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Our society is becoming more and more digital and the outbreak of COVID-19 has stressed this process even more. Thus, the need for online teaching and learning has increased and many new advancements in technology have been made. These advancements have enabled the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and recent years have consequently witnessed increased attention to the use of AI for educational experiences, not least in K-12 schools. However, today little is known about how students perceive AI-based teaching which makes this area interesting to explore further. This study investigated childrens’ perception and learning experience of videos of a human-looking AI instructor, in comparison to videos of a human instructor. If there would appear to be no negative effects on childrens’ learning experience of an AI instructor, this could be used as a basis for developing the growing field of online education applications for children. The study has undertaken a case study approach. Data were collected through user tests and interviews with six children. The respondents were given video instructions by an AI generated instructor and a human instructor in order to evaluate how their perceived learning experience differs between these two. Primary findings indicate that the respondents notice only small differences between the two instructors. However, the answers from the respondents were very diverse, indicating that some respondents preferred the AI instructor while some preferred the human instructor. A lot of interesting findings, such as that children do not seem to be very observant with small malfunctions, are being discussed, indicating that children's learning experience might at least not be negatively affected by an human-looking AI instructor instead of a human instructor. / Vårt samhälle blir allt mer digitaliserat och utbrottet av COVID-19 har påskyndat denna utveckling ännu mer. Således har behovet av onlineundervisning ökat, och likaså har många nya framsteg inom tekniken gjorts. Dessa framsteg har sedan möjliggjort användningen av artificiell intelligens (AI), och följaktligen har man på senare år sett en ökad uppmärksamhet kring användningen av AI inom utbildning, särskilt i grundskolor. Idag är det dock relativt outforskat hur elever uppfattar AI-baserad undervisning vilket gör detta område intressant att utforska vidare I denna studie undersöks barns uppfattning och lärandeupplevelse av videor med en AI-instruktör med mänskligt utseende i jämförelse med videor med en riktig mänsklig instruktör. Om det inte verkar finnas några negativa effekter på barns lärandeupplevelse av en AI-instruktör kan detta användas som en grund för att utveckla det växande området för onlineutbildning applikationer för barn. Studien genomfördes genom en fallstudie. Data samlades in genom användartester och intervjuer med sex barn. Respondenterna fick videoinstruktioner av en AI-genererad instruktör och en mänsklig instruktör för att utvärdera hur deras upplevda lärandeupplevelse skiljer sig mellan dessa två. Resultatet visade på att deltagarna märkte även små skillnader mellan de två instruktörerna. Svaren från deltagarna varierade dock mycket och antyder att vissa deltagare föredrog AI-instruktören medan andra föredrog mänskliga instruktören. Många intressanta insikter diskuteras i denna studie, t.ex., att barn tenderar att inte vara så observanta på små felfunktioner, vilket indikerar på att barns lärandeupplevelse åtminstone inte verkar påverkas negativt av en AI-instruktör med mänskligt utseende istället för en människa.

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation includes three manuscripts that explore the construct of teacher-readiness for integration of computational thinking (CT) skills in their teaching. The first manuscript is a retrospective observational study that builds a binomial regression model to predict teachers’ competence in CT procedural skills using factors such as number of professional development trainings taken, time since last training, subject taught, educational background, teaching experience, and whether they currently teach CT. This study provides insights for professional development providers to better design CT trainings. Some of these insights are then incorporated in the second study which is a design case of an online gamified professional development for K-12 teachers. The second paper provides design precedents for professional development providers of CT for better CT integration in K-12 education. The third study is a phenomenological multiple case study that investigates teachers’ CT self-efficacy, autonomous motivation, and goal relevance beliefs towards CT. It captures teachers’ understanding of what CT is and what its value is to the subjects that they teach. Together, the three studies holistically understand teacher readiness for integration of CT through teachers’ own perspective and provide key insights into how they can be better prepared for this change.</p>

