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A Case Study of Middle School Teachers’ Attitudes of Inclusion of Students with Disabilities
No full textThe aim of this study is to examine teachers’ attitudes toward the inclusion of students with special needs in general education middle school classrooms. Extant literature shows that factors such as teachers’ experiences with students with disabilities, ability to manage diverse classroom behaviors, understanding of individual disabilities, collaboration, self-efficacy, available resources, and school leadership support affect teachers’ willingness to consent to the inclusion model. Research reveals that teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion are greatly influenced by their experiences with students with disabilities and extent and level of collaboration in the school. These are the greatest predictors of employing a successful inclusion classroom model. The present study employed a case study approach utilizing questionnaires and follow-up interview questions for the selected teachers to examine their attitudes toward inclusion. Teachers’ experiences and collaboration revealed to be strongly correlated with teachers’ attitudes toward students with disability. The results indicate that special education teachers more than general education teachers feel adequately prepared in teaching the students with disabilities. Teachers in this study felt that their instructional activities had improved as a result of their work in collaboration, demonstrating a positive relationship between collaboration and increased teacher experience with students with disabilities
Improving Students\u27 Interpersonal Communications, Leadership, and Decision-Making Skills Through Integration of Cockpit Resource Management: A Grounded Theory Study of K-8 Educators\u27 Perspectives
No full textThe dissertation in education administration represents innovative and relative research that provides administrators with a process that students may use to enhance their academic, social, and emotional development. This study gathered the perspective and experiences of recruited educators from a K-8 school who had recently engaged and interacted with kindergarten through second-grade students. The primary goal of this study was to generate theory based on the participating educators’ perspectives on expanding an aviation training model, Cockpit Resource Management (CRM), into education to improve students’ interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision-making skills. This study is a contribution to the study of education in that it provides a method for students to avoid, catch, and mitigate errors that students face on a daily basis. Results of the study show that interpersonal communication has an impact on student development through establishing a classroom community, receiving feedback efficiently, and engaging in event reporting or self-evaluation. Leadership skills also impact student development by providing students with leadership opportunities and effectively engaging in teamwork. Decision-making skills further impact student development by building decision-planning and situational awareness skills. The theory that emerged in this grounded theory study is entitled Classroom-Community Resource Management (CCSS)
How Parenting Style Manifests Itself in College Students\u27 Attitudes of Academic Entitlement
No full textRaising children in today’s world is no easy feat, especially when researchers closely scrutinize parents and their parenting styles. Since the early 1960’s, studying parenting styles reveals how each different style can affect children as they grow up. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the relationship between parenting styles and how they can influence adult children’s attitudes towards academic entitlement. The development of academic entitlement has been extensively studied, but not from the viewpoint of how parenting styles may have shaped these attitudes. This study utilized freshmen college students from a Northern California Community College, and gathered triangulated data from classroom observations, online surveys, and in person interviews. The data were analyzed using observation notes, online survey data collection using Qualtrics, and interview notes. The two key findings from this study are: first, data indicated that there is no direct link between any one of the three identified parenting styles, and second, there were no students who identified with permissive parents. The significance of this study is to demonstrate that attitudes of academic entitlement could be identified to provide students and educators an avenue to eliminate barriers that impede students’ ability to reach academic success due their heightened sense of academic entitlement. This study illustrates the need for further research on the correlation between parenting styles and academic entitlement in college students
Principal Socialization: A Single Case Study of Novice Charter School Principals in Los Angeles
No full textCharter school principals need to effectively manage their school and maintain student academic achievement. As a result of these demands, novice charter school principals must also receive support so that they can grow as professionals to develop a successful school. Van Maanen and Schein’s (1977) foundational theory on organizational socialization is utilized as a conceptual framework to demonstrate a need for novice charter school principal support. This is a single-case study that enlisted 12 participants to further investigate the type of support novice charter school principals in Los Angeles receive. This study identifies effective types of support. This single-case study utilized three qualitative instrumentation methods in order to answer the research questions. These methods were: one-on-one interviews, shadow observations, and observations of the mentor-mentee coaching sessions. Narration, tables, and figures were used to depict the findings. The findings revealed that participants received effective support from their consultant or supervisors concerning budgets, solving political issues, and day-to-day issues within their school. The novice charter school principals studied also felt that in order for support to be effective, the mentee-mentor relationship must involve trust. Several studies could be conducted to help further establish uniform novice charter school socialization in Los Angeles
Teacher Preparation for Home-School Partnerships in an International School Community
