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 PREDICTORS OF STUDENT REFERRALS TO PROBLEM-SOLVING TEAMS: CHILD STUDY TEAMS AND INSTRUCTIONAL CONSULTATION TEAMS(2015) Maslak, Kristi; Strein, William; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study identified predictors of elementary school student problem-solving team referrals from among a broad range of student and teacher measures, including student demographic characteristics, services received, academic achievement, behavior, and student-teacher relationship quality, as well as teacher demographic characteristics, education and experience, and beliefs and practices. The participant sample included first through fifth grade students (n = 13,025) and their classroom teachers (n = 570) within schools (n = 26) concurrently implementing two problem-solving team models that differed in theoretical framework, focus, and process: Child Study Teams (CS Teams: Moore, Fifield, Spira, & Scarlato, 1989) and Instructional Consultation Teams (IC Teams: Rosenfield & Gravois, 1996). Using multinomial hierarchical general linear modeling (HGLM) and the Hierarchical Linear Modeling program (HLM 7.01: Raudenbush et al., 2011), statistically significant effects were found for student sex; Hispanic race/ethnicity; reading, writing, and math achievement; prior ratings of classroom concentration; and closeness in the prior student-teacher relationship on student referrals to both problem-solving teams relative to not being referred to a problem-solving team. Student African American and Unspecified/Other race/ethnicity, prior internalizing behavior problems, teacher sex, teacher age, and 11+ years of total teaching experience uniquely statistically significantly predicted referrals to CS Teams. Student Asian race/ethnicity, being a new student to the district, receiving special education services the prior school year, having a conflict laden relationship with the prior teacher, and 11+ years of teaching experience at the current school uniquely statistically significantly predicted referrals to IC Teams. Planned post hoc coefficient contrasts compared the predictors of student referrals to IC Teams and CS Teams. Findings indicate that student sex and race/ethnicity, being new to the district, receiving special education the prior school year, relationship quality with the prior teacher, severity of academic or behavior problems, and teacher age statistically significantly differentiated referral between the two problem-solving teams. However, with odds ratios ≤ 2.5, the sizes of all effects in this study were small (Chen, Cohen, & Chen, 2010; Chinn, 2000). Limitations include generalizability, missing data, model misspecification, and constraints of standard statistical analysis software.Item An Experimental Evaluation of the Effect of Instructional Consultation Teams on Teacher Efficacy: A Multivariate, Multilevel Examination(2009) Koehler, Jessica Robyn; Gottfredson, Gary; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Teacher efficacy, the extent to which teachers feel they can influence student learning (Berman, McLaughlin, Bass, Pauly, & Zellman, 1977), has been repeatedly linked to important student and teacher outcomes (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). Although the results of many studies support the claim that teacher efficacy is an important educational construct, few studies have investigated interventions to influence these teacher beliefs. The current study evaluated whether a specific teacher intervention, Instructional Consultation Teams (IC Teams), positively affected teachers' sense of self-efficacy as measured by two efficacy instruments. Participants included 1203 in-service elementary school teachers in 34 elementary schools within a large suburban school district--17 randomly assigned to the IC Team intervention and 17 assigned to the control condition. Because teachers are nested within schools, hierarchical linear modeling was utilized to evaluate whether scores on measures of teacher self-efficacy were influenced by IC Teams. A multivariate model was also used to evaluate the effects of IC Teams on both measures, simultaneously. The results imply that IC Teams significantly increased teachers' scores on the efficacy scales. The current study provides one of a few attempts to evaluate the effects of a specific school intervention on teacher efficacy within an experimental framework.Item The Effect of Instructional Consultation Teams on Teachers' Reported Instructional Practices(2007-11-26) Kaiser, Lauren Tracy; Rosenfield, Sylvia A; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A primary goal of Instructional Consultation Teams (IC Teams; Rosenfield & Gravois, 1996) is that students' problems will be prevented or resolved through the provision of services to the adults who serve them. The assumption is that teachers will improve instructional planning, delivery, management, and assessment (e.g., matching instruction to student levels) as a result of working with a colleague through a collaborative problem-solving relationship, or working in a school building in which norms of collaboration and problem-solving with a focus on instruction have been developed. The efficacy of IC Teams for improving instruction has not yet been rigorously evaluated. The current study assesses teachers' self-reported frequency of use of good instructional practices in assessment and delivery of instruction to evaluate the effect of instructional consultation services on instruction in a sample of 977 teachers. Because teachers are nested within schools, multilevel analysis was conducted to control for nonequivalence and to correctly model the error structure of the data. Elementary school teachers in 11 schools that have implemented IC Teams for two or three years were compared with teachers in 17 non-equivalent schools that have never implemented IC Teams and teachers from 17 schools with one year of implementation. Results of multilevel analyses indicate that there are no significant differences in instructional practices between schools with or without IC Teams, but that teacher characteristics, such as years of experience and grade level of instruction, do explain some of the variance in teacher practices. Implications and limitations of the study are addressed.Item The Relationship between the Level of Implementation of Instructional Consultation Teams and Student Goal Attainment(2006-05-01) LaFleur, Allison Marie; Rosenfield, Sylvia; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A number of prereferral and problem-solving teams have emerged since PL 94-142 to provide consultation and intervention planning for teachers with difficult to teach students. Instructional Consultation Teams (IC Teams) is one model that attempts to improve student academic and behavioral performance through the use of a structured problem-solving process. This study examined the archived data of 417 IC Team consultant-teacher dyads to determine the relationship between implementation of the collaborative process and student goal attainment.
High levels of goal attainment were assessed for cases that provided full SDF documentation. Implementation in the dimensions of Clear Communication, Intervention Implementation and Intervention Evaluation related to a small degree with student goal attainment. However, 42% of cases did not provide sufficient information to determine goal attainment. Those cases that did fully document SDF data had higher implementation scores than did those that provided partial or insufficient documentation of critical SDF components.