2,729 research outputs found
A Family Perspective on Family Involvement Strategies in a Local Urban Elementary School
AbstractThe active engagement of parents in the educational experiences of their children has been suggested to support high academic achievement for the children. In the project setting, an urban elementary school, educators were struggling to find effective strategies to promote family involvement in their childrenâs education. The purpose of this qualitative project study was to investigate family perspectives on family involvement strategies and potential barriers at the project setting and to determine new effective strategies to help them become more involved in their childrenâs education. The conceptual framework for the project is Epsteinâs (2009) framework for parental involvement which explains how schools can work with families and communities to help families stay informed and involved in their childâs education. The study sample was identified using the purposeful sampling technique and comprised 18 family membersâ parents and /or guardiansâof children in grade levels K-5. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. The study found the key barriers to family involvement to be ineffective family-school communication, language barriers, poverty, low level of parental education, and low opportunities for parental participation in decision-making and volunteering within and for the school. Strategies for addressing these barriers and improving family involvement were identified based on Epsteinâs (2009) typology of family involvement. The studyâs findings have implications for addressing the barriers to family involvement and creating a change in attitude and practice among teachers so that families feel respected and can participate more in school activities. The findings will also contribute to the empirical literature on family involvement in childrenâs education
Understanding The Lived Experiences of Elementary Teachers Who Teach Students With Dyslexia How to Read: A Transcendental Phenomenology
This transcendental phenomenology sought to understand the lived experiences of elementary teachers who teach students with dyslexia how to read. The central question guiding this study was: âWhat are the lived experiences of elementary teachers who teach students with dyslexia how to read?â Three sub-questions looked more deeply into the phenomenon. The first sub-question asked: âWhat internal influences shape elementary teachersâ experiences when teaching students with dyslexia how to read?â The second sub-question asked: âWhat external influences shape elementary teachersâ experiences when teaching students with dyslexia how to read?â Finally, the third sub-question asked: âHow do internal and external influences shape elementary teachersâ experiences when teaching students with dyslexia how to read?â Banduraâs social cognitive theory (SCT) guided this study, as its model of triadic reciprocal causation provided a framework for understanding the internal and external influences that shaped elementary teachersâ experiences when teaching reading to students with dyslexia. A total of 14 teachers were purposefully selected either from public and private elementary teacher Facebook groups across the United States or snowball sampling. Participants were K-4 classroom teachers, special education teachers, and reading specialists. Data were collected from individual interviews, document analysis, and participant journaling. Moustakasâ (1994) data analysis procedures were used to reveal the essence of participantsâ lived experiences of the phenomenon. Thus, the science of reading, barriers to teaching students with dyslexia, and the pandemic and dyslexia strongly shaped elementary teachersâ instruction when teaching students with dyslexia how to read
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Design for Accessible Collaborative Engagement: Making online synchronous collaborative learning more accessible for students with sensory impairments.
This thesis looks at the accessibility of collaborative learning and the barriers to engagement experienced by blind/visually impaired (BVI) students and deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) students. It focuses specifically on online synchronous collaborative learning after establishing that this format presented the greatest barriers, and that these student groups were not engaging.
Taking a design-based research (DBR) approach, five studies were undertaken to identify these barriers and determine potential interventions. The product of the research, a result of collaborative design by the participants in the study, is a framework for accessible collaborative engagement represented in the form of an interactive website model, the Model for Accessible Collaborative Engagement (MACE).
The studies involved representatives of all stakeholders in the collaborative learning process at the institution (the Open University): students, tutors, modules teams, academics, support staff, and the student union Disabled Students Group. These studies took the form of an online survey of 327 students, 10 interviews with staff and students, 6 staff workshops and a collaborative design focus group. With significant representation of the target groups (BVI and DHH) in all studies, and taking an iterative approach to the design, evaluation and construction of the framework model, the studies established that barriers existed in four main categories covering different themes:
1. Communications: aural, visual, screen reading and navigation, text and captioning, lip reading and non-verbal communications, interpretation and third-party communications, mode control, and synchronisation.
2. Emotional and Social Factors: familiarisation, support networks, self-advocacy, opting out, cognitive load, and stress and anxiety.
3. Provisioning and Technical Factors: dissemination, speed and pacing of sessions, staff training, participation control, group size, technical provisioning, and recordings.
4. Activity and Session Design: Volume of materials, advance materials, accessible materials, accessible activities, and session formats.
Interventions were designed that could reduce the barriers in each of these categories and themes by adjustments and changes from both the student and institutional standpoints. MACE is designed to be utilised by both students and staff to provide guidance and suggestions on how to identify and acknowledge these barriers and implement interventions to reduce them.
