Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item The Chick or the Egg? Multi-Group, Short-Term Longitudinal Relations Between Grit and Literacy Achievement(2019) Boyars, Michal Yablong; O'Neal, Colleen R; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The impact of grit on achievement is well established, but it is unclear whether achievement impacts grit. This short-term longitudinal study examined the direction of relations between grit and literacy among diverse elementary school student groups. Most grit research features a unidirectional design (e.g., grit affects achievement). Yet, recent research supports cross-lagged models in which socioemotional skills and achievement affect one another. In addition to testing cross-lagged effects, this study examined the direction of grit-literacy relations for different demographic groups (i.e., age, gender, and dual language status). Method: Participants included upper elementary students (N = 396; 3 schools; Mage = 9.61; 55% female; 59% dual language learners; 11% Black, 6% Asian, 29% Latino/a, 8% Multiracial; 39% White). Measures were student-reported grit, teacher-reported grit, and a student literacy achievement performance task (Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension, TOSREC). Analytic Approach: An autoregressive cross-lagged design included two time points over 4 months. A cross-lagged model was compared to unidirectional models (i.e., direct and reverse) for best fit. Multi-group analyses were then used to examine whether grit-literacy relations differed as a function of demographics. Results: The data fit the cross-lagged model better than the direct or reverse models. Within the context of a cross-lagged model – which contained both the direct and reverse effects – there was a significant relation between Time 1 literacy achievement and Time 2 student-reported Grit-PE, suggesting that literacy achievement can predict later Grit-PE. There were no demographic differences in the fit of the data with the cross-lagged model between gender, DLL status, and age groups. Findings of the current study support the examination of reciprocal effects in grit-literacy relations and its generalizability among students. Longer-term cross-lagged studies are needed to further understand the temporal sequence between grit and literacy.Item THE PERCEIVED RELATIONSHIP OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ON TEACHER SELF-REPORTED USE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS(2014) Tresler, Tiffany D.; Kivlighan, Dennis; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Beginning in 2012 teachers from 44 states have been challenged to make significant changes in curriculum and classroom instruction to meet the rigor of the Common Core State Standards. However, available research does not provide definitive methods to impact wide-scale reform, such as Common Core Standards adoption. This preliminary, quantitative study seeks to examine professional development and one component of the Common Core. The purpose is to determine if specific teacher perceived features of professional development are related to self-reported classroom use of the six English language arts (ELA) Common Core instructional shifts. The specific professional development features studied and the statistical analysis are based on the work of Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, and Yoon (2001), examining what makes professional development effective. The features are type (reform vs. traditional), duration, collective participation, content focus, coherence, and active learning. The ELA instructional shifts are balancing informational and literary text, teaching reading and writing through disciplines, use of complex text, text-based answers, writing from sources, and use of academic vocabulary. The study population consists of 89 elementary school teachers in one school system in Maryland who completed a survey asking them to describe their most recent professional development experience and their classroom use of the six ELA Common Core instructional shifts. The survey is modified from the Teacher Activity Survey (Garet et al., 1999) used in a large-scale national study (Garet et al., 2001) and a follow-up three-year longitudinal study (Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002). The results of the correlation and ordinary least-squares regression analysis indicate that alignment, a component of coherence, and content focus are the only two perceived professional development features that are strongly correlated with teacher self-reported use of the Common Core instructional shifts. Specifically, the feature of content focus is likely to be a predictor of reported use of students reading and writing through disciplines and writing from sources. Alignment is likely to be a predictor of the reported use of teaching students using complex text. Content focus and alignment are predictors of the reported use of the shifts in total.Item DEAF SPACE AND THE VISUAL WORLD - BUILDINGS THAT SPEAK: AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF(2010) Tsymbal, Karina; Bovill, Carl; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Deaf Space and the Visual World is a set of principles providing understanding of the perceptions and special needs of the deaf. More frequently deaf and hard of hearing school children are attending mainstream public schools, in which deaf-friendly design is not well-understood or implemented. This work analyzes these principles and applies them to the design of a mainstream elementary school at a site within the King Farm community of Rockville, Maryland. Primarily, the ideas of establishing visual connectivity, circulation, collective being, and sense of home guided the school design. These are reflected in numerous design features of the school that will benefit not only the deaf students, but hearing and other special needs children as well. The ultimate objective of this work is to promote understanding of the needs of the deaf in educational settings, as well as to establish a useful set of architectural guidelines.