College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Patterns in Curriculum Choices: Pre-Calculus Curricula in the Archdiocese of Washington(2015) Hurst, Christopher Bryan; Campbell, Patricia F; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study aims to learn more about the choices made by mathematics teachers in the Archdiocese of Washington, given their unique independence from state or district curricular control. To study these choices, pre-calculus teachers completed a survey and submitted their course’s summative assessments. These responses were then compared to themselves, to each other, and to the Common Core to study the choices teachers made, both in the scope of their curricula and in the expectations they had for student performance. This study concludes that teachers choose pre-calculus curricula within two major archetypes, either advancing students’ algebraic skill or exploring new topics. Further, the study found that teachers’ assessments are well aligned to their stated curriculum, but that contrary to recent education trends, teachers have largely chosen to ignore statistics. Consequences of these choices are discussed, as well as implications for policy and future research.Item MULTICULTURAL PEDAGOGIES: THREE TEACHERS' UNDERSTANDING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION(2012) Prell, Vanessa Sylvie Calvo; Croninger, Robert; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While multicultural curriculum is widely used, little is known about how teachers conceive of this curriculum. The purpose of this thesis is to explore teachers' understanding and implementation of multicultural curriculum, including the factors that affect, their beliefs about and practices of multicultural education. My study identifies two pedagogies of multicultural education: student centered and curriculum centered. These pedagogies are shaped by the teachers' view of student engagement, teacher authority, curriculum flexibility, and critical thinking. Teachers' motivations to include multicultural curriculum derived from personal experiences with race and culture. However, teachers struggled with organizational barriers such as limited time, incomplete multicultural knowledge, unachievable curriculum standards, and incompatible mandated texts. This research opens avenues for increased reflection upon and use of multicultural curriculum.Item Complicating the Phenomenological Conversation of Basketball as an En-gendered Life Course(2012) Sotudeh, Kasra; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experience of basketball in the lives of collegiate women who claim to be scholar-athletes. The scholar-athletes were invited to unpack their scholastic and athletic life stories, not just as a mode of relevance for communicating with others, but more significantly, as a way of transacting what is embedded within their memories via the written narrative form. Through the corporeal, temporal, spatial, and relational moments in basketball the meaning of the lived experience is illuminated. The question that compels my study is: What is the lived experience of basketball in the lives of collegiate women who claim to be scholar-athletes? The philosophic works of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty provide the foundation for this lived experience study. The "grounding" that each of these philosophers impart is used to penetrate the hermeneutic nature of basketball as "play" via autobiographical application. Furthermore, van Manen's phenomenological process provides a platform of engagement and writing through the reflective practice of Pinar's currere method as a mode for slowing down the lived experience of play. A group of eight former women basketball players who identified themselves as scholar-athletes were the participants in this study through a 15-week course entitled EDPS 488B: Complicating the Conversation of Basketball as a Life Course. By analyzing their lived accounts of basketball through a variety of literary means, each scholar-athlete was able to gradually build her own autobiographical written narrative of basketball in relation to the social, political, and intellectual contexts of curriculum as lived. In this process, I develop a philosophical approach to examining the significance of sport though a revalidation of seasoned becoming, a transformation of athletic feat into scholarly thought, a deliberation of unrehearsed narrative, and a recognition of never-ending sanctity. Setting a scholarly life course into athletic motion suggests themes encompassing the challenge of bringing the body and mind into an even playing field, the return to a moment when identities were merely playful and time simply stood still, the value of the sporting space on the athlete's sense of community development, and the enlightenment of the self through the other via the discipline of heart and mind. Drawing from the insights I gained from my participants, I suggest that the praxis of sports as a life course is reliant upon curricular transformation and not the isolation of academics from athletics. The notion of irrelevance has trapped our mindset into the anxiety of wanting to be accepted. For scholar-athletes and a multitude of other hyphenated forms of human existence, anxiety hovers over an ever-changing becoming, almost fooling the being out of existence and into an artificial realm of acceptance. Scholar-athletes can serve as powerful role models within society, and hence, their lived experience is consistently challenged by their actions. The currere process not only tells the scholarly story of athletic lives, but it allows others in the broader community to engage in the practice of complicated conversations from a variety of perspectives, both within and beyond the boundaries of the sporting space.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.Item Curriculum Reform as a Reflection of Tradition and Change: Japanese Teachers Approaches to Dimensions of Difference via the Integrated Curriculum(2006-04-26) MacDonald, Laurence Jon; Finkelstein, Barbara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the midst of significant social and global change, Japan has embarked upon its most significant education reform since the immediate post-WWll period. In 2002, MEXT enacted the integrated curriculum (sogoteki na gakushu), a decentralization effort intended to empower teachers and schools with the autonomy to create and implement curriculum of their own choosing. The purpose of multi-site case study is to discover if and how Japanese teachers are utilizing the autonomy provided by the integrated curriculum to provide students opportunities to interact with dimensions of difference based on Japan's changing cultural landscape and global role. This multi-site case study is based on seventeen months of field work in Japan, at which time I analyzed government and school documents; interviewed teachers, administrators, scholars, and leaders of NPO/NGOs; and observed integrated curriculum activities in 60 public schools. Based on this data, I uncovered three approaches to the integrated curriculum that confront students with dimensions of difference: 1) the human rights education approach; 2) the cultural co-existence approach; and 3) the international understanding education approach. In the context of the human rights approach, teachers implemented curriculum to help students: 1) develop self-esteem; 2) contend with issues of bullying and social exclusion; 3) and learn about the rights of minorities, the disabled, and the homeless. Schools in ethnically diverse communities implement a cultural co-existence approach to the integrated curriculum, engaging students in the exploration of human migration and the growing ethnic diversity of their communities. In the international understanding approach, teachers help students explore foreign cultural influences on Japanese culture; the nation's relationship with its Asian neighbors; and the role of the Japanese Government and NPO/NGOs in overseas development and volunteerism. While these approaches to the integrated curriculum were by no means universal, the findings of this study confirmed that many schools in diverse urban areas did implement at least one of these three approaches.