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The Impact of Texas High School Teachers\u27 Perceptions of Culture on Their Intent to Stay or Leave from Their Position
Full text linkABSTRACT
Teacher attrition has been an issue in education for decades, however, post-pandemic, the problem has grown exponentially. Teachers at the high school campus are often particularly difficult to replace because of their specialized areas. Yearly faculty surveys often ask teachers to share their perceptions of their campus, including but not limited to, faculty relationships, administrative decisions, student discipline, and learning and assessment. While teachers’ perceptions of these areas of campus life might be positive or negative, do any of these areas motivate a teacher to leave or to stay? The purpose of this research is to investigate high school teachers’ perceptions of these four aspects of school culture and how those perceptions might impact a teacher’s intent to leave or stay in their position.
Through using a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design, Texas high school teachers were first surveyed through simple random sampling as to their perceptions of campus climate and their intent to stay or leave, utilizing four sub-sections from a campus culture survey tool to investigate teachers’ perceptions of faculty relations, leadership/decisions, student discipline, and learning and assessment, followed by a six-question survey to ask purposeful intent as to whether the teacher would leave or stay. Post-survey, a purposeful sample of teachers was selected to provide context to the surveys through interviews.
The research found that the culture area of administrative decisions is a statistically significant predictor of whether a teacher will leave or stay in their position. Faculty relationships, student discipline and learning and assessment were not strong predictors of a teacher’s intent to stay or leave
Depositional Facies Analysis of the Cotton Valley Group Sandstones of the Blackburn Field, Northern Louisiana using Well Logs and Cores; Implications for Carbon Sequestration
Full text linkThe Cotton Valley Group (CVG) consists of tight sandstones with heterogeneous reservoir properties due to variations in depositional environments and diagenesis, spanning across eastern Texas through the Florida panhandle. It has served as a hydrocarbon target since the 1940s, and with recent technological advances, there is renewed exploration of the tight reservoirs within the group. Across northern Louisiana, the CVG has moderate to good reservoir properties, whereas those south extending westward across the Sabine uplift into east Texas decrease in porosity and permeability. With reservoir depletion coupled with its relatively simple mineralogy, these sandstone units may serve as good, localized carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) reservoirs or benefit from secondary gas recovery.
This research is focused on the depositional conditions and reservoir characteristics, within the CVG, Claiborne Parish, Louisiana to create a preliminary geologic assessment for carbon sequestration in the Blackburn Field. This research utilizes both geophysical and sedimentological analyses, centered on core from the Worley Estate 29H-1 well, particularly focusing on the lower sandstone units. A combination of core descriptions, thin section analysis, x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence are used to characterize reservoir properties. The CVG was divided into six units based upon changes in lithology in the core, correlated to the well log, and extrapolated across the Blackburn Field, northwest Claiborne Parish.
Overall, this group represents deposition ranging from tidal flats to lagoon to reworked barrier islands and reefal slope environments. The lithologies are comprised of sequences of quartz wackes, thinly bedded silty mudstones, quartz arenites, and wackestones. Porosity within the CVG Sandstones was mostly secondary in origin caused by fractures, dissolution of cements and fossils (bivalves), and minor primary intergranular pores. The porosity and permeability vary throughout the reservoir, restricted mainly by detrital clays, carbonate cementation, or protected by chlorite pore coatings. The sandstones of the CVG in the Blackburn Field may not be regarded as ideal CO2 storage reservoirs due to their low porosity-permeability characteristics resulting from the clays and extensive carbonate cementation restricting pore throats
Comprehensive Planning in Small Communities
Full text linkThe comprehensive plan is a vital tool in any city’s toolbox. It serves first and foremost as the general guide for a city’s development. Consisting of multiple parts, history, demographics, land use planning, transportation planning, and goals and objectives, it is the plan that all other plans should relate back to. Any growth and development decisions should be reviewed through the lens of the comprehensive plan. Proper planning has many benefits, especially in small, developing communities. These benefits include promoting sustainability, fostering a sense of community, enhancing quality of life, promoting economic development and managing new growth and infill. However, the development of the comprehensive plan is a lengthy and involved process that should end with a document that does more than sits on a shelf. This document should be the guide for the municipality, not only strategic decisions, but everyday decisions as the municipal staff works towards developing a thriving city. This article will examine the process of developing a comprehensive plan and its effective use of the plan after adoption
