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- Creator:
- Stoops, James Christopher
- Description:
- This study was to gather and report information from California State University (CSU) professors on whether students with disabilities are receiving quality secondary education in the State of California. The author sent out seven open-ended questions to professors who were currently teaching in the Teacher Education and Special Education departments. By using Strauss and Glaser’s (1967) four-stage analysis of grounded theory to analyze the professors’ responses. The two emergent themes that results indicated were that professors perceived a lower quality of secondary education for students with disabilities were receiving; the second was the lack of education that potential secondary educators were receiving within their perspective programs. The inclusive preparation model (IPM) theory that resulted from the yielded results suggested that professors believed that the current CSU teacher preparation program needed to reform their program to ensure that students with disabilities would receive the quality secondary education.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Bowen, Carmen M.
- Description:
- The focus of this research is to find the opinions of teachers of mathematics on the issue of teaching Algebra 1 to all eighth grade students in California. In July 2008 the California State Board of Education approved a new standardized test for eighth grade students; “the revised mathematics blueprint is based on California content standards for Algebra 1” (O’Connell,2008). By 2011, all eighth grade students should have been prepared to take a standardized test based on Algebra 1 standards. Early September 2008, the California School Boards Association and the Association of School Administrators filed a complaint against the Board of Education. The two elements of the legal complaint are: 1. the SBC’s failure to adhere the Bagley-Keen Act (open meeting law) by failing to adequately inform the public that it was considering such a substantive change in state policy, and 2. whether SBE actually has the statutory authority to revise the state’s academic content standards without prior legislative authorization. By December the decision of testing all eighth graders in Algebra 1 was halted in Court. Since this was a very controversial issue, this researcher felt necessary to hear teachers’ voices first hand since they are the ones who carry these decisions in their classrooms. Eighth grade Algebra provides both rigor and opportunity, while potentially enhancing mathematics literacy across student population. The study of Algebra in eighth grade could potentially address the issue of mathematics literacy in the United States, and result in greater number of students enrolled in advanced mathematics courses and science courses. To achieve this goal, however, requires sound decisions and strategies at all levels: from policy makers to the classroom teacher.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Popham, Keith Michael
- Description:
- Homework is, has been, and will be for the foreseeable future a common practice of most schools. Most teachers assign homework on a nightly basis with the expectation that students will perform the tasks independently outside of the classroom setting. Is this practice important to students? Do students within varying achievement levels perceive homework’s importance differently? In order to understand how students perceive homework, research needs to be conducted to examine student perception. This research categorizes the effects of homework on students and researches how these effects may or may not influence student perceptions. Sources of Data Data for this thesis was first collected through a review of the current literature on the issue. Harris Cooper (1989), in a “Synthesis of Research on Homework,” defined the practice and examined the history of research on homework. Theodore D. Reinhardt, Theodore, Bray, and Kehle (2004), in “Improving Homework Accuracy: Interdependent Group Contingencies and Randomized Components,” explored the idea of the effectiveness of specific homework practices on student performance. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (2007), in the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: The Homework Experience. A Survey of Students, Teachers and Parents,” discussed student perceptions of homework. A survey was also conducted of fifth-grade student perceptions to explore their perception of whether or not they felt homework was important. Ninety-nine surveys were collected and analyzed. Conclusions Reached The survey results validated much of the existing research regarding students’ perceptions of the importance of homework. Most students, regardless of achievement level, had an opinion. Of those students with opinions about homework’s importance, most felt it was important to them, made them a better student, and was a good extension of what was taking place in the classroom.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Crook, Jaclyn Marie
- Description:
- In the study the Houghton Mifflin Selection Test short answer response questions were evaluated for developmental appropriateness and validity in the application of their results for the purpose of establishing reading report card grades for third-grade students. Third-grade and fifth-grade students’ responses were evaluated by two scorer’s and analyzed by grade-level, literal and inferential questions, single-part and multi-part questions. It was determined that third-grade and fifth-grade students each demonstrated difficulty on the short answer response questions possibly due to the validity concerns with each test question
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Islip, Elizabeth
- Description:
- Increasing the mathematical knowledge of students is a goal of the National Council on Education. Business leaders are calling on public education to produce students with a deeper, stronger background in mathematics and science. Nationwide, Algebra 1 is an eighth grade subject, yet 50% of the students enrolling in a public independent study high school had not completed the algebra requirement. Research has shown teaching and learning strategies, teacher behavior, and student motivation play an important part in education, yet little research was found in the literature regarding teaching and learning strategies for mathematics. Understanding student perception of the educational endeavor to learn algebra may help researchers and teachers understand how to better facilitate learning. Sources of Data Data was collected and pooled from cumulative school histories, student interviews, observation of students learning during algebra class, and surveys completed by the students. Data and insight was provided regarding the students’ perceptions, histories, and personal needs for learning mathematics. Conclusions Reached The level of intelligence was not the cause of the students’ deficiency in earning algebra credits. Social skills, attendance, attention span, personal attention needs, and family divorce prohibited them from succeeding to their intellectual best. These students had unique, complicated issues. It would take a special teacher with exceptional counseling skills, prolific background information, and abundant time for researching and planning to tackle and help solve these students’ issues with school. They were at a high risk for dropping out of high school. If intervention strategies had been identified early, and systemic support followed through over multiple school years, these students may not have been at risk at all. The cumulative folders, a communication tool already in place in public schools, could be used as a vehicle for transmitting teacher knowledge of the individual student’s optimum learning environment, including counseling recommendations and follow up. Accountability for every student’s educational success is the heart of No Child Left Behind, and an individualized education plan for each at risk student may be ideal.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Lukey, Dania Marie
