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 Implementation Issues Impeding Evidence-based Instruction for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities in One Public School System(2023) Stephanson, Janet; McLaughlin, Margaret J.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)For over 50 years, providing relevant and individualized instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities (SSCD) has challenged school systems because of the heterogeneity of the population and the complicated nature of their learning characteristics, warranting the implementation of specific instruction using targeted, evidence-based instruction, not common practice in most school settings. The intention of this mixed-method Participatory Action Research (PAR) study is to investigate the barriers to providing evidence-based practices in District A while creating a framework of the PD required to increase teacher capacity to deliver the instruction. An Innovation Configuration Matrix (IC Matrix) created by Browder et al. (2014) will be used as the foundation for the study, as it details the evidence-based practices (EBPs) for students with severe disabilities by detailing what instruction is needed, how the instruction should be provided, and what supports are needed for the instruction to occur. The PAR process will occur through the administration and evaluation of a survey for all teachers of SSCD, followed by three convenings of a group of nine District A teachers of SSCD who will use the information of the survey, the IC Matrix, and federal and state guidance to create a PD Framework detailing the learning needs for all teachers of SSCD in District A.Item Designing a framework for teachers' integration of computational thinking into elementary science(Wiley, 2023-07-29) Cabrera, Lautaro; Ketelhut, Diane Jass; Mills, Kelly; Killen, Heather; Coenraad, Merijke; Byrne, Virginia L.; Plane, Jandelyn DawnAs professional science becomes increasingly computational, researchers and educators are advocating for the integration of computational thinking (CT) into science education. Researchers and policymakers have argued that CT learning opportunities should begin in elementary school and span across the K-12 grades. While researchers and policymakers have specified how students should engage in CT for science learning, the success of CT integration ultimately depends on how elementary teachers implement CT in their science lessons. This new demand for teachers who can integrate CT has created a need for effective conceptual tools that teacher educators and professional development designers can use to develop elementary teachers' understanding and operationalization of CT for their classrooms. However, existing frameworks for CT integration have limitations. Existing frameworks either overlook the elementary grades, conceptualize CT in isolation and not integrated into science, and/or have not been tested in teacher education contexts. After reviewing existing CT integration frameworks and detailing an important gap in the science teacher education literature, we present our framework for the integration of CT into elementary science education, with a special focus on how to use this framework with teachers. Situated within our design-based research study, we (a) explain the decision-making process of designing the framework; (b) describe the pedagogical affordances and challenges it provided as we implemented it with a cohort of pre- and in-service teachers; (c) provide suggestions for its use in teacher education contexts; and (d) theorize possible pathways to continue its refinement.Item “EMBRACING THE UNCERTAINTY”: AN EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY OF IMPROVISATION-BASED TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT(2022) Placek, Dale S; Peercy, Megan; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While many education researchers have characterized the impromptu nature of classroom teaching as improvisation, few studies of teacher education or professional development (PD) have examined the potential of improvisation workshops for equipping teachers to face unforeseen classroom moments productively. In this dissertation, I introduced an applied theatrical improvisation framework I call Pedagogical Improvisation (PI), and used it to design, implement, and conduct a qualitative case study of an improvisation-based professional development experience (the PIPD) for a group of nine high school teachers. The research questions were:1. How, if at all, did PIPD participation influence teacher-participants’ attitudes toward, and beliefs about, improvisation and improvisational teaching? 2. How, if at all, did PIPD participation influence teacher-participants’ teaching practices, especially with respect to unforeseen classroom moments? Additionally, during the data analysis process, I added a third research question, based on participating teachers’ responses about the benefits of group participation in the PIPD:3. How, if at all, did the PIPD promote the formation of a Community of Practice for teacher-participants? Findings indicated that, as a result of their PIPD experiences, teacher-participants came to see the role of teacher as a professional improviser more clearly, became more comfortable with uncertainty in both the workshop setting and their classrooms, and experimented with various types of teaching practices related to the PIPD workshop activities and the Elements of Improvisation. Teacher-participants also identified several ways in which the PIPD workshops supported their development of improvisational skills/mindsets, and several constraints that served as obstacles to experimenting with improvisational activities or teaching practices in their classrooms. Beyond their individual reflections and applications of the workshop activities to their classroom, PIPD teachers experienced the benefits of group participation through the Community of Practice that formed as a result of the PIPD workshops. By laughing, playing, and learning together in a workshop setting characterized by psychological safety, teachers also came to see themselves as responsible for creating that type of atmosphere for students in their own classrooms, and experimented with many ways of doing so. This dissertation has