No full textThis study at a single, international school in Mozambique with a diverse parent student population from 40 different nationalities and educators from 9 different nationalities used an ethnographic research methodology to investigate teacher perceptions of their preparation to foster the home-school partnership in an international school community. A sample of 21 teachers from nine different countries of origin represented the demographic breakdown of the school, including gender, nationality, years of teaching, years at site, and whether the participant was a parent of a school aged child. Open-ended interviews gathered participants’ lived experiences on practices for teacher preparation programs around identifying the world and revealed that preparation for the partnership is absent in the universities for the pre-service teachers. This study was unique in seeking to further understand informal preparation occurring at the school site by administration or through collegial support leading to greater preparation to foster the home-school partnership. The participant responses evidence that collegial support and a trial-and-error help many teachers learn the systems used at the school. Teachers who are parents have transferable skills with a depth of empathetic information to assist in developing protocols and teacher preparation. Most importantly, novice teachers are not receiving consistent preparation for their experiences with parents and, therefore, lack confidence in their ability to foster the home-school partnership. The findings of this study display the need for explicit teacher preparation for the partnership, especially for parent conferencing, based on the vision and culture of the school. With administration as leaders, the school can adopt a holistic approach to improving structures for teachers to become better prepared to foster the home-school partnership and develop a shared mindset surrounding the home school partnership
The Influence of the Heritage Language on the Cultural Integration of Second-Generation Hispanic Adolescents: A Phenomenological Study
No full textThis qualitative study explored the influence of the heritage language on the cultural integration of 10 second-generation Hispanic adolescents, ages 15-19. Data were collected using in-depth interviews that asked participants to share their experiences with their heritage language, and in what situations they found themselves feeling more Hispanic, more American, and more bicultural, when speaking their heritage language. Participants also shared the formal course of language study they chose, such as Spanish, Heritage Spanish, and AP Spanish Language, why they chose it, and how that choice influenced their perceptions of the heritage language and their cultural integration. Berry’s (2005) Acculturation Theory was the conceptual framework used for the study. The factors influencing experiences with the heritage language and subsequent attitudes of cultural integration were as follows: changes to the participants’ heritage fluency after starting ELL and the range of parental responses to these changes; participants’ opportunities to use their bilingual skills to help others in school and at work; host and heritage peer perspectives of the heritage language, and the development of their heritage fluency and literacy through their language course selection. Acculturative attitudes of marginalization and assimilation developed when experiences with the heritage language were perceived as negative, and attitudes of cultural integration, or biculturalism, developed when experiences with the heritage language were perceived as positive
Differentiated Discipline for Special Population Students At-Risk: A Qualitative Action Research Study
No full textThe One-Size-Fits-All approach used by public schools in the United States to reduce inappropriate behaviors known as In School Suspension (ISS) has proven to be ineffective and deleterious to at risk special population students. This action research study, which utilized qualitative data, was designed to bring further understanding of this social behavioral problem. Most important to the study, was the specific examination of the use of art-related contingency contracts, whereby students were able to learn art-related skills, and by which rewards were given to students who were able to stay referral free. There have been studies in a few of today’s most progressive schools, in which researchers and educators have shown improvements in at risk students’ academic performance incorporating the arts in teaching the curricula. However, there have been no studies that this investigator has found, in which researchers make a connection between how an art-related program which utilizes contingency contracts affects at risk students’ behavior. The focus of this study is therefore to explore the possibility of utilizing the arts and contingency contracts to improve at risk students’ behavior. The data was drawn from interviews following each of two iterative action cycles, questionnaires, and member-checking forms over a period of five months, including a debriefing interview at the conclusion of the study. The study involved eleven teachers, one counselor, one administrator, and thirteen student participants. The over-all consensus of the participants was that this type of art-related intervention, utilizing positive reinforcement instead of the punitive and exclusionary procedure known as ISS, clearly demonstrated an improvement in at risk students’ self-esteem and self-image resulting in improved behaviors
Explanatory Case Study: Transitions of Highly Mobile Students From Military Families to Public Non-Military Elementary Schools
No full textThe purpose of this explanatory case study is to review the supports provided by public elementary schools for highly mobile students from military families. When military families are uprooted and move to new locations, the children are forced to form new social ties as well as adapt to a new curriculum and learning objectives. The research questions that were addressed in the research for this study included: (a) How are issues of military mobility addressed at the study school sites so students are academically and socially successful? (b) What problems are noted by school staff when working with highly mobile students and how are these problems handled? (c) What training initiatives are implemented at the school study sites to help staff successfully support the transition of military dependent children? There were three schools from a school district in the southwestern part of the United States that has military population of almost 50% that were utilized as for the study site. The student achievement data for 3rd through 5th grade students was examined to confirm the overall performance of the study site schools. Data was collected in the form of interviews with school staff members and the parents of military children. The interviews provided data on the current strategies utilized with military students when they transfer into the district. The data revealed that although strategies are being implemented at the study site schools, there is no consistency across the district with the strategies that are utilized and there has been very limited training for staff members in the district for working with military families
Epiphany 4 Series B 2018
No full textThis PDF comments on the Propers for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Series B and offers ideas for proclamation and preaching