Recent conversations in the field of evaluation concern the number of graduate degree evaluation programs (LaVelle & Donaldson, 2010), a high job-market demand for trained evaluators (Stufflebeam, 2001), and a call to meet that demand using evaluator competencies (Stevahn, King, Ghere, & Minnema, 2005; Russ-Eft, Bober, de la Teja, Foxon, & Kosxalka, 2008). There has also been an increase in the promotion of practice-based instructional strategies for the teaching of evaluation (Alkin & Christie, 2002; Kelly & Kaczynski, 2008; Oliver, Casiraghi, Henderson, Brooks, & Muslow, 2008; Patton & Patrizi, 2005; Skolits, 2009; Trevisan, 2004). This study examined six evaluation degree programs in the United States to describe the knowledge, skills, abilities, and values reflected in the program structure (course work and student experiences). This study utilized a purposeful sampling strategy to identify doctoral programs that had been sustained over time. Practices programs used to develop evaluation professionals were identified from material used to describe programs in terms of evaluator competencies, the program structure used to promote student achievement of those competencies, and the socialization experiences that prepared students for careers in evaluation. Data was collected from interviews with prominent theorists in the field and program-informants, program web-based documents, and evaluation-specific course syllabi. The practices for Developing Evaluation Professionals can be described in two dimensions: Socialization of Students and Individualized Career Preparation. Critical elements include (a) use of evaluator competencies to guide and inform student learning goals, (b) use of experiential learning strategies to facilitate learning, (c) fostering flexible coursework options in designing a program of studies that meets student career goals, and (d) creating tailored practica experiences that engage students with skill sets matched to their career goals. Programs framed these dimensions with two faculty approaches important to supporting, guiding, and enhancing the process of developing evaluation professionals: extensive faculty mentoring and practica experiences culminating in leadership roles. Like the Carnegie Initiate on the Doctorate, discussion addresses opportunities and challenges in identifying "the desired core ingredients of an enriched form" (Golde & Walker, 2002, p. 2) of university-based evaluation training for doctoral students. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2012. / March 16, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references. / Linda B. Schrader, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Vanessa Paz Dennen, University Representative; Richard C. Kunkel, Committee Member; Sande D. Milton, Committee Member.

No description available.

This study aims to answer the question: How have co-curricular transcript programs developed in the last 20 years? Based on the literature dating back to the late 1970's and the results of the current study, this paper will use the following definition of co-curricular transcript programs: A co-curricular transcript program is a system designed to increase intentional involvement among students, and produces a document of their involvement in activities outside of curricular requirements. These programs are coordinated by institutions of higher education as an affirmation of the value of co-curricular engagement with the goals of assisting students in making strategic decisions with their involvement, and achieving their post-graduation goals. While there are multiple avenues to addressing the topic of co-curricular transcripts, this study looked at the history and development of these programs starting with their conception in 1977, and ending today in 2015. Co-curricular transcript programs have the potential to help increase student engagement, and this study is a aims to highlight the opportunities and challenges that exist with these programs. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 13, 2015. / Co-Curricular Transcripts, Higher Education, History of Higher Education, Outcomes of Higher Education, Student Development, Student Learning / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Directing Thesis; Kathy L. Guthrie, Committee Member; Janet G. Lenz, Committee Member.