implications for research, teaching, teacher education, and professional development, and joins a body of now-quickly-growing research across many fields that supports Tint, McWaters, and Van Driel’s (2015) assertion that applied improvisation is “consistently transformative and successful.” Further, it seeks to respond to their call for “rigorous and structured research to ground the findings in larger, evidence-based processes” (p. 73).Item COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN THE ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM: HOW TEACHERS APPROPRIATE CT FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTION(2021) Cabrera, Lautaro; Clegg, Tamara; Jass Ketelhut, Diane; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Researchers and policymakers call for the integration of Computational Thinking (CT) into K-12 education to prepare students to participate in a society and workforce increasingly influenced by computational devices, algorithms, and methods. One avenue to meet this goal is to prepare teachers to integrate CT into elementary science education, where students can use CT by leveraging computing concepts to support scientific investigations. This study leverages data from a professional development (PD) series where teachers learned about CT, co-designed CT-integrated science lessons, implemented one final lesson plan in their classrooms, and reflected on their experience. This study aims to understand how teachers learned about CT and integrated it into their classroom, a process conceptualized as appropriation of CT (Grossman et al., 1999). This dissertation has two parts. The first investigates how teachers appropriated CT through inductive and deductive qualitative analyses of various data sources from the PD. The findings suggest that most teachers appropriated the labels of CT or only Surface features of CT as a pedagogical tool but did so in different ways. These differences are presented as five different profiles of appropriation that differ in how teachers described the activities that engage students in CT, ascribed goals to CT integration, and use technology tools for CT engagement. The second part leverages interviews with a subset of teachers aimed at capturing the relationship between appropriation of CT during the PD and the subsequent year. The cases of these five teachers suggest that appropriation styles were mostly consistent in the year after the PD. However, the cases detail how constraints in autonomy to make instructional decisions about science curriculum and evolving needs from students can greatly impact CT integration. Taken together, the findings of the dissertation suggest that social context plays an overarching role in impacting appropriation, with conceptual understanding and personal characteristics coming into play when the context for CT integration is set. The dissertation includes discussions around implications for PD designers, such as a call for reframing teacher knowledge and beliefs as part of a larger context impacting CT integration into schools.Item FROM VISION TO PRACTICE: A CASE STUDY OF WRITING PROJECT TEACHERS(2019) Singleton, Elizabeth M.; O'Flahavan, John; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the experiences of three practicing teachers involved in a professional learning program focused on writing instruction as they envisioned and enacted new practices for teaching writing in their classrooms. A secondary aim of the study was to uncover the supports and barriers the teachers encountered as they attempted to implement their new ideas for improving their students’ writing in the midst of a reform-oriented literacy initiative in their high-needs school district. This study employed a qualitative multi-case study methodology to take an in-depth look at each teacher’s vision-to-practice process. Data sources from an examination of the visions, practices, and reflections of each of the three case study teachers included semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and analysis of documents produced during the professional learning program that captured teachers’ visions of good teaching. Findings lend insights into the dilemmas that teachers experience assimilating new teaching practices within their existing theoretical perspectives, beliefs, and established principles of practice. Teachers selected new practices that were aligned with their theoretical perspectives of writing development which informed their beliefs about students’ writing challenges and guided their implementation efforts in their classrooms. While beliefs about students’ challenges remained mostly unexamined, teachers developed new practices to address their beliefs about how they could help students improve as writers. Teachers engaged in productive struggle to balance the competing demands of content coverage, fulfilling their professional responsibilities, and meeting their students’ needs. Although teachers made different instructional decisions, they each prioritized preparing their students for their futures over other considerations. Teachers did not find many supports in their schools to encourage their efforts, and they experienced a lack of professional learning opportunities and a data-driven culture as barriers. Findings suggest that teachers require supports to enact professional identities as learners, knowers, and leaders within reform-oriented contexts. The study findings support the utility of teacher vision as a lens for examining practicing teachers’ professional learning and growth.Item Wording their own worlds: A phenomenological exploration of teachers' lived experiences of teacher leadership(2019) Hamilton, Kristin Buckstad; Hultgren, Francine H.; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Teacher leadership remains prominent in policy, career ladder programs, research, and professional discourse, yet few studies center what teacher leadership is like for teachers or what teachers are seeking when they construct their own career pathways. This gap is important to address. Teacher dissatisfaction certainly leads to recruitment and attrition challenges, but there is also an imperative for education as a human institution to attend to teachers’ needs. This study describes the lived experiences six teachers and the author had of teacher