or ethnicity. This study was a quantitative descriptive comparative design using archived data from the Ohio Department of Education and a school district located in Ohio. The study consisted of 334 student test scores, ability grouped males, females, White, Hispanic, and Black students and then the same groups for non-ability grouped students with regard to their gender and ethnicity. Descriptive statistics (standard deviation and the mean) were used to analyze the variables that were under investigation and to answer the hypotheses. Data analysis was completed using independent samples t-test to determine statistical significant difference among ability or non-ability grouped students with regard to gender. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if a statistical significant difference existed between ability grouped and non-ability grouped students with regard to ethnicity, this resulted in a post-hoc test. It was determined that a statistical significant difference did not exist between males and females, regardless of their grouping status for reading on the Ohio Achievement Assessment. When grouping students by ability, there was a statistically significant difference in Hispanic students increase in achievement, when being compared to Black and White students. When non-ability grouped students were compared, there was not a statistically significant difference in OAA scores with regard to ethnicity. Further research is needed to provide holistic recommendations for grouping strategies across curriculum, types of schools, and age of students. </p><p>

<p> Practitioners have agreed that service-learning programs or curricula guide students into developing a more robust connection to the community in which they live as well as amongst other members of that community (Eyler, Giles, Stenson, &amp; Gray, 2001). However, what isn&rsquo;t known extensively is <i>how</i> these outcomes have been generated (Kiely, 2005a). Based upon Milne&rsquo;s (2000) <i>reflective artmaking</i>, this arts-based ethnographic study introduces the terminology <i>reflective artmaking service-learning</i>, demonstrating how the coupled learning processes of reflective artmaking and service-learning respond to the call for research. The Capacities for Imaginative Learning (Holzer, 2009) facilitated my ethnographic analysis, providing specificity towards deconstructing the underlying mechanisms of processing and filtering. Conducted in Texas among Christian homeschool students, this study inquires, how does reflective artmaking coupled with service-learning help to make the underlying concept of &ldquo;community&rdquo; visible? This ethnographic study focuses on the educative (Dewey, 1938) value of an arts-infused program with Christian homeschooled youth (ages 11-17) in Texas. Significant findings include the ways in which experiential learning based on a constructivist epistemology and a focus on the self was a suitable, but yet limiting, theoretical framework. Suggestions include ways to use reflective artmaking coupled with service-learning to enhance the authenticity and applicability of projects and thus to enhance student interest and ownership. This study provides a broad set practitioners in educational programs and public, private, and home schools with practical, innovative, substantive, and customizable methods of incorporating arts-based reflection on civic engagement within their teaching practices.</p><p>

The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ espoused instructional beliefs and whether they differed in relation to schools’ socioeconomic status, extent of teachers’ educational background, or extent of teachers’ classroom experience. The study comprised a total of 242 Miami-Dade County public school educators who responded to a thirty-nine question Likert scale, Literacy Instructional Practices Questionnaire. Eighteen schools, three from each of the six regions, were purposively selected based on the socioeconomic status of students. Nine participants were interviewed using semi-standardized interview procedures and open-ended questioning techniques. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) results revealed that teachers’ espoused beliefs concerning the instruction of literacy and forces and influences affecting instruction do not significantly differ depending on schools’ socioeconomic status, extent of teachers’ educational background, or extent of teachers’ classroom experience. The majority of teachers appear to follow a top-down generated direct instruction model. Generally, students are taught as a whole class and ability grouped for specific skill instruction utilizing commercially produced reading and language arts texts. There was no evidence of a relationship between teachers’ espoused beliefs concerning the model of instruction that they practice or teachers’ espoused beliefs concerning research and its application to practice and the three independent variables. Interview data corroborated much of the information garnered through the questionnaire. However, interview participants espoused the belief that research did not influence their selection of instructional practices. Although teachers perceive of themselves as eclectic in their espoused instructional beliefs, they appear to follow a skills based direct instruction pedagogy in practice. Much of what teachers believe constitutes effective practice, few researchers recommend, affirming the findings of Calderhead (1993) and the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board (U.S. Department of Education, 1998, p. 18) that “educators rarely know research, seek it out, or act in accordance with its results.”

Following is a study that explores learning in community in a fully-integrated, team taught course at a community college in New England. These classes, Learning Communities (LCs) represent rich opportunities for exploring and practicing democratic education. From a theoretical grounding in social learning theories and an exploration into learning and community as active, ongoing phenomena, I present narrative, relational research as enactment. Data from field notes, interviews, focus groups and researcher reflections inform findings and analysis. I represent this as an experience parallel to — not claiming either to mirror or replace — the experiences of the other participants. In these findings, I identify a duality of circles and lines, with circles representing open inquiry, community, collaboration, and democratic discourse. Lines represent reification, hierarchical and binary thinking, and the threat of positivism. Long hours, intense interactions, openness to collaboration, flexible pedagogy, and emerging curriculum all make for complicated relationships that allow for questions, confusions and tensions around what it means to know, who gets to decide, and what are the parameters and epistemologies of academic disciplines. I hope, through this text, to report, celebrate, and participate in these conversations.