Engaging Students in Learning Music Theory Fundamentals And Preparing for College Level Music Theory
Full text linkThe goal of this thesis is to provide teachers resources to prepare students for college-level music theory by using the keyboard. By providing visualization of patterns, the keyboard provides a superior tool to create a smooth transition between pre-college and college-level music theory instruction. In search of easing the passage between these levels, I interviewed numerous piano teachers who provided suggestions on how they include the keyboard to teach theory. After the interviews, I compared piano lesson theory books and college theory textbooks to compare their approaches. To assist with any gaps found in the theory books, I provide some suggestions of supplemental materials such as games and worksheets for theory comprehension in the early years. In order to make a smooth transition, I devised young student lesson plans and an accelerated keyboard program for older students may help prepare pupils for college-level music theory
The Impact of Perceived Administrative Support on Teacher Burnout
Full text linkTeachers are crucial to many facets of life (Güneyli, 2012). Due to current occupational requirements and emotional demands, many educational professionals experience burnout (Roethler, 2021). Burnout occurs when daily occupational challenges overpower one\u27s ability to maintain a healthy emotional state and meet professional demands (Roethler, 2021). Previous studies have been conducted on the levels of teacher stress and burnout (Agyapong et al., 2022; Chang, 2009; Lindqvist et al., 2021; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2021), while few studies explored the impact of administrative support and its contribution to burnout within the teacher population (Howard et al., 2017; Jacob, 2007; McCray-Davis, 2022; Tickle et al., 2011). Therefore, this dissertation\u27s purpose was to create and pilot a measure of perceived administrative support to analyze the stress and burnout levels of K-12 teachers. It was hypothesized that teachers with higher levels of perceived support would report lower levels of stress and burnout; however, this was not the case. The study was released in two phases: Phase 1 was the determination of the psychometric properties of the Perceived Administrative Support Scale (PASS) and the piloting of the scale. Phase 2 used the piloted measure to compare reported levels of stress and burnout experienced by teachers.
The study\u27s first phase included a pilot study with an exploratory factor analysis on the Perceived Administrative Support Scale (PASS), which received 207 total responses. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the sample was N=133.
Statistical analysis of those variables yielded significant findings for 21 items related to their four factors (Culture, Climate, Public Support, Adequate Preparation, Relational Trust, and Mentorship). It was also determined that the PASS held a strong internal consistency amongst factors ranging from 0.78-0.85 and a strong scale consistency of 0.92. The study\u27s second phase was the moderation analysis, which included the previously piloted and revised Perceived Administrative Support Scale, Teacher Burnout Scale (Seidman & Zager, 1987), and Teacher Stress Inventory (Fimian, 1988), which yielded 148 total responses. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the sample was N=120. To answer our first research question: What percentage of teachers experience high levels of burnout? Participants who reported burnout levels above 3.58 were considered high levels of burnout, determined through interquartile ranks and demographic information. It was found that many teachers within our sample experienced burnout. To answer our second research question: What is the relationship between stress and burnout in teachers K-12? A regression analysis with perceived administrative support and stress as the predictors, with levels of teacher burnout as the dependent variable. Overall, the results showed that the utility of the predictive model was significant. However, further examination of the predictors yielded non-significant results for perceived administrative support related to teacher burnout.
Moreover, this indicates that perceived administrative support does not significantly affect teacher burnout. However, teacher stress did yield significant findings, indicating that teacher stress plays a significant role in teacher burnout. The final question this dissertation sought to answer was: Does administrative support moderate the relationship between stress and burnout? A moderation analysis was run and determined that perceived administrative support did not successfully moderate teacher burnout levels
The Impact of “Multiple Looks” when Performing Survival Analysis
Full text linkSurvival analysis is a critical statistical method in healthcare to assess patient treatment effects and disease progression. Another critical area of statistical methodology in health care is the practice of adaptive designs. Adaptive designs allow for interim analyses to take place during a study and various decisions and actions can take place more ethically. This is beneficial for studies that take multiple years to complete and allows administrators and healthcare providers to make sound decisions as early as possible. A challenging aspect of adaptive designs is that the number of interim analyses is known in advance which is applicable in controlled experiments such as randomized clinical trials.
