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Mentorship and Teacher Retention: Analysis of Beginning Special Education Teachers’ Experiences in Minnesota
Get PDFBeginning special education teachers each year enter their classrooms with high expectations and best-practice strategies they are eager to employ. Related literature affirmed, however, that they are quickly faced with what Charlotte Danielson (1999) described as a “sink or swim in the deep end of the pool” culture (p. 251-7) as they grapple with the needed sudden transition from theory to practice. Done well, effective mentoring can become the bridge between preservice learning and classroom experience and guide beginning special education teachers toward a deeper and more impactful teaching practice.
This study’s purpose was to explore facets of new special education teacher mentorship supports in Minnesota to better understand what constituted effective mentoring program supports for new special education teachers in the profession. The study also endeavored to explore the influence of these supports on beginning special education teachers’ plans to remain in the field. The results of this study are intended to supplement the gap in the literature related to the influence of effective mentorship on special education teacher retention rates in Minnesota and to provide greater insight into how mentorship was provided, what that mentorship consisted of, and who provided it to beginning special education teachers in our state.
The significance of this study was supported by four primary factors: 1) the growth of induction/mentoring programs across the United States, 2) the continued high attrition rate of special education teachers and the need to retain them in the field, 3) the limited research on the issues to be investigated, and 4) the recommendations from previous research. Therefore, this study researched specific themes of mentorship to better understand what constituted effective mentoring program supports for beginning special education teachers in Minnesota and to explore the influence on beginning special education teachers’ plans to remain in the profession. Mandlawitz, (2003) reported that the first three years of teaching represent a critical time-period for understanding and affecting the attrition rate of special education teachers. As such, this study focused solely on beginning special education teachers in their first three years of teaching.
The findings of the study indicated that there was an apparent disconnect between what beginning special education teachers found helpful and what they were actually being provided in terms of mentorship support delivery. Further, there appeared to be a disconnect between what content beginning teachers found helpful and what they were actually being provided. There also appeared to be a shift from year one to year two in terms of the reported supports that were most beneficial. Ultimately, findings of the study indicated that provision of positive and meaningful mentorship experience in year one, year two, and year three of teaching special education had a positive impact on beginning teacher retention rates on the short- and long-term
Does Winning Matter? Purchase Decision Drivers of In-Game Attendance for the National Football League
Get PDFThroughout this analysis we explore consumer demand for entertainment from live sporting events with a specific focus on NFL games. A widely established finding in previous studies of demand for live-game tickets for any major sporting event is that demand for tickets is inelastic, and ticket prices are set accordingly. We review literature stating this conclusion and find areas that this research could improve on, which takes the form of introducing our own contribution to the analysis field of variables that deal with the fans level of excitement and comfort during the live game experience. We perform several estimations and view descriptive statistics that lead up to our mixed-results conclusion that the factors that represent excitement are largely insignificant, and winning percentage or win total of a given NFL team is not a significant predictor of demand for live attendance. However, we have also discover several significant, comfort-based factors that previous research has left out, and prove that they are statistically significant areas of NFL demand prediction. These variables are with respect to the home Team’s climate and the stadium type where the team plays their home games. In general, our hypothesis returns mixed results with excitement factors not being a significant predictor of demand for NFL tickets, but showed that comfort-based factors were significant predictors of NFL attendance demand
St. Cloud State Magazine [Spring/Summer 2022]
Get PDFhttps://repository.stcloudstate.edu/magazines/1153/thumbnail.jp
Critical Thinking in Academic Research
Get PDFCritical Thinking in Academic Research will introduce students to the techniques and principles of critical thinking and information literacy
The Crypto Ecosystem and Minnesota Economic Outlook
No full textIn lieu of a formal Winter Institute, the Department of Economics and School of Public Affairs presented a virtual evening of economics: The Crypto Ecosystem and Minnesota Economic Outlook.
Presenters included Laura Kalambokidis, Minnesota State Economist, with an update on Minnesota’s economy. Following Ms. Kalambokidis, Steve Russell, co-manager of the Emerald Finance & Banking Innovation Fund and expert on cryptocurrency, discussed the advancements and importance of decentralized finance, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technologies in the financial services sector.
Moderators: Dean King Banaian, Dr. Mana Komai-Molle, and Eric Foster of the Diffractive Managers Group.https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/sopa_seminars/1003/thumbnail.jp
SOMALI ELL STUDENTS’ COMPOSITIONS: EXPLORATIONS INTO DEVELOPMENTAL SYNTAX
Get PDFRegardless of whether a student is a native English speaker or an English Language Learner (ELL), high school graduates are expected to be able to write in a clear, proficient manner. However, the productive skill of writing can be particularly challenging for second language (L2) learners. The purpose of this paper is to examine issues relevant to L2 writing as diagnosed from the sample text, “Essay #9: Unreported world – Somalia,” which was written by a college-bound Somali student. Aspects of the paper focus on orthographic errors, syntactic issues, and pedagogical implications. The analysis reveals that both insufficient L2 grammatical knowledge and transfer of grammatical patterns from the learner’s first language (L1) contribute to errors when writing in English. The analyses provided here are intended to inform pedagogical practices for teaching writing skills to ELLs. The patterns of errors encountered in this composition raise important issues in developmental syntax
2022 Huskies Showcase Schedule and Abstracts
Get PDFThe 2022 Huskies Showcase booklet includes: Schedule of events Listing of all student presentations by title, Our Husky Compact dimension, student presenter(s), faculty mentor(s), and abstract code Student project abstract
Phylogenomic discordance suggests polytomies along the backbone of the large genus Solanum
Get PDFPremiseEvolutionary studies require solid phylogenetic frameworks, but increased volumes of phylogenomic data have revealed incongruent topologies among gene trees in many organisms both between and within genomes. Some of these incongruences indicate polytomies that may remain impossible to resolve. Here we investigate the degree of gene-tree discordance in Solanum, one of the largest flowering plant genera that includes the cultivated potato, tomato, and eggplant, as well as 24 minor crop plants.MethodsA densely sampled species-level phylogeny of Solanum is built using unpublished and publicly available Sanger sequences comprising 60% of all accepted species (742 spp.) and nine regions (ITS, waxy, and seven plastid markers). The robustness of this topology is tested by examining a full plastome dataset with 140 species and a nuclear target-capture dataset with 39 species of Solanum (Angiosperms353 probe set).ResultsWhile the taxonomic framework of Solanum remained stable, gene tree conflicts and discordance between phylogenetic trees generated from the target-capture and plastome datasets were observed. The latter correspond to regions with short internodal branches, and network analysis and polytomy tests suggest the backbone is composed of three polytomies found at different evolutionary depths. The strongest area of discordance, near the crown node of Solanum, could potentially represent a hard polytomy.ConclusionsWe argue that incomplete lineage sorting due to rapid diversification is the most likely cause for these polytomies, and that embracing the uncertainty that underlies them is crucial to understand the evolution of large and rapidly radiating lineages
Wounded Healer: A Story of Resilience Through Adversity
Get PDFThis is an account of the cascading losses I suffered after a tragic suicide attempt and how I emerged stronger and more resilient in the face of those adversities. It is a story of courage, perseverance and hope