Thesis (Ph.D.)--Drexel University, 2009. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-248).

Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-59). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

<p> Length of time teaching shapes educators&rsquo; competence with intentional integration of democratic engagement in the classroom. This study finding stems from a pivotal understanding of civic engagement refocused and defined as democratic engagement by Saltmarsh and Hartley (2011). The authors determine that <i>democratic engagement</i> as an ideal includes far more than the civic participation element of voting. These authors suggest that for a representative democracy to thrive, communities and civic institutions must partner to create civic agency among not just the individual, but collective, social, and government entities. In this study, educators in a small to medium sized K-6 district are surveyed to identify differing levels of democratic engagement among demographic indicators as identified by Saltmarsh and Hartley (2011). Democratic engagement constructs of community engagement, political voice, civic participation and political knowledge combine to create a Civic Index Scale measure. This measure describes a sample population of highly democratic engaged versus disengaged participants. Identified educators with the most engaged, somewhat engaged, and disengaged civic scores were interviewed for attitudes, beliefs, and professional practice in relation to democratic engagement. A series of two interviews per educator yielded unexpected results. The study found that democratic disengagement does not equate to disengagement in the classroom, poor teaching, or lack of effort to promote citizenship as developmentally appropriate. A disengaged educator in the study was professionally fulfilled, and successfully created classroom community. A medium engaged educator identified in the interview process exhibited highly effective teaching practice as a seasoned professional with lower levels of job satisfaction and difficulty in classroom management. The highly engaged educator in the qualitative analysis exhibited not only effective teaching practice, but also intentional relationship building, and highly effective classroom management. Hierarchical Regression analysis indicated that time teaching, age, race, and gender were significant in the model and that time teaching persisted as a key factor contributing to variance in the model.</p><p>

<p> The role of school libraries in both public and private school systems has changed dramatically over the last two decades as the Internet and ubiquity of digital devices has made the world accessible within seconds just by the tap of a finger on a touchscreen or keyboard. The purpose of the school library as a functional educational space has traditionally been one that promotes information literacy, reading for information, and reading for pleasure with paper books. In today&rsquo;s ever increasingly digital world, however, well-resourced libraries are exchanging paper books and reference sets for e-books and subscriptions to online services that store information in virtual clouds rather than on bookshelves. Moreover, their coveted spaces are sometimes transformed into tactile learning spaces inspired by the recent Maker Movement. </p><p> This qualitative research study examines the functional role of the school libraries in four independent schools, an inquiry seeking to better understand how young students use libraries to develop multiple literacies&mdash;digital, informational, tactile, and printed&mdash;all of which are necessitated by the growing prevalence of electronic resources and technology in schools. How should well-resourced school libraries today, historically bound to paper collections and archives, design learning spaces and allocate resources to support a generation of students born into the digital age? It is the intersection of these two points, students born into a world dominated by technology and traditional school libraries dominated by paper resources, that the current role and purpose of school libraries is examined.</p>

As civilization becomes more dependent on complex technology, education develops increasing importance. Computerized tutoring is a practical mechanism for making advanced education more widely available, especially for ongoing maintenance of skills in the workplace and other situations outside formal institutions of learning. We built a simulation-based intelligent system for teaching medical personnel cardiac resuscitation skills, including a novel mechanism for monitoring student performance and dynamically adapting the simulation to the student's needs, using an expert model of the domain encoded with planning representations. Domain topics were explicitly represented so the system could reason about the student's learning needs and accomplishments, while adapting the simulation context toward states where profitable learning was expected, keeping the student challenged but not overwhelmed. Knowledge of what to teach was separated from knowledge of how to teach, leading to simplified representations that support improved communication between domain and system experts as demonstrated by the fact that a major change in the medical standards adopted during system development was implemented in about a week. The system used planning techniques to make common sense interpretations of unexpected situations while reasoning about simulations of multiple, coordinated agents with distinct roles performing multiple tasks. The system combined techniques from simulation, planning and user modeling in a multimedia tutoring environment, demanding consideration of the different strengths and idiosyncrasies of these components. This approach to integrating domain models, student models, course goals and pedagogical knowledge to create an individualized study plan in a tutoring system is novel and results in improved learning times. An iterative development methodology with formative evaluations of the system involving two classes of medical students helped direct the technology to meet the practical needs of the user community and ensured that the final system was accepted in the target environment. Results of this evaluation support our architecture and development approach. This research contributes to global access to knowledge which, it is hoped, will lead to improved decision making at all levels of civilization, providing for more efficient use of resources, more effective conflict resolution strategies and an overall increase in the satisfaction of critical social goals.

