This application is for the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research Program to secure funding for the development of an application for touchscreen devices that allows students to record real time instructional feedback to their instructors that is collected during, rather than at the conclusion of, a lesson. Student feedback to teachers can be a valuable tool to help improve instruction. This feedback, shared with teachers, would help identify areas for instructional shifts to better meet the needs of students. Embedded in this proposal are the following research questions: What sort of feedback options (format, timing, quantity) do high school students and teachers find most useful in a touch-screen app? To what degree can a touchscreen app provide technically adequate measures of instruction? What are teachers’ perceptions of this feedback?

This study examined data from Tripod student and teacher surveys administered over three academic years in a midsized urban school district in the United States. Two multifaceted questions guided the research: (1) How do teachers’ student survey ratings tend to behave over time? (2) How, if at all, do trends in student survey ratings relate to certain teacher background characteristics and professional experiences as reported on teacher surveys? Analyses indicated significant improvement in ratings, but only during the district’s first year of student survey implementation. Teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership emerged as the variable most closely tied to increases in ratings over time. Findings varied, however, depending on the dimension of teaching measured. Taken together, the study’s results translate into several specific recommendations for leaders and policymakers interested in instructional improvement and its relationship to student surveys.

This thesis examines the potential of a change analysis of student beliefs and attitudes about mathematics to inform teachers' reflective practice and provide the basis for modifying classroom practice. The author and two colleagues were involved in Math4theNines, a collaborative inquiry project for Ontario Grade 9 Mathematics. As part of that project, they developed an online survey to track the impact of their classroom practice on how students felt about mathematics and how students felt about themselves as learners of mathematics. The teachers reported that the before-and-after course survey and the accompanying change analysis that indicated any shifts in their students' attitudes and beliefs toward mathematics provided some unique and revealing perspectives on their practice. This study is a retrospective of that experience and an attempt to reproduce the results with three volunteer teachers. Although the results were mixed, there is some evidence to suggest that this approach has the potential to enhance teachers' focus on the new social-emotional strand in Ontario Grades 1 to 9 mathematics which presently is neither evaluated nor reported on. There is also potential to inform teachers in their efforts to develop the positive attitudes that have been shown to improve academic achievement and encourage entry into STEM fields.

AN ABSTRACT OF THESIS OF Susan D. Sipes, for the Masters of Science degree in Workforce Education and Development, presented on October 11, 2010, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: ONE CONSORTIUM, TWO POPULATIONS: WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED MAJOR PROFESSORS: Dr. Marcia Anderson and Dr. Beth Winfrey-Freeburg University consortia have existed for over 50 years as a practical solution to increase regional access to higher education and control costs. The challenge has been to determine how to measure the effectiveness of consortia in order to predict their success. The goal was to apply a business case to UCLC, treating students as customers, and administrators as business owners. Throughout the literature, much has been written to define the critical operational characteristics of successful consortia, but little has been done to explore the needs of consortia's customers. This work presents a compilation of operational characteristics with services desired by students in order to predict the success of one newer consortium, the University Center of Lake County in IL (UCLC). The characteristics and services of existing successful consortia were gleaned from the literature and a written survey instrument was developed. Students and administrators at UCLC were surveyed; their responses were compared to data extracted from other research using descriptive statistics and a chi-squared test. Results showed that UCLC exhibits many of the most important operational characteristics to be successful. Practical recommendations are provided to UCLC to further explore how to improve student services. For example, UCLC needs to increase its marketing and advertising efforts. Other consortia will be able to repeat the surveys to learn more about their operations and service levels.

