(2018). Applying a Constructivist Approach to the Assessment of Compositions in a Secondary Technology-Based Music Classroom. ProQuest LLC, D.M.A. Dissertation, Boston University. The purpose of this case study was to explore the perspectives and reflections of students and an educator who engaged in the assessment techniques of versioning and critique in a high school classroom employing Technology-Based Music Instruction (TBMI). The use of versioning (whereby students saved projects daily with a different file name), and critique was supported by and chosen based on a constructivist perspective of learning and assessment (Fosnot, 2005; Jonassen, 1992; Scott, 2012). I sought to document what students expressed about their experiences with versioning and critique in a TBMI classroom in relation to their learning process. I also explored the ways students constructed meaning and understanding through the process of reflection and discourse while using versioning and critique in a TBMI setting, as well as the ways their experiences with versioning and critique influenced their views of growth and self-expression. I presented one educator's impressions regarding… [Direct]
(2013). The Impact of "Tuition-Paying" Policy on Retention and Graduation Rates at the University of Ghana. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, v14 n1 p37-65 2012-2013. African universities over the past decade have developed new modes of financial mobilization in search for fiscal solutions to the declining public support for higher education. The creation of the "tuition-paying" ("dual track" or "fee-paying") admission track policy, a variant of cost sharing, is one of such strategic initiatives that has gained popularity in public universities in Ghana and other East African countries. Using official institutional data, this descriptive study examines and compares retention and graduation rates of students enrolled in the University of Ghana as "tuition-paying" and regular admits. The author discusses the factors accounting for students' attrition and persistence in the University of Ghana. The article concludes that, although the "fee-paying" scheme has had some potential successes in revenue generation and enrollment expansion, there exists graduation gap/disparity between tuition-paying and… [Direct]
(2016). Developing Principles of Physical Education Teacher Education Practice through Self-Study. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, v21 n4 p347-365. Background: The articulation of specific principles of teacher education practice allows teacher educators to make explicit the beliefs, values, and actions that shape their practice. Engaging in processes to articulate the principles that guide practice is beneficial not only for teacher educators and their colleagues but also for students. There are, however, few examples of principles that guide physical education teacher educators' practices. Self-study of teacher education practice (S-STEP) methodology offers one way of examining and articulating principles of practice. In this study, I make connections across several S-STEP research projects I have conducted individually and with colleagues, and share the principles that guide my practice with the physical education teacher education (PETE) community. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to articulate my principles of practice using S-STEP. Specifically, I ask: (a) How can the articulation of my principles of practice reflect… [Direct]
(2021). Development of an Effective Interaction-Focused Coaching Model for Community-Based Childcare Programs Participating in an Urban Universal Prekindergarten Program. Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness Background/Context: Although professional development using coaching has been widely adopted as a way of improving early care and education practice, only recently have researchers begun to look at the content and features of coaching that lead to desired outcomes. This study examines one of the first projects to explore coaching components among urban community-based childcare programs participating in a city-wide universal prekindergarten program. The project aimed to use coaching to help teachers use a specific set of high-quality practices, known as the Magic 8, shown in other research to improve child outcomes. Purpose/Objective/Research Question: A primary goal of the evaluation was to obtain preliminary evidence of the potential of an early-stage, field-initiated intervention, Interaction-Focused Coaching (IFC), to determine the extent to which additional research or scale-up efforts might be warranted. Outcome questions. To what extent: (1) did teachers increase their use of… [Direct]
(2011). Transition from Crawling to Walking and Infants' Actions with Objects and People. Child Development, v82 n4 p1199-1209 Jul-Aug. Associations between infants' transition to walking and object activities were examined. Fifty infants were observed longitudinally during home observations. At 11 months, all infants were crawlers; at 13 months, half became walkers. Over age, infants increased their total time with objects and frequency of sharing objects with mothers. Bidirectional influences between locomotion and object actions were found. Walking was associated with new forms of object behaviors: Walkers accessed distant objects, carried objects, and approached mothers to share objects; crawlers preferred objects close at hand and shared objects while remaining stationary. Earlier object activities predicted walking status: Crawlers who accessed distant objects, carried objects, and shared objects over distances at 11 months were more likely to walk by 13 months…. [Direct]