This research represents an original and essential contribution to the field of investigation. As well as informing future research inquiry, the model can be used by all participants and stakeholders in online collaborative learning to help reduce barriers for BVI and DHH students and improve inclusivity in synchronous online events
Measuring the impact of COVID-19 on hospital care pathways
Care pathways in hospitals around the world reported significant disruption during the recent COVID-19 pandemic but measuring the actual impact is more problematic. Process mining can be useful for hospital management to measure the conformance of real-life care to what might be considered normal operations. In this study, we aim to demonstrate that process mining can be used to investigate process changes associated with complex disruptive events. We studied perturbations to accident and emergency (A &E) and maternity pathways in a UK public hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-incidentally the hospital had implemented a Command Centre approach for patient-flow management affording an opportunity to study both the planned improvement and the disruption due to the pandemic. Our study proposes and demonstrates a method for measuring and investigating the impact of such planned and unplanned disruptions affecting hospital care pathways. We found that during the pandemic, both A &E and maternity pathways had measurable reductions in the mean length of stay and a measurable drop in the percentage of pathways conforming to normative models. There were no distinctive patterns of monthly mean values of length of stay nor conformance throughout the phases of the installation of the hospitalâs new Command Centre approach. Due to a deficit in the available A &E data, the findings for A &E pathways could not be interpreted
Narrative inquiry of language assessment literacy development of pre-service English as a foreign language teacher in China
As an indispensable element in the teaching and learning, assessment not only informs teachers about the effectiveness of the instruction, but also frames student learning. However, pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers across the world have been suggested to possess an inadequate level of language assessment literacy (LAL). The first step is to understand their concerns in LAL. To address the paucity, this narrative inquiry is conducted to explore pre-service EFL teachersâ LAL conceptualizations, self-evaluated proficiency level, evolvement trajectories, and the mediating factors in the evolvement process. Six participants from a pre-service EFL teacher education programme in China were purposefully sampled. The narrative interviews, assessment artifacts, and journals were collected and analyzed by narrative analysis and thematic analysis. The findings showed that the participants conceptualized LAL as a scaled eight-dimensional concept embedded in the social-cultural contexts. They tend to self-evaluate their LAL proficiency ranging from insufficiently qualified, through marginally qualified, to satisfactorily qualified. Besides, the experiential, contextual, and personal mediating factors were identified to participate in LAL evolvement. From bottom-up, the mediating factors participated in constructing pre-service EFL teachersâ knowledge base, shaping their assessment conceptions, filtering the assessment practices, and facilitating the assessor identity construction. With the enhanced LAL, they were more attentive to reflect on the influence of these mediating factors. As to the LAL evolvement trajectory, all the participants went through three mastery levels from the first assessment knowledge base through internalized assessment understanding to assessor identity construction. This study contributes to LAL conceptualization by involving in the neglected stakeholders, pre-service EFL teachers and enriches the application of narrative inquiry in LAL field. The findings can be used as a guidance for the improvement of deficient LAL among pre-service EFL teachers by offering implications for the teacher educators and teacher preparation programmes
Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity
Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century:
For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car,
from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad,
for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world?
How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations
in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication.
The authors and institutions come from all continents.
The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust!
The book is a continuation of the volume âCyber Ethics 4.0â published in 2018 by the same editors
Evidence-based practice to develop social communication competency: listening to the voices of teachers of autistic children
In education research, there is a firm belief that reflecting on inclusive pedagogy is imperative for teachers, as effective inclusion means considering the childâs needs on all levels and adopting appropriate practices to meet these needs in schools (Lerner and Johns 2015). The appropriate practices, recommended for teachers of autistic children should have a research base, with evidence of their effectiveness to show what works to support learning. Such practices are termed evidence-based practices (EBPs). The 2016 Review of Autism Spectrum D[ifference] (ASD) Provision, commissioned by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), has identified that in Ireland there are âsignificant gaps in our knowledge of interventions for supporting children and young people with ASD, at different ages and in different educational settingsâ (Bond et al. 2016, p.139). Despite global efforts, an upsurge in the availability of literature on ASD and the existence of high-quality experimental research, recommendations from empirical studies are not always transmitting into effective practice (Joyce and Cartwright 2020). The researcher sought to document the EBPs, that teachers report as most effective in early yearsâ classrooms, to facilitate social communication competency (SCC), which is acknowledged, nationally and internationally, as significant for autistic children. The research study utilised a detailed systematic literature review to provide an authentic evidence-based foundation that informed data collection, for teachers to use to reflect on their practice. The research adopted a cross-sectional survey as the data collection instrument, which was completed by a purposeful sample of teachers nationally across Ireland. A mixed methods approach to data analysis was embraced, whereby quantitative and qualitative analyses were combined to yield rich data (Creswell and Guetterman 2021). The study adopted Vygotskyâs socio-cultural theory as its theoretical framework for analysis. It unveiled the perspectives of teachers in relation to EBPs, which they employ to teach SCC to autistic children in early yearsâ classrooms. Emerging from the voices of the teachers, seen as key stakeholders in the provision of education for autistic children, several recommendations are suggested for policy and practice, nationally and internationally.N
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