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Robert J. Shoop / Lobbying and lobbyists have been a part of the national policymaking landscape since the inception of this country. In addition, lobbying and lobbyists play a similar role in the policymaking in every state in the Union. Recent and past media reports of dishonest politicians in Washington, D.C. who have accepted expensive gifts from powerful and unscrupulous lobbyists do little to cause the general public, including legislators in Kansas, to trust those individuals whose role includes being a source of information legislators can access when making decisions about issues. The purpose of this study was to discover the nature of the influence on Kansas K-12 education policy that each type of registered education lobbyist had from 1995 – 2006. The influence lobbyists have had on Kansas K-12 education policy was identified through interviews with each type of registered education lobbyist and with legislators who have served as the chief leadership of the Kansas House Education Committee, as well as through an analysis of documents related to bills the Committee considered from 1995 – 2006. A qualitative method of inquiry, in the form of a case study, was selected by the researcher as the methodology around which to structure the research. The focus of this case study was to learn how lobbyists influenced the decisions made by members of the Kansas House Education Committee from 1995 – 2006. The study identifies the significant education issues of the Committee as determined by an expert panel of educators, the strategies registered lobbyists indicated they used in their attempt to influence legislators’ decisions, and the information sources which were perceived to influence the positions lobbyists and legislators took on education policy. As a case study, the research is “based on one person’s encounter with a complex case” (Creswell, p. 187); and includes analysis of the data; a discussion of the implications of the understandings drawn from the analysis of data, and suggestions for future research.

Public K-12 education is a large enterprise in the United States. Through local, state and federal sources, the U.S. allocated over $610 billion to K-12 public education in 2009 (NCES). Not only is the commitment of public funds for education substantial, the provision of K-12 education is primarily administered by the government in non-market settings through local school districts. It is this institutional environment that generates the impetus for evaluating how those in education make choices in the absence of markets. Like traditional markets, non-market solutions often fail because the incentives facing individuals and agencies elicit choices which produce outcomes that are divergent from those which could be considered Pareto optimal. Examining these incentives and the resulting choices allows researchers to identify unintended consequences of policy and better inform policy design and reform. This dissertation endeavors to identify some of these incentives and to empirically examine their effects on the choices made by teachers and administrators. Chapter two recognizes that teaching effectiveness may motivate teacher choice into relatively more rigorous professional development. The empirical results suggest that teachers with a past history of relative ineffectiveness are selecting into the professional development program examined. The subsequent effectiveness of the in-service training is mixed. High stakes testing and school accountability are an increasing part of our K-12 education system. Chapter three acknowledges it is plausible that administrators may choose to place more students into class rooms of more effective teachers to maximize school performance. However, because of tenure and salary constraints they may choose to place fewer students into the class rooms of more effective teachers to reward their performance. Results overall indicate that more effective teachers have larger classes. Chapter four examines school district budget uncertainty and its relation to contingency funds. The institutional ambiguity of the definition of contingency funds allows a significant amount of choice for administrators to determine fund size and use. This chapter finds that administrators may be less sensitive to budget uncertainty and more responsive to the desire for budget fungibility. This dissertation concludes by addressing implications and future research.