(2014). Creating and Sharing: Teens' Information Practices in Digital Communities. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, v19 n1 Mar. Introduction: In a connected world youth are participating in digital content creating communities. This paper introduces a description of teens' information practices in digital content creating and sharing communities. Method: The research design was a constructivist grounded theory methodology. Seventeen interviews with eleven teens were collected and observation of their digital communities occurred over a two-year period. Analysis: The data were analysed iteratively to describe teens' interactions with information through open and then focused coding. Emergent categories were shared with participants to confirm conceptual categories. Focused coding provided connections between conceptual categories resulting in the theory, which was also shared with participants for feedback. Results: The paper posits a substantive theory of teens' information practices as they create and share content. It highlights that teens engage in the information actions of accessing,… [PDF]
(2011). Solo Librarians Working Collaboratively. Knowledge Quest, v40 n2 p40-43 Nov-Dec. The Elko County School District in Nevada has elementary school librarians that are "solo" librarians. Over the last several years they have worked to collaborate on meeting monthly–even though the district covers 17,100 square miles–and on providing professional development face to face and online. Sharing and collaboration help them to problem solve, meet student needs, and extend their resources. The school district librarians currently try to meet once a month during the school year using the Elko County School District's interactive video equipment. With sixteen school librarians in the district, their highest attendance at the monthly meetings this past year was nine. This year the librarians hope to use Elluminate Live!, a web-conferencing program, for some of their meetings. This software may enable more librarians to participate than in the past. The author concludes that collaboration and sharing are key to their library programs and to making them as solo… [Direct]
(2011). Orthographic Analogies and Early Reading: Evidence from a Multiple Clue Word Paradigm. Journal of Educational Psychology, v103 n1 p190-205 Feb. Two experiments using a variation of the clue word analogy task (Goswami, 1986) explored whether children can make orthographic analogies when given multiple clue words, beyond the known effects of purely phonological activation. In Experiment 1, 42 children (mean age 6 years and 8 months) were first taught 3 "clue" words (e.g., "fail", "mail", "jail") and then shown target words sharing orthographic and phonological rimes (e.g., "hail"), phonological rimes (e.g., "veil"), orthographic and phonological vowel digraphs (e.g., "wait"), phonological vowel digraphs (e.g., "vein"), or unrelated controls (e.g., "bard"). All word types were advantaged at posttest over unrelated controls. A small additional advantage for orthographic and phonological rimes over phonological rimes was evident in by-participant analysis. Finally, regression analysis showed a specific relationship between onset-rime… [Direct]
(2017). Telling the Story of America: Digital Storytelling Projects in American Literature. English Journal, v106 n3 p32-37. According to the author, as our abilities to combine image and text become more sophisticated and ubiquitous, digital storytelling is a powerful means for sharing those stories. Digital storytelling is a perfect way to remix stories. To present American literature as relevant to students' lives, the author rewrote their curriculum using backwards design and created essential questions centered around three main themes: defining what an American is; exploring the concept of the American Dream and its accessibly (or lack thereof) to all; and considering how American literature reflects Americans and differs from the literature of other countries. Many of the author's students are international students studying abroad and living on campus. The students often have little experience with American culture, history, or literature before they arrive at the school. Though immigrants come to America from all over the world, early American literature often does not reflect the diversity in our… [Direct]
(2015). Schools as Community Hubs: Integrating Support Services to Drive Educational Outcomes. A Series of Discussion Papers on Building Healthy Neighborhoods. No. 3. Brookings Institution Effective approaches to the problems of struggling neighborhoods–from health to school success and poverty–require the focused use of integrated strategies. Consistent with this, community schools and many charter schools now function as hubs, helping to deliver a range of services beyond education in order to prepare their students to learn and to assist families. These include social services, "two-generation" support, and population health services. There is debate over the potential of schools as hubs and the impact on school achievement. For success, we need to explore how schools can best "integrate backwards." That requires us consider how schools can function in an interdependent manner with providers of, say, mental health care or social services yet maintain the control needed to customize services to a student's needs and achieve academic objectives. Despite their considerable potential, schools face many challenges in operating as hubs: (1) sharing… [PDF]
