<p>Despite Minnesota&rsquo;s investment in professional development in content area literacy, secondary students are not showing expected literacy gains. A lack of literacy proficiency limits future options for students. The purpose of this study was to examine content-area literacy strategy inclusion and its relationship to professional development in the context of complexity theory, efficacy theory, transformational learning theory, structured teaching, and constructivism. A cross-section correlation survey research study was conducted to investigate the relationship of time spent in systematic professional development, type of professional development, rate of strategy inclusion, and confidence in literacy strategy inclusion in lesson design. Convenience sampling was employed to secure secondary teachers (<i>N</i> = 65) in public schools in Minnesota. The Spearman Rho Coefficient calculation was used to analyze these 4 variables; relationships were determined at (<i> p</i> &lt; .05) and (<i>p</i> &lt; .01) confidence levels. According to the results of the study, self-selected professional development is related to the frequency of literacy strategy use and confidence in literacy strategy use. Time in professional development is a critical issue in confidence of literacy strategy use. Recommendations for local districts include providing a menu of self-selected literacy professional development options. This study may impact social change through providing educators improved literacy instruction, resulting in more competent adult readers and informed decision-makers. </p>

<p> The Framework for K-12 Science Education, the foundation for the Next Generation Science Standards, identifies scientific explanation as one of the eight practices "essential for learning science." In order to design professional development to help teachers implement these new standards, we need to assess students' current skill level in explanation construction, characterize current teacher practice surrounding it, and identify best practices for supporting students in explanation construction. This multiple-case study investigated teacher practice in eight high school science inquiry units in the Portland metro area and the scientific explanations the students produced in their work samples. T</p><p> eacher Instructional Portfolios (TIPs) were analyzed with a TIP rubric based on best practices in teaching science inquiry and a qualitative coding scheme. Written scientific explanations were analyzed with an explanation rubric and qualitative codes. Relationships between instructional practices and explanation quality were examined. </p><p> The study found that students struggle to produce high quality explanations. They have the most difficulty including adequate reasoning with science content. Also, teachers need to be familiar with the components of explanation and use a variety of pedagogical techniques to support students' explanation construction. Finally, the topic of the science inquiry activity should be strongly connected to the content in the unit, and students need a firm grasp of the scientific theory or model on which their research questions are based to adequately explain their inquiry results.</p>

<p> The local school district in the current study was struggling to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) targets in reading because secondary students were scoring below the basic level in reading and their content area teachers had little or no training in reading deficiencies. What had been speculated, yet never tested, was the utility of teacher training in research-based reading programs and interventions on increasing reading achievement scores. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine issues hampering RTI implementation. This case study focused on analyzing the perceptions of secondary RTI teachers within an urban school district in Texas. The theoretical framework was based on cognitive and social constructivist theory. The research question investigated the best approach to improve teachers' knowledge and implementation of the RTI framework to increase students' reading achievement. Interview data were collected from 3 RTI teachers who had more than 3 years of teaching experience. Data were analyzed through lean coding by using provisional codes to reduce codes to 3 major themes. Reports from the 3 teachers suggested that they all encountered many challenges in implementing RTI; additionally they all conveyed that they needed more support from administrators, access to prescribed resources, and consistent guidelines in program implementation. A white paper was developed to inform the local district on RTI implementation challenges and provide recommendations for improvement. This study impacts social change by providing administrators and educators with information that could improve implementation practices and result in better understanding of RTI.</p>

<p> Recent curriculum recommendation call for mathematical argumentation to play a significantly greater role in U. S. mathematics instruction at all grade levels, including the elementary grades. To better understand how preservice elementary teachers (PTs) enrolled in a one-semester course emphasizing mathematical argumentation might become better prepared to implement this change, I interviewed five such PTs at two points in time, near the beginning of the course and shortly after they completed it. Both interviews focused on a problem set in which nine fictional elementary school students present arguments for their solutions to mathematical problems. Interviewees compared the arguments, decided which were convincing and which were not, and gave reasons for their choices. Using an interpretative, phenomenological approach, I analyzed their responses and found that they initially preferred arguments in which they perceived the arguer as knowing what to do, getting the correct answer, using a quick way to get it, showing how with numbers, and having the right attitude. In contrast, after they had completed the course, they focused on understanding the problem, finding answers that made sense, and explaining why with diagrams. They also viewed the arguer&rsquo;s attitude as a more complex issue than they had at the beginning of the course. These and other findings suggest that current research on PTs&rsquo; approaches to mathematical justification may: (a) overemphasize the formal aspects of mathematical arguments and undervalue their substance, (b) overemphasize the role of verification and undervalue explanation, (c) be too far removed from PTs&rsquo; perspectives, and therefore (d) fail to accurately reflect significant progress in PTs&rsquo; understandings.</p>

