Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
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Item A Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship between Physical Education Requirements and Student Academic Achievement in High School(2015) Kim, Sang Min; Valli, Linda R.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although national recommendations and guidelines have called for schools to play a greater role in enhancing physical activity through physical education to prevent sedentary lifestyles or physical inactivity of children and adolescents, many schools have reduced or eliminated physical education time or programs despite state or district mandates. These policies and practices are often part of schools’ efforts to increase students’ standardized test scores given the pressures of accountability reforms in education. Guided by Argyris and Schön’s (1974) theory of action, the effectiveness of schools’ policies and practices of decreasing or eliminating physical education time or programs to improve students’ academic achievement was tested in this study. In particular, this study aimed to examine the relationship between schools’ physical education graduation requirements and students’ academic achievement growth in reading, mathematics, and science in high school settings. To this end, the study used a multilevel analysis from a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. high schoolers from the NELS database. Results showed that time requirements of physical education for graduation were either positively or neutrally related to student academic achievement growth in mathematics and science while time requirements of physical education for graduation had only a neutral relation to student academic achievement growth in reading, after controlling for student, family, and school characteristics. Also, there were gender differences in the relations between time requirements of physical education for graduation and student academic achievement growth in mathematics and science with no gender difference found in reading. Overall, although there was not strong evidence that more time requirements of physical education for graduation were associated with higher student academic achievement growth, the findings of this study indicate that certain time requirements of physical education for graduation are positively associated with student academic achievement growth especially in mathematics and science. The findings of the study further imply that increased time requirements schools set aside for physical education for graduation do not decrease or compromise student academic achievement growth in the three core high school subjects.Item Three Essays on the Role of Teacher Working Conditions in Shaping Human Capital(2014) Jackson, Cara; Croninger, Robert G.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In recent years, education policy has increasingly focused on improving human capital as a strategy for school improvement. Many recent efforts to enhance the stock of human capital in schools have focused on holding individual teachers accountable for student outcomes, with little regard to the role of teachers' working conditions in shaping human capital. Yet prior research by labor economists, organizational sociologists, and educational researchers indicates that working conditions can influence teachers' choices about where to work, and some evidence suggests that aspects of the school environment may foster or inhibit effective teaching. In this dissertation I report the results of three studies that explore the relationship between working conditions in schools and three different expressions of human capital. I explore similar notions of working conditions across these studies to peruse how these working conditions relate to both educational opportunities, such as student access to quality high school mathematics teachers, and educational outcomes, including elementary school teachers' effectiveness and novice teachers' gains in effectiveness. In the first study, I use multilevel logistic regression to explore students' access to quality teachers based on a nationally representative sample of ninth grade mathematics students. I find that ninth graders in schools with greater collegial support are more likely to have quality mathematics teachers. In the second study, I explore data on teachers of fourth and fifth grade students nested in schools in a large urban district and employ a two-level hierarchical model to examine the relationship between working conditions and teacher effectiveness. Average teacher effectiveness is higher, on average, in schools with strong data use and strategic decision-making and in which teachers perceive high level of collegial support. In the final study, I use the same data but limit the sample to early career teachers to examine how working conditions facilitate or impede gains in early career teachers' effectiveness. I find that novice teachers have greater gains in effectiveness in English language arts in schools that are perceived by teachers as having strong learning communities. Novice teachers' gains in effectiveness in mathematics are greater in schools with greater collegial support and data use.