(2015). Assisting Tutors to Utilize Web 2.0 Tools in Education. International Association for Development of the Information Society, Paper presented at the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) International Conference on e-Learning (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, Jul 21-24, 2015). Over the last decade, web has changed the way that educational procedures are delivered to students and has brought innovative learning technologies and possibilities that were not available before. The Web has evolved to a worldwide platform for collaboration, sharing and innovation, constituting what is called Web 2.0. Social media are an emerging part of Web 2.0 and have great potential to be used in education. The efficient integration of social media and Web 2.0 tools in educational systems and courses' curriculum mainly depends on tutors' abilities and experiences. However, in many cases, tutors are not familiar with social media and with many useful Web 2.0 tools and so fail in utilizing them into their courses. In this paper, we present an educational system that aims to assist teachers to develop e-Learning 2.0 knowledge and skills and thus turn them from just in-class trainers to skilled e-tutors. We present the educational courses and the learning approaches followed to… [PDF]
(2014). Singing Well-Becoming: Student Musical Therapy Case Studies. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, v4 n2 p205-235. Much research supports the everyday therapeutic and deeper social-neurophysiological influence of singing songs alone and in groups (Austin, 2008; Cozolino, 2013; Sacks, 2007). This study looks at what happens when Japanese students teach short English affirmation songlet-routines to others out of the classroom (clandestine folk music therapy). I investigate 155 student-conducted musical case studies from 7 semester-long classes (18 to 29 students per class) over a 4-year period. The assignments, their in-class training, and their results are introduced, with examples directly from their case studies. Each class published their own booklet of case studies (a class publication, available to readers online for research replication and modeling). Results show that most primary participants enjoyed spreading these positive songlets as they became "well-becoming agents of change" in their own social networks. "Well-becoming" emphasizes an agentive action or activity… [PDF]
(2010). Video-Sharing Websites: Tools for Developing Pattern Languages in Children. Young Children, v65 n5 p20-25 Sep. Children and their families and teachers use video-sharing websites for new types of learning and information sharing. With the expansion of the World Wide Web, the ability to freely exchange pattern-based information has grown exponentially. As noted by Alexander, \pattern language development\ is a process in which communities freely share information, with the intention of developing best practices. Millions of people throughout the world can visually demonstrate new and traditional knowledge through online videos. This technology adds value, because video-based searching provides new ways of interpreting and relaying information that were not possible with just text. Streaming videos allow a learner to see complex processes over and over again in a manner not easily conveyed with pencil and paper, through verbal conversation, or even by face-to-face demonstration. This article explores the pedagogical implications of this relatively new digital phenomenon in the context of… [Direct]
(2013). The Retention of Tacit Knowledge in Higher Learning Administration. ProQuest LLC, D.B.A. Dissertation, Baker College (Michigan). Higher education institutions (HEIs) could be among organizations without effective programs for preserving tacit knowledge (TK) when knowledge workers retire, quit, take a leave of absence, or are terminated. The theoretical underpinnings of this study were neuroscience related to brain learning physiology, transformational leadership theory, succession planning theory, and knowledge management theory. Research questions addressed (a) what is the level of awareness of the role of tacit knowledge in the administration of higher education, (b) what methods exist for capturing, sharing, and creating tacit knowledge that can be effectively integrated in succession planning, and (c) what unique elements exist in the administration of higher-education that either support or prevent tacit knowledge preservation, sharing, and creation through succession planning initiatives. Data collection involved interviews and document review at a Midwestern college. Findings included the need for trust… [Direct]
(2012). An Empirically Grounded Framework to Guide Blogging for Digital Scholarship. Research in Learning Technology, v20 suppl p176-188. This research project investigated how openness and sharing of knowledge are manifested through scholarly blogging. We aimed to identify the academics' and researchers' motivations for starting a blog; the contribution of blogging to their personal and professional development; and any challenges. Twenty-six participants were recruited. A pre-interview questionnaire was first emailed to the participants to collect background information. An initial unstructured interview was conducted by email, followed by a synchronous semi-structured interview. Textual and visual extracts of blog content were also collected. The datasets were analysed using different techniques. The findings revealed varied reasons for blogging. Some academics/researchers began a blog for its accessibility to self and others. Blogging aided the academics' and researchers' personal and professional development in several ways. Bloggers can quickly reach a wider audience compared to other forms of academic… [Direct]