leadership. Following the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology as articulated by Heidegger, Gadamer, and van Manen, participant descriptions and other lifeworld texts are analyzed to render themes that evoke the lived bodies, time, spaces, and relationships of teacher leadership. Metaphorically, teacher leaders travel into between-spaces, across borders, and over edges in response to their callings. Teachers experience teacher leadership bodily, insatiably growing and enacting pedagogic knowledge. They experience leadership as a following of a pedagogic need that compels them. They navigate the world with finely tuned sense-abilities that perceive what students, teachers, and pedagogy need. Lastly, they experience leadership relationally, feeling connected with other teachers near and far. Teachers in this study also experience a profound tension. The decision to accept new responsibilities as their professional vision expands is rooted in their being as a teacher, whether the roles are in the classroom or not. Yet, teacher leadership asks them (via policy, titles, and other cultural signals) to replace their teacher identities with teacher leader or educational leader identities. The teacher leader name does not always feel right to them. The final chapter of the study invites us to wonder about expanding the teaching profession’s scope in a way that resonates with teachers. In a world where “teachership”—the state of being a teacher, just as leadership is the state of being a leader—is recognized, the name “teacher” would be expansive enough to invoke all the opportunities teachers seek in pedagogy’s name. The study explores implications for a profession that empowers itself to claim teachers’ right of participation as teachers in other worlds within education.Item Learning to teach for social justice in early childhood classrooms of privilege(2018) Blackmon, Laurel Catherine; Imig, David; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purposes of this study were to examine how Social Justice Education (SJE) was envisioned and enacted at an elite school and to examine what the experiences of the school’s early childhood teachers were as they participated in professional development (PD) programming around SJE. Through embedded case study methodology, the researcher analyzed the school as one unit, with the five teacher participants as bound cases within this context. Conducted in 2017, data included interviews with school leaders, curriculum documents, school documents, PD materials, teacher interviews, and classroom observations. These data were analyzed in the context of a theoretical framework of SJE developed from the literature. Findings indicated that SJE was largely defined by the teacher participants and the School Head as a way to create a welcoming school community and that observed classroom practices aligned with this definition. Administrators and the School Mission & Statement of Community Values, however, included taking action against inequity in the definition, a conceptualization of SJE that would be challenging to fully realize in the context of the school and professional cultures at the time of the study. The school and professional cultures were also found to be key factors in how teacher learning was experienced by the teachers. Each teacher participant positioned herself as an outsider to these cultures in some way, and each described this position as having an impact on her implementation of SJE. Participants described their learning experiences as both personal and professional, and they expressed that PD that supported development of their critical lenses and their classroom practices was impactful. Implications for professional developers and school leaders include the importance of understanding the school and larger socio-political context in which teachers are learning about SJE. Three areas of focus for PD were also identified: teacher self-knowledge, critical lens development, and training programs for specific curriculum and pedagogy that supports SJE. Implications for research include inquiry into the role of school and professional culture in shifting schoolwide practices to SJE and into the impact of PD that emphasizes teacher self-knowledge, critical lens development, and training in SJE curriculum programs.Item Habits of Mind: A Case Study of Three Teachers' Experiences with a Mindfulness-Based Intervention(2016) Dunn, Molly; Croninger, Robert; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)K-12 teachers encounter numerous occupational stressors as part of their profession, and these stressors place them at risk of job-related stress and burnout (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Given the prevalence of stress and burnout among school personnel, concrete interventions designed to address the unique demands of teaching are necessary (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jennings, Snowberg, Coccia, & Greenberg, 2011). This dissertation examined one mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for teachers, Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE). The study employed a qualitative case study methodology; data sources included in-depth interviews, field observations of CARE, and analysis of documents such as the CARE Facilitator Manual and Participant Handbook. The current study investigated how participants perceived the MBI immediately after the completion of the intervention and how they utilized experiences from the intervention at a five-month follow-up point. This study reveals that participants identified immediate and longer-term benefits from participating in this MBI, with aspects of compassion, adaptability, and community emerging as important factors in MBI interventions for teachers. Subsequent follow-up interviews suggested that participants, to varying degrees, incorporated aspects of the intervention into their daily and professional lives. The study concludes with recommendations on how to strengthen MBIs as a professional development protocol and identifies areas for future research on how MBIs might influence teacher performance.Item THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHANGES IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH ACHIEVEMENT AND TEACHER PERCEPTIONS OF THE TEACHING AND LEARNING