We designed an experiment to evaluate change in students' spatial skills as a result of specific interventions. Our test subjects included high school students in earth science classes, college level non-science majors enrolled in large enrollment introductory geoscience courses and introductory level geoscience students. All students completed spatial tests to measure their ability to mentally rotate three-dimensional objects and to construct a three-dimensional object from a two-dimensional representation. Results show a steady improvement in spatial skills for all groups. They also indicate that students choosing science majors typically have much higher spatial skills as they enter college. Specific interventions to improve spatial skills included having a subgroup of the non-science majors and high school students complete a suite of Geographic Information System (GIS) activities. The intervention at the high school level was more extensive and resulted in significant improvements in both categories of spatial ability. At the college level, the non-science majors that received the intervention showed no significant difference from those that did not, probably because the time spent on the intervention was too short. The geoscience majors had nearly three times the improvement of non-science majors in both categories of spatial ability attributed to hands-on weekly laboratory experiences. These results reveal a wide range of abilities among all groups of students, and suggest that we evaluate teaching strategies in all courses to ensure that students can interpret and understand the visual imagery used in lectures.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / David Thompson / This present study extended the longitudinal perspective begun by DeBacker (2002) and Jordan (2012) and, when considered wholly, provides insights into the educational experiences offered by districts in the state of Kansas from the years 1992 through 2017, as well as the impacts that changes to school funding had on those experiences. This study assessed selected fiscal and pupil performance variables and examined the impacts that changes to school funding had on those variables, paying close attention to the shift from per pupil funding under the School District Finance and Quality Performance Act (SDFQPA) of 1992 to block grant funding under the Classroom Learning Assuring Student Success (CLASS) Act from 2015 to 2017. In the first phase of this study, Kansas school districts were ordered from wealthiest to poorest based on their assessed valuation per pupil for 2001. To narrow the study population and to ensure that longitudinal analysis could occur, districts that had closed or consolidated by 2016 were removed. For the remaining districts, decile analysis was applied to the population by ranking all 289 school districts from wealthiest to poorest based on 2001 assessed valuation per pupil (AVPP) and by further dividing the population in to ten equal parts (i.e. each decile representing 10% of the population). The population was again narrowed to the representative sample of 112 school districts, with Decile 10 representing the wealthiest 10% of districts, Decile 1 representing the poorest 10%, and Deciles 5 and 6 representing the average wealth districts found in the middle (each representing 10% of the population respectively). This process was repeated for 2011, 2014, and 2016. For this study, 2001 and 2016 served as the bookend years, as DeBacker (2002) had done (1992 – 2001) and Jordan (2012) had repeated (2002 – 2012). Establishing the beginning year as 2001 ensured overlap of years examined by both previous studies and extending through the most recent year of audited data, i.e., 2016. Once the study population was established, data analysis was conducted in two phases. First, fiscal and pupil performance data were analyzed to provide insight into overall health of each district during the years 2001- 2016. Second, survey and interview data were collected and analyzed to glean insights from district leaders for contextual perspective of the impacts that changes to school funding had on districts and their leaders, paying close attention to the years of block grant funding under CLASS. The present study resulted in a critical examination of fiscal and pupil performance variables and the impact that changes to school finance in Kansas had on the educational experience of Kansas pupils.

This presentation tells the story of two partnerships co-initiated by the ETSU Center of Excellence in Mathematics and Science Education. The first partnership, Eastman Scholar MathElites, demonstrates how a 7+ year partnership between business and an institute of higher education (Eastman-ETSU) has brought a regional impact in Grades 3-8 math. The second partnership, G6-12 Science and Literacy project, introduces how a local education agency and institute of higher education (Hawkins County Schools-ETSU) have worked together to provide teacher professional development (PD) that focuses on Grades 6-12 English Language Arts and Science. This PD seeks to build confidence and understanding about using reading as a tool to understand STEM literacies. These two programs do not only benefit K-12 education in the Northeast Tennessee region, but also bring practical implications for future development in state-wide and national issues.

In an urban Georgia school district, teacher satisfaction surveys revealed that technology-based professional development was not equipping teachers with the skills or support needed to implement technology into their teaching practices. The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to explore teachers' experiences and perceptions of technology-based professional development and its effect on self-efficacy. Guided by Piaget's constructivist theory, this study was based on the perspective that teachers often construct knowledge rather than gain it. Guiding questions explore the experiences teachers have had with technology integration in daily teaching practices, their self-perceived competency level and self-efficacy regarding technology, their attitudes about provided professional development and time and resources provided for their collaborative professional work, and perceptions about their technology related professional development needs. A purposeful sample of 35 teachers was used to collect quantitative data through a survey and 8 of these teachers were interviewed. Interview data were transcribed, coded, and member checked. Three themes emerged: teacher-centered versus student-centered use; necessity of differentiated professional development; and lack of support, resources, and time. Descriptive analysis revealed that most teachers were using technology daily. Factors contributing to the frequency and quality of technology use included resources, support, and self-efficacy. As a model intervention, the final outcome is a comprehensive professional development plan to provide teachers with a platform to share and improve their teaching practices, which when implemented will offer positive social change, in the form of support for these and other teachers, which will lead to improvements in teaching and learning and achievement of educational outcomes.