Since the enactment of No Child Left Behind, U.S. education has been dominated by test-based accountability policies and subsequent calls for data-driven decision-making (DDDM). DDDM is often framed as a method for making instruction more rational and scientific. Yet there is little clarity or consensus around the DDDM process: What data do teachers use? How do they interpret data? Though data can be used for instructional improvement, the high pressure associated with test-based accountability often results in data use that has distortive effects on teaching and learning. In this dissertation, I build on the literature on educatorsâ data use in practice to investigate the tensions between test-based accountability policies and instructional improvement. In Paper 1, I examine the existing data use literature to identify distortive data use practices and offer recommendations for using evidence of student learning in more responsive ways. Paper 2 is an analysis of the ways that test-based accountability policy shapes the data use practices of a middle-school mathematics teacher workgroup. The logic of accountability policy constrains their data use practices in ways that reinforce systemic oppression and limit opportunities for more equitable instruction. In Paper 3, I analyze the epistemic underpinnings of teacherâs data use through a comparative case study of two middle-school mathematics teacher workgroups. The workgroups take different epistemic stances on data, which shape their data use practices, what they consider evidence of learning, and the instructional responses they design. The educators who use data as an indicator of learning are better positioned for instructional improvement than those who use data as a measurement of learning. These analyses inform the development of more productive data use practices. Despite the various calls for DDDM, there are few efforts to prepare teachers or instructional coaches to engage in nuanced discussions of data. By identifying potential pitfalls of data use and articulating ways to use data for instructional improvement, I provide recommendations that can support more ambitious and equitable instruction.

My research questions pertain to (1) how Black undergraduate studentsâwho were interested in STEM at college entranceâperceive influences on their choice of a STEM or non-STEM major and (2) to how studentsâ lived experiences in STEM appear to have challenged their success in their intended postsecondary STEM pathways. In exploring the answers to these questions, I focused on students in two different contextsâa historically Black college (HBCU) and a predominantly White institution (PWI). In addition, I traced out the racialized nature of studentsâ experiences and uncovered ways that STEM structures (e.g., instructional practices) seemed to be impacting their academic choice processes. Using qualitative interview methodology, I uncovered several findings. STEM structures formed barriers to the expression of certain studentsâ values that, in turn, dissuaded them from persisting in STEM. Introductory course expectations appeared to reify racialized inequalities in pre-college educational access. Some studentsâ lack of access to effective college STEM supports in the areas of instruction and academic advising was compounded by unequal access to compensatory, informal, STEM supports which were dispensed along racial lines. Microaggressions in STEM spaces were evident on both PWI and HBCU campuses, though HBCU students more frequently revealed how their STEM professors at times marginalized them because of their gender, nationality, and assumed class identities. Based on these findings, I offer a series of recommendations for how undergraduate STEM programs might be more supportive of equity and diversity with respect to Black undergraduate students.

The in-migration of relatively affluent households into disinvested central city neighborhoodsâcommonly referred to as gentrificationâis increasingly common across the United States. There is limited quantitative evidence, however, as to how gentrification relates to the structure and function of neighborhood schools. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide an introductory picture of how a shifting landscape of urban inequality brought about by patterns of gentrification relates to urban schooling in the contemporary U.S. city. In the first section, new statistics are presented on the incidence and distribution of gentrification occurring around public schools in the United States as a whole. Of the roughly 10 percent of urban schools that were located in neighborhoods categorized as disinvested in the year 2000, roughly one in four experienced gentrification in the subsequent decade. However, there exists considerable heterogeneity in the prevalence of gentrification across U.S. metropolitan areas. For example, the share of urban schools located in disinvested neighborhoods in 2000 that subsequently gentrified was over 40 percent in Washington, DC, but effectively zero in Memphis, TN. The second section explores factors correlated with whether gentrification occurs around public schools. Among the population of schools located in gentrifiable neighborhoods at baseline, gentrification was more likely to occur around schools with fewer non-white students, fewer students per teacher, and fewer students overall, controlling for observable differences. School neighborhoods were also more likely to gentrify if the neighborhoods themselves had fewer non-white residents and if schools were located in cities with less racial residential segregation. The third part of this dissertation estimates whether gentrification is associated with changes in disciplinary patterns at neighborhood schools. Evidence is found that gentrification is associated with increased rates of suspension for black students at local high schools, especially in schools wherein black students comprise a minority of the student population.

The recent public availability of large-scale datasets, also known as big data, and digital visualization tools has ushered in new ways of telling stories about the social world. The three papers that comprise this dissertation collectively explore how both youth and young adults learn to engage in the interdisciplinary, representational practices that support becoming modelers, storytellers, and consumers of stories told with big data. The first paper is a literature review that introduces storytelling and modeling with big data as a new cultural activity and a rich design space for learning. The second and third papers draw on a corpus of observational studies and design studies of experimental teaching and dive deeply into interaction in each setting to understand participantsâ comparative, representational practices for assembling models with big data and dynamic visualization tools. The second paper compares three case studies of storytelling and modeling with big data: a professional big data storyteller from the public media and two groups of newcomersâmathematics and social studies preservice teachers in our design-based research studiesâperforming stories about global development trends with an interactive, big data visualization tool. The analysis of video records across cases found that getting personal with big dataâconnecting personal experiences to aggregate trends described in the modelâcan support telling stories about society that counter, challenge, or critique dominant or conventional social narratives. This work motivated the design study iteration reported in the third paper, which examined storytelling and modeling with big data in a personal context: Teenage youth in the public library were invited to create family data storylines about personal family mobility in relation to national census data trends. The third paper found that scaling personal histories to socioeconomic and historical issues represented by big data entails serious data wrangling to align the family story with the data and supports meaningful forms of learning about oneself, oneâs family, and society. Furthermore, locating a population that one identifies with or finding places of meaning in models is an important first step for engagement with big data interfaces.