CONSTRUCTS DEFINED BY THE TELL MARYLAND SURVEY(2014) Pugh, Peggy Anne; Kivlighan, Dennis M; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This quantitative research study uses path analysis to determine relationships between changes in high school English achievement and changes in teacher perceptions of teaching and learning constructs as defined by the Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) Maryland Survey. Using individual western Maryland high schools as the unit of analysis, 2011 and 2013 English High School Assessment (HSA) results reported as percent proficient are correlated to 2011 and 2013 TELL Survey percent agreement of teacher perceptions about the constructs of sufficient time, teacher leadership, school leadership, professional development, and instructional practices and support, as defined by the TELL Survey. Much of the research literature concerning the constructs is descriptive and qualitative, rather than quantitative. This study focuses on perceptions of teachers rather than the direct effect of the constructs on teaching and learning in high schools. The results did not accord with the volume of literature supporting the theoretical framework that sufficient time, teacher leadership, school leadership, professional development, and instructional practices and support are related to student achievement. The results demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between the HSA results in 2011 and 2013, and the same strong relationship between each of the constructs across those two years. Importantly, teacher perceptions of each of the measures of climate are high, but among the broad phenomena of success, teachers report sufficient time as the lowest percent agreement among the constructs. Interestingly, there is a statistically significant relationship between student achievement on the English HSA in 2011 and teacher perceptions of both school leadership and instructional practices and support two years later in 2013.Item THE LEARNING COUPON: THE EFFECT OF PEER AND SUPERVISORS' PARTICIPATION ON INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPATION IN AN EMPLOYER-SPONSORED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE.(2014) Robinson, Jill D.; Kivlighan Jr., Dennis M.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE LEARNING COUPON: THE EFFECT OF PEER AND SUPERVISORS' PARTICIPATION ON INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPATION IN AN EMPLOYER-SPONSORED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE. Jill Dornetta Robinson, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: Dennis M. Kivlighan Jr.,Doctor of Philosophy Department of Counseling and Personnel Psychology The learning coupon program was initiated by Federal Student Aid (FSA), a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Education (ED), to promote employee participation in lifelong learning and career development. The initiative was introduced in 2002 in response to Executive Order No. 13,111 (1999) issued by former President Bill Clinton, which called for agencies to use technology to expand training opportunities for federal employees. The initiative has been operational since 2002 until present, however, leaders at FSA are troubled that employee participation has consistently remained at or below 50%. Researchers theorize using human capital theory that individuals calculate the costs and benefits of training opportunities to determine whether participation in training is worthwhile. This framework effectively explains participation in terms of employees' intrinsic characteristics, such as personal motivation and outcome expectations. However, research indicates that the perceived value of training opportunities can be "relative to one's standing with similar or referent others" (Bamberger & Biron, 2007, p. 179) and that individual perceptions of the worth of rewards can be influenced by interaction and interdependent behavior with others (Friedland & Nadler, 1999). For example, researchers have hypothesized that, within interdependent social contexts, information about the other person's potential reward or outcome can affect individual tendencies to participate, cooperate, or compete with one another (Friedland & Nadler, 1999). Thus, researchers believe that employee participation and the perceptions of the utility of a training opportunity have to be analyzed within the structure of the social context in which the interactions unfold. In this study, I hypothesized that--based on social learning theory--regarding interdependent behavior with others, namely peers and supervisors--individual employee participation in the learning coupon would influence individuals' decisions to participate in the learning coupon. Prior to the selection of research methods, I reviewed the relevant literature to identify the determinants of training participation and then used this information to construct the model and conceptual framework for this study. Data on employee gender, supervisor, business unit, and status of participation from the year 2007-2008 represents the highest level of participation (49%) in the learning coupon initiative. Status of participation was coded as a yes-no variable to indicate whether or not each employee and each supervisor participated in training during the 2007-2008 calendar year. Employee data was linked to supervisor data, which allowed me to identify the employees who shared a common supervisor. Based on this data, I created the "other participation" variable which was defined as the percentage of employees who share the same supervisor as the target employee who participated in the learning coupon. The study revealed that other participation had a significant negative effect on individual participation. I also found that group size had a significant negative effect on individual participation. As the group size increased, the likelihood of individual participation decreased. Our model demonstrated that size mitigated the negative effect of other participation on individual participation. As group size increased from low to high, the negative effect of other participation decreased. Finally, the results indicated that supervisors' participation did not have a statistically significant influence on individual decisions to participate in the learning coupon.