Trust is an intrinsic component of any loyal “consumer friendship” between customers and service providers, and is a by-product of shared understanding. Nowhere is the notion of trust more relevant than in technical service—such as professional legal practice, architecture, medical care and auto repair—where the primary commodities exchanged are specialized knowledge, equipment and skills. A common challenge in dialogue between expert providers and novice customers in this context is meaningful sharing of technical information. A successful exchange requires care in representation, language, attitude, delivery and timing. Furthermore, with communication breakdowns, trust falters, and business relationships run the risk of falling apart. Rather than relying on simple transactional exchanges of information in service, a customer’s journey could be enriched by framing service touchpoints as individual opportunities for learning. Learning activities occur in everyday life via interactions with society, artifacts or programs, and often involve the pursuit of knowledge or skills without the structure of a formal curriculum. This study explores how learning might function as a channel for strengthening multi-faceted trust relations in service through integration into programs and artifacts. In this project, an auto repair shop was investigated as a case study in technical service, given its long inglorious history of customer mistrust. Through exploration in the context of a local mechanic shop, prototypes for experiential and transformative service learning were implemented, tested, and re-shaped into a four-part framework designed to improve technical communications

Thesis advisor: Richard M. Jackson / The diversity of the student population in K-12 settings has steadily increased over the past few decades. While students who are of a racial/ethnic minority background have increased (Villegas & Lucas, 2007), teachers are increasingly young, female, and white (Goldenberg, 2008; NCES, 2013). In acknowledging these demographic discrepancies between teachers and students, many studies and reports have put forward an array of frameworks that teachers can employ in their practice to address diversity. Among these frameworks are Teaching for Social Justice (TSJ) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This dissertation seeks to examine the potential relationship among the two frameworks as viewed by undergraduate teacher candidates as they develop their dispositions for teaching diverse learners through a 17-week course attached to a one-day-per-week pre-practicum experience. This multi-case study examined how the beliefs of 19 participants regarding TSJ and UDL changed over the course of a 6-month study within the context of a course. This study investigated how these participants connected UDL and social justice as a cohesive framework for addressing diversity in the classroom. Using daily and weekly journals, online discussion forums, and pre- and post- surveys, this study analyzed all 19 participants to identify four representative cases. Findings from this study reveal that most participants were impacted by the course to the extent that they were able to identify the importance of aspects of social justice in the practice of an educator. Fewer participants were able to identify the role of UDL in the classroom. Only one participant viewed social justice and UDL as a cohesive framework for impacting classroom practice. Analysis of the representative case studies suggests that participants at this level of development may need more time to engage in complicated abstract concepts. They may also need course-attached field placements in classrooms that align with the mission and vision of the preparation program, consistency in messaging through the duration of a preparation program, and differentiated supports based on their background experiences. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Simulation games may increase student engagement in the social studies classroom. Papert (1991) states that constructionism allows students to build, whether tangible or intangible objects, and that the building and conversation around the building allows student to learn best. In this study, the researcher observed and interviewed participants, as well as wrote in a journal about the experience, regarding playing a simulation game about the Electoral College. The researcher utilized en vivo coding to facilitate data interpretation. The participants were 18 year-old students at a suburban high school in a metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. These participants were selected by self-identifying themselves as ‘social studies haters.’ The researcher gathered data to determine if the simulation game has a relationship to engagement in the social studies classroom and examined with the simulation game, eLECTIONS, exercised elements of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) theory to engage the participants. The researcher determined that self-identified social studies haters at this school more strongly engaged in the social studies content when they participated in the simulation game on the Electoral College. The research also determined UDL enhanced engagement in the simulation game.