The dissertation provides an analysis of how the content and organization of explanations function to achieve communicative goals under potentially conflicting constraints, and applies this analysis to the design of a planner for generation of explanations by computer. An implementation of this planner as a multimedia question answering system is described. The functional analysis has four major subparts: (1) A theory of the kinds of knowledge that can provide the basis for "informatively satisfying" responses to a given question. (2) A theory of context sensitive constraints on the choice between alternate domain models that compete as the basis for answering a given question. (3) A theory of how supplemental explanations aid the comprehension and retention of the primary explanation. (4) A theory of how the sequencing of the parts of an explanation enhances the communicative functionality of those parts. The functional aspects of explanation just outlined imply a variety of explanation planning subtasks having distinct information processing requirements. A planning architecture is presented that matches these planning subtasks to appropriate mechanisms: (1) Top-down goal refinement translates queries into specifications of relevant knowledge on which a response can be based. (2) Prioritized preferences restrict competing domain models to those that are expected to be both informative and comprehensible to the questioner at a given point in the dialogue. (3) Plan critics examine the evolving plan and post new goals to supplement the explanation as needed. (4) A constrained graph traversal mechanism sequences the parts of an explanation in a manner respecting certain functional relationships between the parts. Contributions include: (1) the clarification and integration of a variety of functional aspects of explanatory text, (2) an analysis of the roles and limitations of various explanation planning mechanisms, (3) the design of a flexible explanation planner that applies various constraints on explanation independently of each other, and (4) an approach to selection between multiple domain models that is more general than previous approaches. Together these contributions clarify the correspondence between knowledge about communication, planning tasks, and types of discourse structure and provide improved interactive explanation capabilities.

The purpose of the study is to describe how four New England state library media consultants are working within their respective states toward the promotion of excellence in school library media centers through the implementation of the elements of Information Power, the current national school library standards. Literature describing the evolution of these standards, the current standards Information Power, and the activities of the school library media specialist and state library consultant associated with accomplishing the desired goals described in these standards are reviewed. This quantitative research project is conducted over a period of three years. Data were gathered through a combination of surveys, field notes, interviews, and questionnaires. Verbatim transcriptions were made of the audiotaped interviews. From these data were gathered responses to nineteen questions designed to provide the framework for the study--implementation activities of the state consultants. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that the state library media consultants, in spite of having no regulatory powers, work actively in a myriad of ways to promote quality school library programs. Their changing environment brought about by individual perceptions, economics, technology, and educational reform creates a challenge to each of these participants.

Thesis (M.S.)--Michigan State University. Interdepartmental Physical Science, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 28, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p.122-123). Also issued in print.

This study measured the computer competency of New Hampshire high school seniors, using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1986 assessment. Six different test booklets, cumulatively containing 124 cognitive items and 75 demographic items were used. An additional 35 demographic questions beyond the NAEP items were collected from a survey designed for this dissertation. One hundred and sixty-eight students (95 males, 68 females, 5 unknown) from eight public and two private high schools across the state were sampled based upon an enrollment size distribution. The total enrollment of the sample schools represented 15% of the total state high school enrollment of 52,400 students. 8.4% of the seniors at participating schools were assessed. Essentially all students have completed a one semester computer competency course, as required by state regulations. The data was analyzed utilizing non-parametric statistics for demographics and Z-Tests for comparisons to the NAEP national sample. The microcomputer statistical packages of MINITAB and EXECUSTAT were used. Conclusions. First, the computer competency levels of New Hampshire are significantly greater than both the national average and the higher New England average as measured during the NAEP national survey in 1986 at the 95% confidence level. Secondly, it made no difference whether the computer competency course was taken in (1) In high school or junior high school. (2) A Public or private school. (3) A small, medium or large school. (4) Different types of communities (i.e. city, rural etc.). Third, the cognitive outcome was significantly correlated at the 95% confidence level with: (1) Sex of the student. (2) Number of years of computer usage. (3) The curriculum content of the first course. (4) Semesters of computer courses studied. (5) Time of the first computer course. (6) Word processing usage. Finally, the cognitive outcome was not significantly affected by the following characteristics: (1) Attitude. (2) Self-assessment. (3) Home computer. (4) Programming courses. (5) Timing of last computer class. Students perceived that computers were not integrated into the curriculum as many in the state expected. Classroom computer usage was substantially limited to computer classes. Students overwhelmingly desired more computer usage in classes.

