<p> The human experience occupies the central role in phenomenological research. In this interpretive phenomenological study, the researcher recruited and interviewed secondary school teachers from three public urban schools in the Pacific Northwest in order to have them describe their lived experiences that relate to instructing students affected by homelessness. The researcher used two semi-structured, conversational interviews with six participants who reflected on how their classroom experiences influenced their teaching, engagement strategies, emotional states, and student relationships. The conceptual framework for this study included: Homelessness in America, public school setting, impact of homelessness, and teacher perspective. In this study, the researcher identified gaps in pre-service teacher programs with regard to supporting the marginalized population of students affected by the homeless experience. The essence of the lived experience of the participants&rsquo; in this study is centered around a teachers&rsquo; drive to seek introspective reflection and gain knowledge, along with building positive relationships with their students, which leads to increasing engagement strategies with all students, including those affected with homelessness. Based on discovering the essence of the lived experience of educators who work with homeless adolescents in a public school, the researcher has begun to fill in the missing gap of literature and potentially assist educators to be more effective in supporting this marginalized population of students.</p><p>

<p> In 2014 the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) adopted the <i> Framework for Great Schools</i> to act as a gauge for measuring and monitoring school improvement. The amalgamation of this framework entails six components- two of which are the foci of this study: trust and strong family-community ties as it relates to the engagement of families. Educational research (Mapp &amp; Kuttner, 2013) has revealed the direct correlation of school improvement and student achievement with purposeful-intentional parent engagement. Therefore, this qualitative- comparative study explored school leaders&rsquo; capacity to address issues of impoverished and homeless families, their ability to foster trust and strong family-community ties with families and their protocol for progress monitoring and refinement. Participants in this study include six principals, four parents, four Students in Temporary Housing Liaisons (STHL) and two Community-based Organization representatives. All of these principals are affiliated with Title 1 elementary schools in NYC and Long Island which have a temporary housing population of 10% or greater. Data was collected using interview questions designed by the researcher, 3.4 indicator of NYC&rsquo;s 2015-2016 Quality Review Rubric and NYC&rsquo;s 2015-2016 Learning Environment (LE) survey. </p><p> This study focused on identifying leadership ability and embedded school cultures to answer three research questions: 1. How are school leaders addressing issues of poverty and homelessness faced by families of their student population? 2. What structures or partnerships have schools established to address the needs of this population of families? 3. How is or to what extent is the school building trust in creating strong family-community ties? </p><p> The findings of this study revealed that issues of poverty and homelessness hamper the building of trust and strong family- community ties. The contributing factors that are barriers to building trust and strong family-community ties are poor student attendance and parent involvement, immigration status, language/culture, negative experiences with schools, lack of communication and the disregard of parents as stakeholders. The barriers school leaders encountered vary from school to school thus their approaches to addressing the needs of families differed. Schools were most effective in meeting the needs of students and their families when they worked collaboratively with CBO partnerships and other agencies. This collaborative effort provided additional resources both human and financial to support addressing the needs of homeless and impoverished families. Lastly, protocols and methods used at the school level did not specifically measure trust and community-ties but success of activities or events that were geared toward families. </p><p>

<p> Instructional coaching has become a popular and widely-used form of professional development for educators. The influence instructional coaches have on individual teachers, students in classes where teachers are coached, and the general effectiveness of coaching programs can be complicated to decipher. This dissertation analyzed the instructional coaching arm of a program entitled Teachers Coaching Teachers (TCT), collaboratively created through a partnership with district leadership and a local teachers&rsquo; union. Two analyses were conducted. Pre and post instructional survey results from 139 teachers on instructional competency and job satisfaction, and student growth data from 30 teachers&rsquo; classes over the course of two years were analyzed using a first differencing statistical approach. In both studies, coaching was found to produce a statistically significant positive impact.</p><p>

<p> The relationship between pre-service teachers and their mentor teachers has long been defined by roles that mentor teachers play in the relationship. Research indicates that mentor teachers evolve into a variety of roles, from evaluator to critical friend, but we understand very little about how the relationship develops into these different forms, or how to improve relationship development. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to explore how a mentor teacher experiences the relationship with a pre-service teacher candidate and to compare the relationship to the elements of a story. Data was collected through written story, interviews, and visual representations of the data. The goal of the study was to understand how mentor teachers experienced their relationship with a pre-service teacher candidate through the lens of a common Narrative Story Arc. Data was analyzed using codes determined by the Narrative Story Arc and through emergent codes present in narrative surveys and semi-structured interviews. Themes and codes were then compared between methods and participants, then recoded to explore themes in the data to demonstrate connections between codes. </p><p> Findings from this research reveal the following: 1. Mentor teachers experience a variety of emotions in their relationship that shift based on the alignment between their expectations and reality; they experience the relationship through collaboration, a desire to help, and concern for their students. 2. Data demonstrates a connection between the teaching candidate&rsquo;s perceived personality traits and abilities in pedagogy or management and the mentor teacher&rsquo;s willingness to engage in a positive relationship. 3. Mentor teachers provide access or withhold access to teaching and learning in the practicum placement based in part on the relationship that develops. 4. Mentor teachers conceptualize their relationship with a teaching candidate in terms of a story, indicating that the beginning of the story determines access to teaching; the events of the story open or close access to learning and the way in which conflict resolves. Specifically, this study informs teacher preparation programs and stakeholders how to mitigate disruptive emotions, outlines steps to communicate expectations, and confirms the importance of attending to the beginning of the relationship between a mentor teacher and a teaching candidate.</p><p>