Syftet med föreliggande examensarbete är att undersöka och kritiskt granska hur specialpedagogisk handledning används för att skapa en inkluderande skola för elever med Autsimspektrumtillstånd (Autism Spectrum Disorder - ASD).  Studien avser att särskilt undersöka hur fyra specialpedagoger arbetar med handledning som syftar till att bidra till att lärare utvecklar strategier/arbetssätt som skapar förutsättningar för lärande och delaktighet hos elever med ASD.    Resultaten i den tidigare forskning som granskas i föreliggande examensarbete hänvisar till att lärare generellt har sämre attityder gentemot elever med ASD ju högre upp i skolålder de undervisar. Samtidigt pekar andra studier på att lärares attityder och förhållningssätt gentemot sina elever och i synnerlighet de med ASD, är essentiellt för elevens akademiska framgång och sociala inkludering i gruppen. De visar även betydelsen av ett systematiskt tänk i lärande organisationer och de positiva effekterna av att ha ett mångfaldsperspektiv (som exempelvis i Universal Design for Learning).   Det teoretiska perspektiv jag utgår från är systemteorin med utgångspunkt i Antonovskys begrepp Känsla av sammanhang, KASAM, och i komplexitetsteorin. Metoden är kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer med fyra specialpedagoger i form av en kombination av samtal och intervju. Resultaten visar att den specialpedagogiska handledningen spelar en central roll i ett förändringsskapande av attityder och förhållningssätt gentemot elever. Resultaten visar även vikten av ett systematiskt helhetstänk i en organisation för att kunna arbeta framgångsrikt med inkludering av elever med ASD och deras förutsättningar för en tillgänglig undervisning.

This case study examined learning components and outcomes of the UDL Virtual Classroom project, a web-based professional development program that was a collaboration between educators in the United States and Jamaica. The study applied the HPL lens (NRC, 2000) in order to understand the ways that Jamaican educator-participants perceived the integration of learner-centered learning, knowledge-centered learning, assessment-centered learning, and community-centered learning in the program itself, and also examined the impact of these components, despite numerous hurdles, on teachers’ mindsets and practices and the engagement and performance of students in their schools and classrooms. The researcher’s intent was to address the contextual nature of teacher learning, which must contend with the challenges of meeting the needs of individual teacher-learners, as well as obstacles and real-world situations impacting the implementation of theories and strategies. A multi-case study design was used to gather data through observations, interviews, group meetings, and surveys. Findings were analyzed using qualitative methods, focusing on the experiences of participants both as adult-learners in the professional development program and as educators themselves as they returned to their own educational contexts to implement what they had learned. This study provided insights about strengths and challenges of hybrid learning, international resource-sharing, and long-term impacts of teacher learning.

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the management practices of expert secondary general education teachers in inclusive classrooms. Specifically, expert teachers of classrooms who included students with severe cognitive disabilities, including autism, intellectual disability, and traumatic brain injury were of interest in this study. Further, this study was designed to determine how the teachers learned to expertly manage their inclusive classrooms. Eight teachers met criteria for inclusion in this study as expert teachers, through confirmed nomination, experience requirements, holding required teaching certifications, and through evidencing positive impacts on their included students with disabilities. Interviews were conducted with these eight teachers, in addition to telephone interviews with their special education teaching peers. Through a constant-comparative method of data analysis, it was found that teachers learned to manage their inclusive classes in a variety of ways. They learned from traditional opportunities, self-directed learning, and through learning from others. Each of these teachers engaged in continual learning strategies that began during pre-service preparation and continued through professional development while in-service. Additionally, the teachers in this study managed their classrooms in a variety of ways which addressed student learning, the environment, and student behavior. Management of student learning was evidenced through 17 identifiable practices, including ones such as modifying product expectations, including multi-sensory opportunities, and including real-world applicability. Teachers managed their inclusive classroom environments through 11 different practices, such as establishing a structure with rules, working as a whole group/class, and creating a calm learning environment. Management of behavioral expectations was executed by these expert teachers through 12 distinct management practices, including consistency with consequences, maintaining a respectful attitude ant tone with the class, and being aware of student stressors. Management practices of these expert teachers additionally aligned well with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Working collaboratively with VSA Texas, the research study examined how a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) curriculum functions for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in an art learning setting. The curriculum focused on learning new media for art making in the form of digital film and video. My research and proposed successful classroom strategies are intended to assist current and future art educators in implementing aspects of UDL in their inclusive art classrooms to better educate students with disabilities through art. / text