Orientador: Jair Lopes Júnior / Banca: Ana Maria de Andrade Caldeira / Banca: Denise de Freitas / Banca: Renato Eugênio da Silva Diniz / Banca: Sérgio Vasconcelos de Luna / Resumo: O presente estudo buscou verificar se um conjunto planejado de interações, mediado pela literatura da Análise do Comportamento/Behaviorismo Radical (AC/BR), entre pesquisador e professores participantes poderia constituir-se condição favorecedora para a aprendizagem de recursos metodológicos que priorizassem o alcance de metas e orientações previstas oficialmente para o Ensino de Ciências. Nos últimos vinte e cinco anos, a Análise do Comportamento buscou, como orientação teórica, cientificamente, investigar, induzir e propagar a necessidade de avanços em modalidade de recursos metodológicos de interpretações funcionais de repertórios comportamentais relevantes em contextos clínicos e escolares. Um recurso de destaque neste estudo, em relação ao seu potencial e refinamento metodológico, é a Avaliação Funcional Descritiva (AFD), que contou com uma sequência onde foi possível registrar e priorizar propostas de intervenção no próprio ambiente de trabalho docente, durante a rotina das aulas. Evidencia-se a necessidade da produção e aquisição de conhecimentos profissionais docentes com diferentes modalidades de licenciaturas (Pedagogia e Ciências Biológics, neste caso), objetivamente pela formação continuada de professores em serviço, de recursos metodológicos que objetivem a compreensão de interpretações funcionais de interações professor-aluno em sala de aula. A metodologia de pesquisa adotada foi a Pesquisa Qualitativa na Modalidade de Delineamento de Estudo de Caso Único (single case design), N=1 e/ou sujeito como seu próprio controle. O conjunto planejado de interações sugerem que existe inabilidade de as docentes viuncularem dificuldades de aprendizagem nos repertórios dos alunos; diante de condições de ensino que eles deveriam manifestar os comportamentos esperados. Após o contato com os vídeos dos... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This study to determine whether a planned set of interaction mediated by Behavior Analysis/Radical Behaviorism Literature between researcher and teachers could become a condition for favoring the learning of methodological resources to prioritize the scope of goals and guidelines laid down officially for the Teaching of Science. Over the past twenty-five years, the Behavioral Analysis sought, as theoretical orientation, scientifically, researching, inducing and propagating the need for advances in methodological resources mode for functional interpretations of relevant behavioral repertoires in clinical setting and schools. A prominent feature of this study in relation to their potential and refinement is the Descriptive Functional Assessment, which included a sequence becoming possible to record and prioritize proposal for intervention in the teaching environment during routine classes. This study highlights the need for production and acquisition of professional knowledge teachers whit different degrees (Pedagogy and Natural Sciences, in this case), objectively the continuing education of teachers in service, methodological resources that aim to understand interpretations of professor - student functional interactions in the classroom. The adopted research methodology was the Qualitative Research Prize in Design of Case study One (single case design), N = 1 and / or subject as its own control. The planned set of interactions suggest that there is an inability to commit teaching learning difficulties in students' repertoires, under conditions of education that they should express expected behaviors. After the contact with the videos of episodes of education defined in this study, the teachers report was: (a) recurrence of verbal behavior devoid of functions that provid information on their teaching repertoire, (b) no distinction between teaching... (Complete abstract, click electronic access below) / Doutor