<p> Private schools are by definition separate corporate entities, not supported by the government, but primarily by private funds. While private schools are independently owned and operated, their similarities end there. Their extensive organizational diversity creates problems for researchers and results in few studies with practical significance for the private school leader. Likewise, studies utilizing instruments and lenses common to public school research has limited private school data. </p><p> The purpose of this research was to describe the organizational climate of Texas private schools. Based on 3,000 faculty respondents from 75 organizations, representing an estimated 120,000 K-12 students, this research will begin to fill a void in the organizational climate literature as it relates to private schools. Furthermore, this study will equip private school leaders with practical information to assess and improve their organizations&rsquo; climate. The findings reflect healthy and open environments across three dimensions of the Organizational Climate Index (OCI) for all participating schools representing all three major private school typologies.</p><p>

abstract: no / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Administration and Supervision 2012

abstract: Students with traumatic brain injury (TBI) sometimes experience impairments that can adversely affect educational performance. Consequently, school psychologists may be needed to help determine if a TBI diagnosis is warranted (i.e., in compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, IDEIA) and to suggest accommodations to assist those students. This analogue study investigated whether school psychologists provided with more comprehensive psychoeducational evaluations of a student with TBI succeeded in detecting TBI, in making TBI-related accommodations, and were more confident in their decisions. To test these hypotheses, 76 school psychologists were randomly assigned to one of three groups that received increasingly comprehensive levels of psychoeducational evaluation embedded in a cumulative folder of a hypothetical student whose history included a recent head injury and TBI-compatible school problems. As expected, school psychologists who received a more comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation were more likely to make a TBI educational diagnosis, but the effect size was not strong, and the predictive value came from the variance between the first and third groups. Likewise, school psychologists receiving more comprehensive evaluation data produced more accommodations related to student needs and felt more confidence in those accommodations, but significant differences were not found at all levels of evaluation. Contrary to expectations, however, providing more comprehensive information failed to engender more confidence in decisions about TBI educational diagnoses. Concluding that a TBI is present may itself facilitate accommodations; school psychologists who judged that the student warranted a TBI educational diagnosis produce more TBI-related accommodations. Impact of findings suggest the importance of training school psychologists in the interpretation of neuropsychology test results to aid in educational diagnosis and to increase confidence in their use. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Psychology 2012

abstract: This dissertation study examines the coping methods and attributional styles of peer victimized children versus those who are not involved with acts of bullying. Data corresponding to elementary school children (n=317) over a period of four years from four public elementary schools in the Southwest United States was used in the present study. Latent class analyses and correlations were conducted to explore (1) whether externalizing versus internalizing or passive emotional reactions differentially influence the attributions children make regarding victimization, (2) whether externalizing types of emotional reactions differentially influence the coping methods victimized children utilize, and (3) whether children identified as "bullies" experience different types of emotional reactions than those identified as "victims." Findings revealed that children who identified as self-reported victims tended to report higher levels of internalizing feelings. However, contradictory to what was hypothesized, the victim group also reported higher levels of being mad. Specific patterns arose between the types of attributions that victimized and non-victimized children made, where the children who identified more frequently as being victims tended to report that they believed bullying took place due to reasons that were more personal in nature and more stable. Lastly, findings also revealed similarities in the ways victimized children coped with bullying. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Psychology 2013

abstract: Current emphasis on adequate academic progress monitored by standardized assessments has increased focus on student acquisition of required skills. Reading ability can be assessed through student achievement on Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measures. This study investigated the effectiveness of using ORF measures to predict achievement on high stakes tests. Study participants included 312 students across four Title 1 elementary schools in a Southwestern United States school district utilizing the Response to Intervention (RTI) model. Participants' ORF scores from first through third grade years and their third grade standardized achievement test scores were collected. In addition, information regarding reading interventions was obtained. Pearson product-moment correlations were used to determine how ORF scores and specific reading skills were related. Correlations were also used to assess whether the ORF scores from the fall, winter, or spring were most related to high stakes test scores. Additionally, the difference between computer-based versus instructor-led interventions on predicting high stakes test scores was assessed. Results indicated that correlation coefficients were larger between ORF and reading comprehension scores than between ORF and basic reading skills. ORF scores from spring were more highly related to high stakes tests than other times of the year. Students' ORF scores were more strongly related to high stakes tests when in computer-based interventions compared to instructor-led interventions. In predicting third grade high stakes test scores, first grade ORF scores had the most variance for the non-intervention sample, while third grade ORF scores had the most variance for the intervention sample. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Psychology 2013

abstract: Structural equation modeling is potentially useful for assessing mean differences between groups on latent variables (i.e., factors). However, to evaluate these differences accurately, the parameters of the indicators of these latent variables must be specified correctly. The focus of the current research is on the specification of between-group equality constraints on the loadings and intercepts of indicators. These equality constraints are referred to as invariance constraints. Previous simulation studies in this area focused on fitting a particular model to data that were generated to have various levels and patterns of non-invariance. Results from these studies were interpreted from a viewpoint of assumption violation rather than model misspecification. In contrast, the current study investigated analysis models with varying number of invariance constraints given data that were generated based on a model with indicators that were invariant, partially invariant, or non-invariant. More broadly, the current simulation study was conducted to examine the effect of correctly or incorrectly imposing invariance constraints as well as correctly or incorrectly not imposing invariance constraints on the assessment of factor mean differences. The results indicated that different types of analysis models yield different results in terms of Type I error rates, power, bias in estimation of factor mean difference, and model fit. Benefits and risks are associated with imposing or reducing invariance constraints on models. In addition, model fit or lack of fit can lead to wrong decisions concerning invariance constraints. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Educational Psychology 2014