This study explores the necessity and validity of including cultural competence as a dimension of the construct of quality teaching and classroom community. Through an analysis of existing measures, cultural competence was found to be missing across widely-adopted measures of teacher quality; in contrast, the literature on cultural competence in education, as well studies documenting the importance and validity of including cultural competence in measures of quality medical education, point to the importance of expanding the dominant construct of teacher quality to include aspects of cultural competence. In response to this need, this dissertation analyzes a new observation rubric, the Vision for Student Learning (VfSL). The VfSL is not a traditional, evaluative measure of teacher quality; instead, it is a formative measure of classroom community that scores classrooms based on student actions, rather than teacher actions. The VfSL is grouped into three dimensions: Safe, Brave, and Equitable Classrooms; Rigorous and Culturally Relevant Learning; and Perseverance to Goals. Using exploratory factor analysis and item response theory (IRT) models, this dissertation demonstrates that the VfSL is both reliable and valid as a measure of classroom community, providing initial evidence that inclusion of cultural competence in observation rubrics is both possible and desirable when used strictly to provide formative feedback. Furthermore, the factor structure of the VfSL empirically affirms the theoretically-driven design of the first two dimensions of the measurement instrument and provides evidence that the skills of building classroom culture and enacting rigorous instruction are distinct skill sets that should be targeted to improve classroom community. Revisions to the design of the instrument are suggested based on findings from the factor and IRT analyses. Additionally, while the VfSL shows sensitivity across various demographic groups, researchers and practitioners utilizing the VfSL should be cautious to ensure that any observed differences in classroom community across lines of race and gender are not a function of rater or item bias.

LEARNING, TEACHING, AND DIVERSITY Translingual Home to School Connections: Including Studentsâ Heritage Languages and Cultural Experiences in the Curriculum through Family eBooks Mary Ellen Miller Dissertation under the direction of Professor Deborah W. Rowe As emergent bilingual student populations continue to grow in the U.S., classrooms are more linguistically diverse, while many curricula remain English-dominant. Furthermore, researchers have called on educators to include studentsâ heritage languages, families, and cultural experiences in instruction, or create translingual home to school connections. Yet the processes by which teachers, particularly primarily English-speaking teachers, support studentsâ translanguaging and sharing in the classroom are not well understood. This qualitative study investigates ways that a primarily English-speaking teacher, a researcher, and emergent bilingual students shared about their heritage languages, families, and cultural experiences during home and classroom eBook composing and presenting activities with touchscreen tablets and digital cameras. Data were collected October through May using ethnographic techniques of participant/observation and interviews in one multilingual second grade classroom in an urban, English-dominant, public school. Adults invited children to use tablets in the classroom writing center to take photos, draw pictures, record oral narrations, and write/type text for translingual eBooks. Five digital cameras and two tablets were sent home with participants on a rotating weekly basis so that families could compose eBooks and take photos at home. Family eBooks and photos were included in classroom instruction, and findings indicate that students combined multiple modes and languages to represent their families, languages, and experiences in eBooks. Even when participants spoke different heritage languages, they taught each other their languages for translingual eBooks. Features of a translingual instructional context include collaborative composing, opportunities to present eBooks, and embodied practices where students and adults are positioned as both teachers and learners. Implications for researchers and educators working with emergent bilingual students and their families in English-dominant schools are described, including practices for creating translingual home to school connections. Future research is needed to further examine familiesâ use of digital tools to create translingual instructional materials, familiesâ perspectives on translanguaging pedagogies, and ways to implement translingual instruction beyond the classroom level.

No description available.

This dissertation is concerned with the detailed accounts of twenty-one students who participated in a peer tutoring program known as Supplemental Instruction (S.I.) In this approach, the development of students’ study skills through weekly peer tutoring sessions, is built on particular subject curriculum, not separate from it. In this study the subject selected was Statistics for Marketers. The approach is designed to assist students to succeed in ‘high risk subjects’ through voluntary attendance at the S.I. sessions. / The central question to this study was how can students’ critical awareness of their learning experience while participating in an S.I. group, inform our teaching practice in universities, at a time when we are facing an incredibly challenging, competitive environment. The interest in S.I. stemmed from its links with the concept of peer monitoring as a learning strategy, studied in earlier research. It appeared to offer an innovative first year intervention strategy, at a time when Australian universities are beginning to compete more openly in offering students high quality teaching and learning. Research to date had not investigated to any depth how the approach worked nor gained any detailed student accounts of their learning experiences in an S.I. program. (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (M.A.T.) -- School for International Training, 2007. / Advisor -- Susan Barduhn Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-63 ).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1984. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-46).