This research investigated the effects of embedding knowledge-check questions in temporal locations within video lectures and their impact on students’ perceptions and performance. The students’ perceptions focused on their views on both the video lecture and the knowledge-check questions embedded in temporal locations within the video. These strategic locations are the time intervals between questions. It was hypothesized that when questions are embedded in strategic locations in a longer video, students will score significantly higher in perception and performance scores. This study builds on recent studies on optimal engagement times for video lectures, the use of questions within the lectures, and the use of xAPI analytics to determine video usage patterns. A total of 86 students from six undergraduate classes participated in the study. These classes were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The control group (CG) did not have questions embedded in the video lecture but had practice-test questions after the video lecture. Treatment 1 (T1) and Treatment 2 (T2) had knowledge-check questions embedded in temporal positions within the video at the 2-3 minute and 5-6-minute mark, respectively. There were no significant differences between groups regarding the student perception scores, which included both perceptions on the video lecture and the embedded-knowledge-check questions. There were also no significant differences between the groups with regards to the post-test quiz scores. However, there were significant differences between groups relating to knowledge-check question scores. Furthermore, by running a linear regression, two relationships were discovered 1) between post-test performance scores and time spent engaging with the video lecture, and 2) between knowledge-check scores and time spent engaging with the video lecture. A relationship was not found between perception scores and usage patterns. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / 2019 / November 12, 2019. / eLearning, Embedded Questions, online distance learning, Online learning modules, Video Lectures, xAPI Analytics / Includes bibliographical references. / Vanessa P. Dennen, Professor Directing Dissertation; Motoko Akiba, University Representative; James Klein, Committee Member; Fengfeng Ke, Committee Member.

Feedback procedures are an important class of operant behavior change methods used in a wide variety of settings. One innovative method of providing immediate feedback adapted from the animal literature is through the use of an acoustical stimulus, such as a clicker. Methods utilizing this response contingent delivery of acoustic feedback in humans is commercially referred to as TAGteaching. Several studies have documented the effectiveness of this teaching procedure with various human populations. Despite the successes, very little is known of the environmental manipulations necessary to produce desirable effects; and if these effects sustain when this procedure is implemented in clinical settings. Moreover, several authors have asserted that the acoustic stimulus functions like a conditioned reinforcer, however no explicit pairing procedures are traditionally implemented with humans, to establish the functions of contingent deliveries of the acoustic stimulus. The purpose of the current study was twofold; first this study sought to evaluate the role of textual instructions in establishing the functions of response contingent acoustic feedback using a laboratory task. Secondly, this study sought to evaluate the extent to which instructions and acoustic feedback, produce changes in staff and client behaviors in a clinical setting. Study one was conducted across 40 college students and evaluated the role of instructions in establishing the functions of contingent acoustic feedback in the context of a Multistep Experimental Task (MSET). The MSET was adopted from a previous laboratory evaluation of TAGteach (Smith & Lambert, 2014). Participants were assigned to four different experimental groups for both a within-subject and a between-group analysis of performance. Results indicated improved performance for all participants who received both instructions and contingent acoustic feedback, whereas three participants who received acoustic feedback only showed similar improvements. Study two was conducted across three staff participants and sought to evaluate an intervention comprised of in-situ instructions and response contingent acoustic feedback to teach staff to use Behavior Specific Praise procedures (BSP) with clients. Results from a multiple-baseline-across staff design revealed that the intervention increased staff’s rates of BSP in this clinical setting. Additionally, intervention effects were maintained during one to three-week probes. The intervention also maintained client correct responding across different targeted behavior chains. Staff members also rated the acoustic feedback procedure as more worthwhile, helpful, relevant, pleasant, and less disruptive than their typical feedback methods. Both findings provide useful data to support the design and implementation of acoustic feedback procedures in clinical settings. They also provide preliminary data to clarify the antecedent conditions necessary to establish the functions of contingent acoustic feedback.

This study compared perceptions of principals and assistant principals to examine the skills and traits necessary for one to be successful as an assistant principal. Research on the role of the assistant principal is limited. Over the last several years there have been major reforms in education such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that constitute a re-examination of all roles in K-12 schools. An online survey was used to gather data from assistant principal and principals in the State of Mississippi.Overall, 9 out of the 10 variables are significant except problem solving in the second MANOVA which reports the results of the comparison of the first year assistant principals and principals. This variable showed no significant difference between assistant principals and principals in regards to problem solving with a significance of .239. In each of these variables assistant principals rated the skills as more important than principals. The results of this study suggest that school districts and state departments of education should consider providing more training for assistant principals and principals about instructional leadership.

The subject of this study is the comparison of the annual instructional pupil-subject cost in five class a high schools and a determination of the factors in each schools which affects its instructional cost, and finally, an attempt to set up criterion for determining the annual pupil-subject instructional cost in a high school in a city of from 5,000 to 25,000 population.

Game-based learning environments (GBLEs) can offer students with engaging interactive instructional materials while also providing a research platform to investigate the dynamics and intricacies of effective self-regulated learning (SRL). Past research has indicated learners are often unable to monitor and regulate their cognitive and metacognitive processes within GBLEs accurately and effectively on their own due mostly to the open-ended nature of these environments. The future design and development of GBLEs and embedded scaffolds, therefore, require a better understanding of the discrepancies between the affordances of GBLEs and the required use of SRL. Specifically, how to incorporate interdisciplinary theories and concepts outside of traditional educational, learning, and psychological sciences literature, how to utilize process data to measure SRL processes during interactions with instructional materials accounting for the dynamics of leaners' SRL, and how to improve SRL-driven scaffolds to be individualized and adaptive based on the level of agency GBLEs provide. Across four studies, this dissertation investigates learners' SRL while they learn about microbiology using CRYSTAL ISLAND, a GBLE, building upon each other by enhancing the type of data collected, analytical methodologies used, and applied theoretical models and theories. Specifically, this dissertation utilizes a combination of traditional statistical approaches (i.e., linear regression models), non-linear statistical approaches (i.e., growth modeling), and non-linear dynamical theory (NDST) approaches (aRQA) with process trace data to contribute to the field's current understanding of the dynamics and complexities of SRL. Furthermore, this dissertation examines how limited agency can act as an implicit scaffold during game-based learning to promote the use of SRL processes and increase learning outcomes.