- Description:
- This thesis is an Alternative Culminating Experience for a Master of Arts in Education: Curriculum and Instruction with an Elective Emphasis on Arts in Education. It follows Pathway I: Artist as Educator. This project focuses on the author’s journey as a budding artisan of weaving and ceramics and as a devotee of poetry. Over the course of the year, the author created a journal using her exploration into these crafts as a platform to explore the convergence of ideas from disciplines thought of as divergent: Zen and Buddhist ideas of life and aesthetics, systems theory of interrelationships, cognitive science’s ideas of embodied knowledge, and ideas from the philosophers of art and education. All was researched, reflected on, and discussed in the journals along with documentation of the processes of designing and creating the objects. The author reviewed and incorporated many of the ideas touched on during her undergraduate degree in architecture. (Architectural education depends on meta-cognitive and heuristic pedagogy, architectural theory parallels many of the ideas of craft.) As related in Chapter 5 of this thesis, the author found at the crux of the relationships of these varied disciplines, a new direction for our educational institutions through the integration of v embodied narrative inquiry. The objects produced during this thesis were shared with the public through an interactive installation at the culmination of the master’s program.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Starks, Charlane Fay
- Description:
- The early inclusion of a civic responsibility-based curriculum is critical as African American students’ values and attitudes are forming about educational, civic, and behavioral competencies. Educators must grapple with shifting social value toward high school matriculation by incorporating a civic-based pedagogy to reduce education apathy. The undervalued civic education component in the 2001 reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Act, also known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act remains necessary for whole child education toward the knowledge and understanding of basic civic competencies. This thesis examines civic education as a means to lowering the African American student dropout rate while presenting it as a civic responsibility and right. The review of literature includes literary works, published research that investigate the American perspective on civil rights, civil rights in education, civic education, and a conceptual framework linking civic education to the dropout crisis.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Lear, Tereze
- Description:
- This teacher action research project served as the Culminating Experience for a Masters of Arts in Education: Curriculum and Instruction with an Elective Emphasis on Arts in Education. The author formulated the question, Does standards based, sustained visual art instruction result in significant gains in reading achievement for incarcerated youth? The author was a classroom teacher of art, in a maximum-security housing unit in a youth detention facility. Over an 18-month period, reading pre and post-test scores were compiled and analyzed. These scores were contrasted with data derived from student scores from another maximum-security unit where no art instruction took place. The main questions that guided the literature review were as follows: What is the theory and practices of arts in education? Is there a connection between a young person‟s cognitive development and participation in the arts? What prior research has been conducted measuring reading achievement in incarcerated juvenile offenders who received standards based art instruction? In addition to the vi quantitative data, qualitative data included the author‟s narrative observations and, student case studies that included work samples. The author concluded that standards based, sustained visual art instruction does result in significant gains in reading achievement for incarcerated youth.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
- Creator:
- Bruckmann, Colleen Mary
- Description:
- The problem explored was whether or not allowing students the opportunity to self-select reading material effected their motivation to read and reading skills. Personal interest greatly effects how much time a student spends reading. Those who are more motivated have better reading skills. Additionally students who are motivated readers have a more positive self-concept of themselves as readers (Gambrell, Palmer, Codling, & Mazzoni, 1996). The following is a qualitative study of 32 third grade students and their reading experiences prior to and following the opportunity to self-select reading material. Data were collected both pre and post self-selection using the Guided Reading Assessment (GRA), Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAT) and Reading Attitude Interviews (RAI). The researcher analyzed the data to compare re-occurring themes. The researcher observed most participants overall enjoy reading. The researcher discovered the participants prefer to self-select reading material based on personal interest. Differences in genre preference were observed by the researcher as well as stated by the participants during interviews. The importance of providing a high-quality library was apparent to the researcher in order to offer appealing literature to meet a variety of interests. When the participants spent time reading books they selected based on their own personal interests, it was observed that more students were choosing to read during their free time.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
20. The effects of teaching roots and affixes on the vocabulary development of underperforming students
- Creator:
- Buddingh, Melissa
- Description:
- Recent STAR testing results show that California students are not performing well on the English/Language Arts portion of the examination (California Department of Education, 2008). Many underperforming students, including English Learners, have difficulty with the plethora of unfamiliar vocabulary words found in such examinations, as well as in their regular schoolwork. Since these students have to pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) to graduate from high school, they need to be taught strategies that will assist them in decoding and comprehending foreign vocabulary words. The skills they learn in K-12 education will help students have successful futures. Information was obtained through the program and coursework as well as research of the pertinent and relevant literature. Other data was collected through the observation and testing of two junior high school English classrooms. Results of a pre and posttest suggested students who were given explicit instruction in roots and affixes performed better than those who did not receive explicit instruction. Results also showed students responded well to games and activities meant to motivate them to academic success.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- Education (Curriculum and Instruction)