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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    Urbanicity and Academic Self-Concept
    (2009-02-27) Strein, William; Pickering, Cyril; Grossman, Julie
    The main focus of this study was the relationships between school urbanicity (size of community in which the school is located) and fifth-grade students’ academic self-concepts. Using multi-level modeling methodology (HLM) we were able to investigate “school effects”, net of individual students’ characteristics. School urbanicity had no effect on reading, math, or general academic self-concept. School-level effects were found consistently for aggregate school achievement in reading and math, congruent with Marsh’s Big-Fish-Little-Pond effect. Less consistent school-level effects were found for proportion of minority students and school-average SES. Individual level effects mirrored those reported in other literature with tested achievement having the greatest effect
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    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.
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    A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF CONTEXT EFFECTS ON ADOLESCENT CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: THE ROLE OF FAMILY, PEERS, SCHOOL, AND NEIGHBORHOOD
    (2009) Wilkenfeld, Britt Skeens; Torney-Purta, Judith; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The relations between multiple contexts of influence and adolescents' civic engagement were examined in order to facilitate understanding of how adolescents are being prepared for citizenship. This study extends previous research by simultaneously examining the family, peer, school, and neighborhood contexts, including how contexts are interrelated in their influence, and by employing multilevel regression techniques. The purpose of the study was to understand how contexts interact to produce positive outcomes for adolescents, especially those deemed at risk for poor civic outcomes. Utilizing data from the 1999 Civic Education Study and the 2000 U.S. Census, I examined a nationally representative sample of 2,729 14-year-olds from 119 schools in the United States. Access to the zip-codes for each school that participated in the study enabled the connection between neighborhood characteristics and schools and students within schools. Given the multifaceted nature of civic engagement, the current study considered context effects on four different aspects of civic engagement: civic knowledge, support for the rights of ethnic minorities, anticipated voting behavior, and anticipated community participation. Predictors pertain to adolescents' demographic characteristics, political discourse with parents and peers, civic experiences in school, and the demographic composition of the neighborhood. Political discourse with parents was positively related to civic knowledge, attitudes, and anticipated behavior, indicating the consistency with which socialization occurs in the home. Across the contexts examined, student measures of civic experiences in school (or civic learning opportunities) had the most consistently positive relationships with students' civic outcomes. Civic experiences in school include student confidence in the effectiveness of school participation, perception of a classroom climate that is open for discussion, and learning about ideal civic practices. Interactions between the school and neighborhood contexts indicate that higher levels of civic learning opportunities particularly make a difference for students attending schools in impoverished neighborhoods, sometimes substantially improving their civic outcomes. Schools, although implicated in the existence of a civic engagement gap, have the potential to narrow the gaps. Civic experiences in schools contribute to the preparation of youth for active citizenship and full access to these experiences reduces civic engagement gaps between students of different demographic groups.