Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
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
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item The Initial Implementation Patterns of the C3 Framework in Maryland School Districts(2018) Pugh, Shannon Michelle; De La Paz, Susan; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This qualitative study examined the initial implementation patterns of the C3 Framework in Maryland school districts. The National Council for the Social Studies published the C3 Framework as a guide for state departments of education to revise social studies standards. This study sought to determine how district social studies leaders viewed the C3 Framework, how the district social studies leaders translated the C3 Framework in their districts, and why they chose to implement the C3 Framework as they did. The primary data sources were interviews and documents; the data were analyzed using constant comparative analysis to identify overarching attitudes toward the C3 Framework and implementation patterns. Policy implementation research specifically related to cognitive theory and capacity was used to help explain the implementation process. This study found that beliefs, financial and human resources, and time were the main factors influencing implementation. The study also found that how districts approach and support reform implementation for social studies might be different from how districts previously approached and supported new standards and curriculum in other content areas. In this study, all district social studies leaders focused primarily on disciplinary literacy components of the C3 Framework, specifically those related to history. District social studies leaders focused on document-based activities, student projects, and writing to source but few addressed the Inquiry Arc in a way that challenged or altered expected approaches to teaching and learning social studies. Many used the C3 Framework as leverage to justify the continued work and focus on historical thinking and other disciplinary literacy work in their districts. Most district social studies leaders used inquiry and disciplinary literacy as synonyms; the pattern suggests that further work to help educators distinguish between these related approaches to learning is necessary to help support the use of inquiry in the social studies. As more states use the C3 Framework in state standards, this study might help states and districts guide how they approach its implementation.Item Developing an Alternative Perspective on Coherence Seeking in Science Classrooms(2012) Sikorski, Tiffany-Rose; Hammer, David; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Education research continues to struggle with how to characterize students' engagement in the doing of science. Too often, educators and researchers reduce doing science to learning particular facts and explanations, or participating in narrowly-defined, de-contextualized ways of reasoning and arguing. In this dissertation, I review prominent work that attempts to characterize students' engagement in one aspect of doing science--seeking coherence. By seeking coherence, I mean trying to make information "hang together" in meaningful, mutually consistent ways. Using examples from a variety of science classrooms, I show that these prominent approaches fail to provide substantive accounts of students' work to form connections between information. To address those weaknesses, I develop, refine and illustrate an alternative perspective on coherence seeking in science education, one that emphasizes what information students are trying to fit together, how they are trying to fit it together, and toward what ends.Item Building Shared Understandings in Introductory Physics Tutorials Through Risk, Repair, Conflict & Comedy(2012) Conlin, Luke David; Hammer, David M; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Collaborative inquiry learning environments, such as The Tutorials in Physics Sensemaking, are designed to provide students with opportunities to partake in the authentic disciplinary practices of argumentation and sensemaking. Through these practices, groups of students in tutorial can build shared conceptual understandings of the mechanisms behind physical phenomena. In order to do so, they must also build a shared epistemological understanding of what they are doing together, such that their activity includes collaboratively making sense of mechanisms. Previous work (Conlin, Gupta, Scherr, & Hammer, 2007; Scherr & Hammer, 2009) has demonstrated that tutorial students do not settle upon only one way of understanding their activity together, but instead build multiple shared ways of understanding, or framing (Scherr & Hammer, 2009; Tannen, 1993a), their activity. I build upon this work by substantiating a preliminary finding that one of these shared ways of framing corresponds with increased evidence of the students' collaboratively making sense of physical mechanisms. What previous research has not yet addressed is how the students come to understand their activity as including collaborative sensemaking discussions in the first place, and how that understanding develops over the course of the semester. In this dissertation, I address both of these questions through an in-depth video analysis of three groups' discussions throughout the semester. To build shared understandings through scientific argumentation and collaborative sensemaking, the students need to continually make repairs of each other's understanding, but this comes with the risk of affective damage that can shut down further sensemaking discussions. By analyzing the discourse of the three groups' discussions throughout the semester, I show how each group is able to manage this essential tension as they each build and maintain a safe space to sensemake together. I find that the three groups differ in how soon, how frequently, and how deeply they engage in collaborative scientific sensemaking. This variability can be explained, in part, through differences in how the groups use hedging, irony, and other discourse moves that epistemically distance the speakers from their claims. This work highlights the connection between students' epistemology and affect in face-to-face interaction.Item Giving Children Space: A Phenomenological Exploration of Student Experiences in Space Science Inquiry(2011) Horne, Christopher Robert; Hultrgren, Francine; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the experiences of 4th grade students in an inquiry-based space science classroom. At the heart of the study lies the essential question: What is the lived experience of children engaged in the process of space science inquiry? Through the methodology of phenomenological inquiry, the author investigates the essence of the lived experience of twenty 4th grade students as well as the reflections of two high school students looking back on