In 2011, President Obama called upon the education system to prepare students to be competitive in today's global workforce in order to regain the United States' position as the international leader in business, politics, and education. In response, colleges and universities have begun to internationalize their curriculum and introduce more cross-cultural experiences for students such as study abroad and international service learning programs. The intention of this study was to understand how intercultural competence was developed in students participating in three international service projects approximately one and a half years after their return, understand students' attitudes about their experiences, and propose suggestions for program improvements into future planning. Using a logic model as the conceptual framework for understanding program theory, this study addressed the following questions: 1. To what extent are intercultural competence outcomes realized by students approximately one and a half years after their return from participating in one of UHP's three international service projects? 2. What program elements facilitate or impede students' acquisition of intercultural competence? 3. What program elements can be expanded upon or changed to improve the program? The study was conducted with mixed methods and incorporated both qualitative and quantitative data. Surveys were conducted using the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES) and the Intercultural Sensitivity Inventory (ICSI), which were designed to identify students' intercultural competence outcomes. The IES measures three dimensions: continuous learning, interpersonal engagement, and hardiness. Based on the dimensions of the IES, interviews were completed with each student approximately one and a half years post-project trip. The two student program directors also participated in a separate, second interview process seeking input on proposed changes both for the organization and the future design of international service projects. Sixteen students participated in one of UHP's three international service trips. Fifteen responded to the surveys and 14 made themselves available for an individual interview. Results were based on the subsequent analyses and triangulation of these data sources. The data showed all but one student scored in the 'high' range of the IES. The interview responses supported these scores and showed that students developed not only intercultural competence through their experience on the trip, but other skills including project management and evaluation. The data collected via the Intercultural Sensitivity Inventory suggested that students appeared to be flexible and open, however, the scores on the adaptability section suggested participants' misunderstanding of the objective of the measurement tool itself. Program elements which facilitated students' development of intercultural competence were identified. These included their involvement in the management of day-to-day activities while in-country, integration into the community and the culture, participation in community development activities, and extensive intercultural interactions. Because students were able to work and live alongside local community members, they seemed to gain a greater empathy for the culture and truly valued providing services to them. Survey data showed that students scored highest in the Interpersonal Engagement dimension, and this was supported by the interviews. A lack of planning was identified by many as a factor undermining the effectiveness of the program. All participants commented that they felt some of the elements were not planned well enough and that this had negative effects on the program outcomes. Although the change of plans seemed to upset students and distracted them from their goal of helping the host community, it all also gave them opportunities to develop other important skills like problem solving and team work. A number of important recommendations to enhance the program surfaced in the interviews, including: having experienced directors stay with the program for a long period of time; pre-trip opportunities to learn more about the culture, the host country, and the work to be expected upon arrival; recording and passing on lessons learned, policies, and practices; recruiting students earlier for participation in projects; delegating some of the planning work to students; recruiting from a greater range of academic disciplines; more pre-trip time to get to know other students; and having a liaison in the U.S. for the students abroad. The implementation of these recommendations will provide UHP with a stronger foundation and ensure a more sustainable organization. Overall, all participants found the experience to be life changing and expressed the desire to have more such organizations on campus. Recommendations for future research include comparisons between a control group and the intervention group as well as comparisons within group from before, immediately after, and sometime after in order to understand the impact of the trip over time. It is also recommended that UHP conduct more internal evaluations so that they can compare data across years. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 31, 2014. / Evaluation, Intercultural Competence, International Service Learning, Logic Model, Study Abroad / Includes bibliographical references. / Linda Schrader, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Carolyn Herrington, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Robert A. Schwartz, Committee Member; Tamara Bertrand Jones, Committee Member.

The purpose of the study was to explore the process of conducting action research and to describe how two groups of teachers came to understand, account for and apply their own action research plans. The processes involved in conducting action research and the degree to which teachers conducting action research can bring effective change in their own classrooms are described. The study analyzed the path of four teacher researchers conducting action research and provided insights into their understanding of the process of implementing their own action research plans. The primary research question addressed in this qualitative study during the fourteen-week period was: What is the difference in the process of conducting action research between those teachers whose action research plans were evaluated to have modeled appropriately the action research process taught to them and those teachers whose action research plans were evaluated to be divergent from the guidelines taught to them? The methods employed in this study involved the collection of qualitative data through observations, interviews, field notes, personal journals, reflections, document analysis and questionnaires. The analysis techniques included analytic induction and the constant comparative method. Using the constant comparative method together with triangulation revealed ten themes with supporting assertions that explicated the research questions. The four cases in this study demonstrated that conducting action research helped the teacher researchers provide personal and professional growth that brought effective and meaningful change in their teaching practices. This study also confirmed the findings of previous research indicating that action research contributes to the knowledge base of teaching, improves teachers' individual practice, changes their teaching and helps teachers become more reflective about their instructional practices during the inquiry. Although there were various degrees of differences between the two participant groups of teachers in the study, these differences were not extreme. Overall, it was evident that the process of action research enabled each of the participant teachers to bring about change in areas that they believed needed improvement. In this manner, action research was used as a school improvement tool and as an individual professional development alternative to bring about change and improvement. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Childhood, Reading, and Disability Services in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2005. / October 25, 2004. / Challenges in Teacher Research Process, Reflective Practice and Critical Thinking, Professional Development through Action Research, The Effects of Action Research, Benefits through Action Research Process, Action Research, Teacher Research Process / Includes bibliographical references. / John Hansen, Professor Directing Dissertation; Sande Milton, Outside Committee Member; Ithel Jones, Committee Member; Diana Rice, Committee Member.