This study explores young children's use of digital tablets in Swedish preschool environments, with special interest in how the use of digital tablets may affect children's agency. A multimodal, design theoretical approach was used, combined with sociology of childhood, to highlight the dynamics between children's agency and the affordances provided by the digital tablets. Two video ethnographic substudies were conducted within two separate preschool settings, including preschools where children use digital tablets to communicate in a minority language. In order to take into account as many modes of communication as possible, video recordings of children's use of the digital tablets was set side-by-side with screen recordings of the digital tablets. Major findings include how children's agency in digital tablet activities is intertwined with the different affordances, as emerging in the children's interaction with one another and the digital tablet. It was found that when affordances were built on visual, auditive and corporeal modes of communication, children's agency was enabled. Such affordances are in this study argued to be more, for the children, apt modes of communication for children to exert agency. Furthermore, it is argued that when children are given the possibility to communicate in their minority language, using for example Skype, this is a form of children's agency. The didactical implications and the societal potentials for children's use of digital tablets in preschools are discussed in relation to the creative skills individuals may need in an unknown future.

Research shows that schools are largely a professional solo cultures (Blossing 2014), which impede teachers' professional development as learning takes place in social interaction and through living-practice dilemmas (Wenger 1998/2004). Changing cultures is difficult, not least in the world of education that on the whole has been a solo culture since the establishment of convent schools.The purpose of this study is to investigate whether teachers believe that through professional collaboration in the form of Teacher Learning Community (TLC) has contributed their knowledge and compentence in the field of embedding formative assessment. TLC is a sort of community of practice for improve teaching. The study works according to the hypothesis that “Teachers believe that professional collaboration in the form of Teacher Learning Community (TLC) has contributed to their knowledge and expertise in the field of embedding formative assessment”. The study was conducted at a large secondary school in central Sweden which organized its collegial learning according to TLC and exclusively worked to develop and modify instruction regarding embedding formative assessment during five years before the study. The theoretical approach applied is based on the tradition of "school improvement" with a human relational and group dynamic organizational based on social-constructivism) (Schein, 1994; Giddens, 1984; Wenger 1998/2004; Schmuck & Runkel, 1994; Blossing 2008; Scherp 1998). The study is quantitative and was conducted using a questionnaire, processed through a factor analysis, that is, a multivariate analysis. The analysis was conducted in four stages: stage 1: factor analysis to reduce factors exceeding the value of 1; step 2: categorization of all questions related to the component; step 3: measurement of the homogeneity of issues with Cronbach's Alpha; step 4: hypothesis testing in Person. The correlation was 0,686 (p<0,001). This is a so called census survey and the high response rate gave the study high validity. The study concluded that it is possible to change a school's historic solo culture to a collaborative team culture through systematic collegial cooperation in the form of TLC, and as a result to change the current teaching patterns.

A multiple baseline across participants design was used to examine the impact of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), implemented as a total framework, on the academic engagement of middle school students with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD), and students who are at-risk for academic failure due to behavior problems, who are included in general education classes. Five teachers from two middle schools participated in professional development on UDL and UDL lesson plan design and then implemented UDL lessons in their classes. Data were collected on the fidelity of UDL implementation, student academic engagement during lesson plan implementation, and teacher acceptability of UDL. Results from implementation fidelity data indicated that after professional development on UDL, the teachers designed and implemented UDL lessons with limited fidelity. Results from student engagement data indicated that brief and limited exposure to UDL is insufficient to produce measureable improvements in student engagement, although increased interest and involvement was noted during specific types of UDL-related learning activities. Results from the teacher acceptability survey indicated that the teachers found UDL to be an acceptable treatment for improving engagement, but they were somewhat uncomfortable with a student-centered classroom and thought UDL was time consuming to implement.