their 4th grade space science experience. To open the phenomenon more deeply, the concept of space is explored as an overarching theme throughout the text. The writings of several philosophers including Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer are opened up to understand the existential aspects of phenomenology and the act of experiencing the classroom as a lived human experience. The methodological structure for the study is based largely on the work of Max van Manen (2003) in his seminal work, Researching Lived Experience, which describes a structure of human science research. A narrative based on classroom experiences, individual conversations, written reflections, and group discussion provides insight into the students' experiences. Their stories and thoughts reveal the themes of activity, interactivity, and "inquiractivity," each emerging as an essential element of the lived experience in the inquiry-based space science classroom. The metaphor of light brings illumination to the themes. Activity in the classroom is associated with light's constant and rapid motion throughout the Milky Way and beyond. Interactivity is seen through students' interactions just as light's reflective nature is seen through the illumination of the planets. Finally, inquiractivity is connected to questioning, the principal aspect of the inquiry-based classroom just as the sun is the essential source of light in our solar system. As the era of No Child Left Behind fades, and the next generation of science standards emerge, the students' stories are viewed through the lens of the scientific practices found in A Framework for K-12 Science Education (The National Research Council, 2011). The critical challenge for elementary educators interacting with this text is to find the lived meaning of giving children space in an inquiry-based experience.Item Influence of Subject Matter Discipline and Science Content Knowledge on National Board Certified Science Teachers' Conceptions, Enactment, and Goals for Inquiry(2009) Breslyn, Wayne; McGinnis, J. Randy; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study investigated differences in the continuing development of National Board Certified Science Teachers' (NBCSTs) conceptions of inquiry across the disciplines of biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. The central research question of the study was, "How does a NBCST's science discipline (biology, chemistry, earth science, or physics) influence their conceptions, enactment, and goals for inquiry-based teaching and learning?" A mixed methods approach was used that included an analysis of the National Board portfolio entry, Active Scientific Inquiry, for participants (n=48) achieving certification in the 2007 cohort. The portfolio entry provided detailed documentation of teachers' goals and enactment of an inquiry lesson taught in their classroom. Based on the results from portfolio analysis, participant interviews were conducted with science teachers (n=12) from the 2008 NBCST cohort who represented the science disciplines of biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. The interviews provided a broader range of contexts to explore teachers' conceptions, enactment, and goals of inquiry. Other factors studied were disciplinary differences in NBCSTs' views of the nature of science, the relation between their science content knowledge and use of inquiry, and changes in their conceptions of inquiry as result of the NB certification process. Findings, based on a situated cognitive framework, suggested that differences exist between biology, chemistry, and earth science teachers' conceptions, enactment, and goals for inquiry. Further, individuals teaching in more than one discipline often held different conceptions of inquiry depending on the discipline in which they were teaching. Implications for the research community include being aware of disciplinary differences in studies on inquiry and exercising caution in generalizing findings across disciplines. In addition, teachers who teach in more than one discipline can highlight the contextual and culturally based nature of teachers' conceptions of inquiry. For the education community, disciplinary differences should be considered in the development of curriculum and professional development. An understanding of disciplinary trends can allow for more targeted and relevant representations of inquiry.Item Students as Historical Detectives: The Effects of an Inquiry Approach on Middle School Students' Understanding of Historical Ideas and Concepts(2004-11-23) Stout, Mark Joseph; VanSledright, Bruce; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)National tests of student achievement in history have been poor for nearly 100 years, yet instructional practices have remained largely static pedantic, teacher-centered, textbook-driven, and dull. This study investigates the use of a student-centered, inquiry approach in the teaching of traditional history content that moves beyond stereotypical portrayals of history teachers. This approach placed the interpretation of historical content in the hands of students through the analysis of primary source documents, images, maps, and statistical data as an alternative manner of learning history. Working in collaborative teams, students presented their interpretations in a variety of products and then compared their ideas to those of historians. In order to collect close-up data and to assess this type of approach, the researcher became the teacher of an 8th grade United States history class in a diverse middle school, examining this approach from both the perspectives of the students and of the teacher. Primarily qualitative in nature, data sources include a researcher's journal, student classroom discourse and assignments, interviews with students and a privileged observer, pre and post think-aloud-protocol readings of historical text, and a survey of student interests and motivations. These data were analyzed using open coding and an analysis of reading primary source text based on a continuum of reading strategies. Key findings suggest that students struggled initially with a shift in the culture of learning from traditional history classes and with reading sophisticated primary source text. The researcher found that by promoting a sense of confidence in his students and shaping the class into a community of learners, the students were able work collaboratively to develop deep understandings of both historical content and of the practices and tools of historians. They were able to negotiate difficult primary source text when the text was carefully selected for interest and direct connection to the learning objective, were analyzed in small chunks, and, when feasible, were analyzed in concert with visual images. The author also discusses the practical applications of such an approach from a teacher's perspective and implications for other stakeholders.