"Alice Miel, Associate Professor of Education in Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, and Editor of the Association for Childhood Education International says: 'Continuity has to do with relatedness. It may be relatedness between what the individual has experienced and learned before, the present learning opportunity, and the possibilities for future learning. (Such relatedness need not be with the immediate past nor be an obvious one.) But the relatedness may also be among parallel experiences or among various aspects of growth--intellectual and emotional, social and physical.' With this idea in mind, a study of the instructional program in DeSoto County with particular attention to those phases which tend to break its continuity is presented. Items which seem to have definite bearing on continuity are teacher turnover, mobility of population, promotional policies, instructional practices, the testing program, and cumulative records"--Introduction. / "August, 1951." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 27).

This study utilizes an alignment-crosswalk of metro-Los Angeles public K-12 school districts’ teacher evaluation items and the California Teacher Performance Expectations to determine which local school district evaluation items do not align with pre-service preparation course work standards, and which pre-service preparation course work standards are not assessed by local school districts. Findings initially indicated that many districts utilize the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, a set of standards defined by the same California regulatory body which responsible for developing and authorizing the California Teacher Performance Expectations. Initial findings also included school district evaluations not aligned to the California Standards for the Teaching Profession which were also crosswalked with the Teacher Performance Expectations to determine their alignment and non-coverage areas. Content analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis were performed to determine what gaps exist between preservice teachers’ preparation standards and in-service early-career evaluation standards.

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Career and technical education (CTE) has been a contested area with mixed study results and conflicting theories. Adding to the controversy is the fact that various types of CTE programs are implemented in diverse ways, which creates challenges for researchers to conduct empirical studies and program evaluations about CTE policies and programs on a large scale. In order to contribute to the current understanding of CTE, this study focuses on students’ participation in career education in one of the largest school districts in Florida. It examines the quantity and the types of CTE courses that students take. It also explores potential factors that can possibly influence students’ CTE course-taking pattern and their concentration on career clusters with different expected economic returns. Results from descriptive statistics and regression analysis indicate that students take increasingly smaller proportion of high school credits in CTE courses, but more and more students take significant amount of CTE credits from one career cluster as CTE concentrators. Disadvantaged students are less likely to be CTE concentrators, but if they do, they all tend to concentrate on occupations with better payment than their counterparts. More studies are needed that track students into labor market and examine how different CTE course-taking can potentially lead to different employment opportunities and incomes. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / 2019 / November 12, 2019. / Career and Technical Education, Career Clusters, CTE Course-taking / Includes bibliographical references. / Patrice Iatarola, Professor Directing Dissertation; Anastasia Semykina, University Representative; Jeffrey Milligan, Committee Member; Stacey Rutledge, Committee Member.

