UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Teaching the Empire: Education and State Loyalty in Late Habsburg Austria(2015) Moore, Scott Olen; Rozenblit, Marsha L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how Austria utilized its system of public education to develop loyalty to the multinational Habsburg Monarchy from 1867-1918. It draws from a range of sources, including textbooks, pedagogical journals, curricula, school chronicles, school year-end-reports, school inspection reports, and other records related to school administration to show that Austria developed a strong system of civic education which attempted to build a supranational, Austrian identity among its citizens. Its first chapter provides an overview of the Austrian educational system from the eighteenth century to 1914. It also discusses the development of the history curriculum in these schools and illustrates that it possessed a unique ability to serve as a conduit for civic education. The second chapter examines how textbooks and history classes presented Habsburg rulers in a way that portrayed the dynasty as the embodiment of good governance. It shows that such presentations sought to create an interpretation of the Habsburg past that served future rulers while teaching about Austria's history. This chapter is followed by an analysis of how these textbooks and classes used the Monarchy's history to support a supranational, Austrian identity in which its citizens were bound by common struggle and a shared past. Most importantly, this chapter shows that officials sought to create this identity in a way that supported existing local and national identities. The fourth chapter explores how school celebrations and patriotic events reinforced civic education efforts. It proves that there was a strong collaboration between schools and other agencies to create a consistent message about the Habsburg past which strengthened the supranational identity asserted by Austrian civic education. The final chapter discusses the efforts by the Austrian educational bureaucracy to ensure that teachers remained supporters of civic education efforts. Ultimately, this study shows that Austria possessed a nuanced, assertive system of civic education within its schools. This system of civic education attempted to create a layered identity among Austrians which blended loyalty to the imperial, dynastic state while also allowing for regional, and national identities to remain strong.Item THE ROLE OF READING COMPREHENSION IN LARGE-SCALE SUBJECT-MATTER ASSESSMENTS(2013) Zhang, Ting; Torney-Purta, Judith; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study was designed with the overall goal of understanding how difficulties in reading comprehension are associated with early adolescents' performance in large-scale assessments in subject domains including science and civic-related social studies. The current study extended previous research by taking a cognition-centered approach based on the Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) framework and by using U.S. data from four large-scale subject-matter assessments: the IEA TIMSS Science Study of 1999, IEA CIVED Civic Education Study of 1999, and the 1970s IEA Six Subject surveys in Science, and in Civic Education. Using multiple-choice items from the TIMSS science and CIVED tests, the study identified a list of linguistic features that contribute to item difficulty of subject-matter assessments through the Coh-Metrix software, human rating, and multiple regression analysis. These linguistic features include word length, word frequency, word abstractness, intentional verbs, negative expressions, and logical connectives. They pertain to different levels of Kintsch's reading comprehension model: surface level, textbase level, and situation model. Integrating this item-level information into multiple regression analysis and Multidimensional IRT modeling, the study provided feasible methods (1) to estimate reading demand of test items in each subject-matter assessment, and (2) to partial out variance related to high level of reading demand of some test items and independent of the domain proficiencies that the subject-matter assessment was intended to measure. Overall, results suggested that reading demands of all test items in TIMSS Science and CIVED tests were within the reading capabilities of almost all of the students, and these two tests were not saturated with high reading demand. In addition, multiple regression results from the earlier Six Subject Surveys showed that an independent measure of students' general vocabulary was highly correlated with their achievement in the domains of science and civic-related social studies. On average, boys outperformed girls in both subject domains, and students from home with ample literacy resources outperformed students from homes of few literacy resources. In the science assessment, interactions were found between gender and word knowledge, home literacy resources and word knowledge, meaning the correlation between vocabulary and science performances differed by gender and home background.Item Fueling the Fire: A Phenomenological Exploration of Student Experiences in Democratic Civic Education(2006-11-28) Paoletti Phillips, Donna Teresa; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the lived experience of civic education for middle school students. It is grounded in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology as guided by Heidegger (1962), Gadamer (1960/2003), Casey (1993), and Levinas (1961/2004), among others. I use van Manen's (2003) framework for conducting research for action sensitive pedagogy in which I follow six tenets including turning to the nature of lived experience, investigating experience as we live it, hermeneutic phenomenological reflection and writing, maintaining a strong and oriented relation and balancing the research context by considering parts to whole. By calling forth the philosophical and methodological tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology, I endeavor to uncover the lived experience of civic education as well as what it means to be a teacher as civic education. A class of twenty-nine students are taped as they engage in discussions, debates, a Simulated Congressional Hearing, and other lessons related to civic education in a social studies class. Their reflective writing about their learning is used as well. Twelve students self-select to engage in conversations about their experiences. These conversations along with the taped class sessions are transcribed and used to uncover themes essential to their experience of civic education in the social studies classroom. Two central existential themes of lived body and lived relation emerge from this inquiry. The importance of embodying one's learning, as well as connecting to one's society, are apparent. When they are face-to-face with the Other in group activities, debates, games, and simulations, students are afforded the opportunity to experience what is fundamental in a democracy, including their ethical and moral obligation to the Other. The students' learning through their corporeal and relational experience create the civil body politic of the classroom and inform their behavior outside in society. These insights from this study may inform curriculum theorists and developers, policy-makers, and social studies teachers. Recommendations are made to reconceptualize social studies in order for students to capitalize on their bodily and relational experiences within the classroom so that they may grow in their role as citizen. Students may then embody the ideals essential in civic education and democratic societies.