School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) is a plan based on broad assessments of schools and their climate that can be implemented to create classrooms and schools that are focused on community and positive behavior (Horner, Sugai, Todd, & Lewis-Palmer, 2005). SWPBS involves creating and explicitly stating expectations, teaching those expectations, encouraging appropriate behavior, and defining ways to handle inappropriate behavior. Current tools that are suggested for use in conducting an assessment of school climate are: the Best Behavior School Discipline Assessment (BBSDA) also known as the Best Behavior Self-Assessment Survey (BBSAS), the School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET), the Oregon School Safety Survey, and the Effective Behavior Support Self-Assessment (EBS Self Assessment) (Horner, et al., 2005; Sprague & Walker, 2005). All of these indicators and evaluation tools are helpful in planning SWPBS programs as well as assessing the integrity of implementation and changes in behavior patterns; however, they gather limited information from students. Collecting and examining student attitudes and perceptions about their school and safety is an important aspect of the evaluation process. The current study examined information from student surveys concerning the behavioral expectations at school as well as places in the school they felt safe and unsafe. Information gathered from these surveys was used to create an intervention that targeted a specific area identified as being the least safe and most unsafe, the bathroom, in the school to improve students' sense of safety. Based on the results of student survey information, an intervention was designed and implemented for six weeks. Compared to pre-intervention surveys, the treatment group reported feeling safer in the bathroom after the implementation of the intervention as compared to the control group, which reported no change.

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One type of instruction that is of particular interest in STEM education is instruction that actively engages students in inquiry and discovery. The author develops an operational definition of instruction for discovery learning (IDL) that adopts some of the fundamental commonalities among many reform-oriented instructional frameworks such as inquiry-based and project-based instruction. Four teachers—who received their bachelor’s degree in mathematics and teacher certification from the same undergraduate teacher-preparation program—and their Algebra I classes were observed with the focus on how particular features of IDL were being implemented in their classrooms. To gain further perspective on classroom practices and interactions, student surveys were administered to a total of 142 students and each teacher was interviewed. The student surveys focused on student orientations toward IDL, attitudes toward mathematics, and their perspective of IDL implementation in their class. Student survey data was analyzed through ANOVA, post hoc tests were used to identify significant pair-wise differences between teachers for which the ANOVA identified significance, and a factor analysis was used to evaluate the component loadings for the survey questions. The surveys revealed significant differences between perceived activities in the classes (p<0.05), but did not show very significant differences between student orientations toward IDL. All four teachers expressed familiarity with and commitment to reform-oriented frameworks such as inquiry-based and project-based instruction, and certainly experienced inquiry-based learning as students themselves in their undergraduate program. However, only one teacher—the one teaching in a New Tech high school that was structured on the framework of project-based instruction (PBI)—showed consistent differences in both student perspectives of IDL and observed implementation of IDL. The author discusses the levels at which these teachers implemented IDL, the differences among student perceptions across the classes, teacher orientations toward mathematics and learning, and the importance of a supportive school culture and administration in order to fully implement IDL and influence both student and teacher orientations toward reform-oriented pedagogy. / text

abstract: As scrutiny of teacher effectiveness increases, there is a greater call for multiple instruments to measure teacher effectiveness and provide robust feedback to support teacher growth and development. Student perception surveys, questionnaires completed by K-12 students about their teachers, have increasingly been used to evaluate teachers and provide feedback. Situated in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (MLFTC) at Arizona State University, this action research study used Attribution Theory, Sensemaking Theory, and research on teacher emotion to 1) document the experiences of pre-service teachers as they related to the administration and subsequent results from a student perception survey (SPS), and 2) examine the influence of two online professional development modules created to prepare teachers for the SPS process and make sense of the results. Teacher candidates participated in the SPS process in their final, year-long residency. Results from the mixed-methods study provided evidence that pre-service teachers had both positive and negative experiences that were influenced by the SPS results they received from their students. Also, depending on the results they received, teacher candidates either attributed the cause of the results to themselves or to characteristics of their students. Results from the study also indicate that teacher candidates use few strategies to make sense of the results and used those strategies to varying degrees. Pre-service teachers indicated that they regarded the modules as helpful in the sense-making process. Furthermore, evidence indicates that pre-service teachers value their students’ feedback. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2017

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