Motivated and highlighted by our collaborations with Fresenius Medical Care, many clinical studies are observational in nature and have no clear endpoint, making it difficult to determine the number of interim analyses that will be conducted. This research considers the application of survival analysis using adaptive designs within observational studies. To do so, we developed a collection of statistical programs to simulate these types of interim analyses while accounting for the additional complexity that survival data exhibits. Simulations summaries were performed and we will summarize some of the key results including investigations of statistical power, Type-I error control, and parameter estimation performance. Additionally, this work aims to assess the necessary conditions to achieve reasonable power at early looks and/or establish general rules of thumb when designing the study
Diet Considerations to Promote Bone Health, Prevent Chronic Disease, and Optimize Healing After Orthopedic Surgery
Full text linkThe Relationship Between Salvinia molesta Infestation and the Microbial Ecology of Wetlands at Caddo Lake, TX, USA
Full text linkWetlands are known to host many beneficial geochemical processes such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. These processes are primarily driven by the microbial communities within a wetland. The establishment of non-native invasive species within wetlands has the potential to alter the once beneficial functionality of wetland microbial communities due to the sensitivity microbes have towards environmental changes. Because of this, several metagenomic studies have been conducted to assess microbial community response to aquatic plant invasion; however, there haven’t been any studies researching the influence of Salvinia molesta (D.S. Mitch.), commonly known as Giant Salvinia, on microbial communities. The goal of this study was to determine the influence of Giant Salvinia on the abiotic environment and the structure and function of the surrounding microbial community. The results of this study indicated that there were significant differences in abiotic factors, microbial community structure, and microbial community function. The Giant Salvinia invasion influenced water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen concentrations, and the nutrient concentrations of nitrate, nitrite, and orthophosphate. These changes indicated that eutrophication could be occurring and selected for microbial taxa that could survive in hypoxic conditions. This in turn altered the microbial community function in the process. This supported the original hypothesis, but additional research would be needed to determine whether Giant Salvinia promoted eutrophication, or the resulting microbial communities promoted eutrophication. This study provides a basis for further research to determine whether changes in dissolved oxygen are the mechanism used by Giant Salvinia to become established, or if there are any novel chemicals involved which aid in establishment
Society of American Foresters (SAF) Academic Publications as They Relate to the Curriculum Standards for SAF Forestry Program Accreditation: A Content Analysis
No full textGoals that impact decision-making components within academic programs in the university system have the potential to define and change the direction of a field of study, and, with that, should be thoughtfully approached with a certainty of evidence that supports responsible paradigms in forestry education. Periodic revision of the standards for accreditation by SAF influences institutional expectations that result in shifts in forestry education and should be consistent with professional forestry standards. The methodology utilized in this research contextualizes data from a sociological perspective intentionally as a method to holistically integrate data as evidence to support the interpretation of Society of American Foresters (SAF) assessment standards. This study analyzed influences, as defined, related to academic and professional development of forestry education. The focus of this study highlighted revision of SAF curriculum and identified selected key themes, patterns, and insights for each of the curriculum standards for forestry education as defined by SAF
Sing a New Song: Analyzing A Cappella Arrangements of Contemporary Worship Music
Full text linkMusic is indispensable to Christian worship services, and pop/rock-influenced contemporary worship music (CWM) serves an important role in modern worship. This thesis explores strategies for arranging CWM for a cappella settings by comparing the originals with two a cappella arrangements: one intended for group performance and the other for congregational worship. This will be accomplished through examining the following five songs: “Hymn of Heaven,” “Raise a Hallelujah,” “Build Your Kingdom Here,” “Psalm 34 (Taste and See),” and “Battle Belongs.” Analysis of elements such as form, texture, harmony, and rhythm reveals many arranging techniques. The songs are categorized by the level to which the arrangements differ from the original. Comparing the arrangements reveals which techniques may produce which type of arrangement. The analyses also highlight techniques employed by performance groups extending beyond what is available for congregational worship. These findings underscore the creative potential and flexibility available for a cappella arrangements