This dissertation highlights the experience of personalization in schools in the context of high-stakes test-based education accountability policy. Historically, personalization has been understood to be essential to the teaching-learning enterprise. However, there have been variable understandings and applications of personalization in schools. Given education policy and core school activities, personalization tends to be slanted toward an academic focus and, consequently, its social-emotional core—social support based on adult-student relationships—tends to be downplayed. Also, students are usually viewed as passive recipients of school-related social support, rather than active agents in the shaping of their own school experiences. There is also a failure to adequately acknowledge the influence of external environments. This study subscribes to an expansive, yet integrative view of personalization, as it considers multiple interrelated concerns/facets and goals of education and development. The twin goals of this study are to explore students’ and school personnel’s perceptions of high school students’ personalization experiences in a high stakes accountability context and to understand how social-cognitive factors and ecological conditions might shape adults’ personalization practices and students’ personalization experiences. For this study, I adopted a relational-developmental systems framework, particularly as it is represented in Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory. Applying elements of this Bandura-Bronfenbrenner lens and related literature, I advanced the assumption that the reciprocal interplay among student characteristics (viz., self-concept, agentic beliefs/actions, future aspirations, engagement, sense of belonging), interpersonal processes (viz., adult-student relationships, social support, adult/teacher expectations), and sociostructural factors (viz., school-home interactions, accountability policy/demands) informs students’ personalization experiences and academic and social-emotional development. Working through a critical realist lens, I interrogated qualitative data drawn from the dataset of the National Center on Scaling up Effective Schools’ work in two higher-performing and two lower-performing Florida high schools with specific performance and accountability statuses. I used a qualitative multiple-case study approach. I conducted three forms of qualitative content analysis (directed, conventional, summative) to recode a subset of data from semi-structured interviews with 23 students, 48 teachers, and 12 guidance counselors across the four participating high schools. Findings are discussed in terms of the literature and limitations of the data. The study uncovered several consequential personalization practices, structures, and related experiences across the four case study schools. Most of these aspects were more evident in the higher-performing schools, with variations between schools of similar performance statuses. Important personalization structures included small learning communities (SLCs), looping, and extracurriculars; salient personalization practices involved reciprocal sharing and club sponsorship. The study demonstrates the personal-structural nature of personalization and the centrality of intentional social-emotional connections. However, further research is needed to understand the extent to which particular social support classifications reflect the emotional core of personalization. The findings in this study also indicate the presence of several notable student characteristics and experiences: universalized, positive academic self-conceptions; mastery experiences and social models as major sources of self-concept formation; widespread college-going aspirations; and differences in behavioral engagement and agency. These findings underscore students’ personal contributions to their school experiences and development in concert with their interactions with school personnel and other significant others. Schools and school personnel are therefore encouraged to provide needed “external assets” to foster students “self-concept formation,” enhance self-regulatory strategies, and establish structures geared toward the development of student agency. The study also found that patterns of school-home interactions/parental involvement were demarcated by the schools’ performance statuses. How and what schools communicate with families are likely issues that need to be addressed, particularly as it involves parental role constructions and academic socialization. Lastly, the findings identified consistently strong perceptions of pervasiveness in accountability demands with some variability in negative affect. Relatedly, evidence of accountability effects on teachers’ personalization practices was limited. The findings suggest that schools can transpose the experience of external accountability—through shared norms, values, and expectations—to high internal accountability reflective of school personnel’s strong sense of personal accountability. However, this study also highlights the need to consider the potential for “depersonalization” associated with the impingement of teachers’ professional integrity and identity due to high stress accountability demands. Limitations in the data suggest that more research is needed to clarify the accountability-personalization linkage. Other implications for practice, research, and policy are also discussed in terms of a relational-developmental perspective on personalization in high schools. Overall, this study adds to the resurgent set of research that examines students’ nonacademic skills and needs and contributes significantly to the theoretical and empirical foundations of Personalization for Academic and Social Learning (PASL). / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2017. / November 02, 2017. / Accountability, Bioecological Systems Theory, Personalization, School Effectiveness, Social Cognitive Theory, Social-Emotional / Includes bibliographical references. / Stacey A. Rutledge, Professor Directing Dissertation; John R. Reynolds, University Representative; Patrice Iatarola, Committee Member; Linda Schrader, Committee Member; Lara Perez-Felkner, Committee Member.