Significant progress has been made the last decades in Thrace, northern Greece, in the Muslim minority education setting, with respect to gender parity in school enrollment, retention, and progression from primary to secondary education. The change of orientation of the Greek politics towards the Muslim minority which allowed for reforms and initiatives, the Project’s for the Education of Muslim Children (PEM) actions alongside with the overall changes of modernization are perceived to be the determinants for the substantial changes in the landscape of Muslim minority education. But why there are still gender disparities within secondary education? This research study focuses on the ways the concept of gender equality is addressed, promoted or undermined and thus identifies ways that facilitate and promote gender equality through education. The investigation took place in the prefecture of Xanthi, in rural and urban areas, with the participation of teachers and female students. In total, forty teachers and fifty three students responded to questionnaires while thirty of them participated in focus group interviews. The present study points to some interesting findings which provide an insight on gender equality teaching, the project’s contribution, and obstacles for the completion of compulsory[1]education from the students’ and teachers’ perspective.  Drawing on the evidence of the study, despite the significant progress in female students’ access in education, there are still significant social and cultural constraints in shaping one’s own educational path. [1] Education in Greece is compulsory for all children aged six to fifteen years and consists of three stages; pre-school, primary and lower secondary education

The purpose of this study is to investigate meanings of inclusion at different levels of the education system in relation to the New Zealand Curriculum Framework and Special Education 2000 policies. My specific focus is to make connections between policy and practice in relation to the inclusion of students with disabilities in a secondary school setting. Through using an ethnographic qualitative methodology I am able to gain an in-depth understanding of the perspectives of participants at all levels within the state education system, (students, school staff, parents, support agencies and state representatives), particularly those directly involved within the school. Data was collected by way of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Data analysis was ongoing throughout the study, through a method of modified analytic induction. My analysis draws on the theoretical perspectives of interpretivism and radical humanism, both of which are underpinned by a social construction epistemology. This provides the necessary theoretical link for understanding the connections between macro- and microlevel social action in terms of policy intentions and classroom practices. My findings serve to highlight the inconsistencies, contradictions and points of congruence between the New Zealand Curriculum Framework and Special Education 2000, the intentions of the policy makers and classroom implementation. Six themes emerge from the findings. These are Walking The Tightrope: issues of contestability; Privileged Knowledge; Blurring The Edges; Power Struggles; Maintaining Normality; and Excluding The Included. These themes demonstrate that a shift by the state to utilitarianism diverged from principles of inclusion that were simultaneously being promoted in the curriculum documents. The conflicting messages at a state level were being replicated within the school, and thus the status quo was maintained because the only inclusion models the school had available to them were those based on traditional special educational ideologies. The result was a context of continued exclusion, which continued to permeate through to daily classroom practices.

<p> Instead of accepting the adage that adolescent motherhood had a negative effect in young women's lives, this researcher used a portraiture methodology to illuminate the goodness of adolescent motherhood for two <i>Mexicana </i> women in a southern New Mexico mountain town (Lawrence-Lightfoot &amp; Davis, 1997; Pillow, 2004). I examined how the ideological conditions of the hierarchy of gender that femininity and motherhood contextualize the conditions in which two first-generation Mexican American women became pregnant while still in high school. I framed that result within the historical structuring of the education of adolescent mothers to understand how the participants were able to experience a campus-based daycare, parenting program, and health center when they most needed it in order to graduate from high school. This research followed how the participants contended over the years with issues of legal work status, culture, healthcare, romance, language, resiliency, agency, discipline, contraceptives, and sexuality. From 24 hours of audio transcriptions, the experiences of the two participants were presented chronologically from 2004-2013 in order to show how context informed the decisions the women made at the intersection of woman, mother, worker, and student identities. Through a feminist standpoint, I examined the portraits to reveal important insight into the experience of adolescent motherhood to illuminate possibilities for social justice (Bowman, 2011). My findings are based upon the themes that emerged from the data and the critical consciousness I gained from researching their experiences.</p>

<p> The purpose of this ethnographic research study was to investigate the effect of a Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) policy on student engagement in a high school setting through classroom observations, cross-sectional surveys, and a focus group of technology teacher leaders. The qualitative and quantitative data gleaned from this study indicated no significant difference in student engagement levels when student-owned technology was used for instructional purposes, but student engagement increased with teacher support and efficacy with technology, student-directed learning, and utilization of Web 2.0 applications. The findings of this study will inform future decision making by school districts considering BYOT policies, assist teachers with technology-based instructional design, and contribute to the literature on student engagement with instructional technology.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to find study differences between ELLs who exit ELLs services and ELLs who do not exit based on regularly collected demographic and standardized achievement data. The variables included: ACCESS scores for reading, writing, speaking, and listening, state CRT scores for reading and math, MAP benchmark scores for reading and math, initial English proficiency, IEP status, number of years in the US education system, and the following risk factors, attendance, suspension, transiency, and retention. The study was based on data related to ELLs in third, fifth, and ninth grade from one urban school district in the west during the 2013-14 school year. There were 1096 third grade cases, 591 fifth grade cases, and 261 ninth grade cases. </p><p> Six discriminant analyses were calculated to find the variables with the highest predictive power. One discriminant function was produced for each analysis at each grade level. The variables that had the highest predictive power in the third grade discriminant function were the ACCESS scale scores for reading, writing, and listening. The variables that had the highest predictive power in the fifth grade discriminant function were the ACCESS reading and writing scale scores. The variables that had the highest predictive power in the ninth grade discriminant function were the ACCESS comprehension composite score and the writing scale score. </p><p> In addition the graduation rates for seniors during the 2013-2014 school year who had been ELL at one time was different depending on when they exited ELL. Students who exited in third grade had an 82% graduation rate. Students who exited in fifth grade had a 72% pass rate, and students who exited in ninth grade had a 59% pass rate. </p><p> The findings in this study indicate English as a second language development and literacy development for ELLs who enter the US school system in kindergarten are inseparable.</p>

No description available.