Mastery Learning: A Mixed-Methods Study of Teacher Efforts Implementing Key Components of the Mastery Learning Framework

This study works to assess the degree to which the impact of implementation of Mastery Learning can be described through teacher perception, academic achievement, and student growth. Elementary school teachers in a suburb in North Carolina implemented the Mastery Learning framework. The school’s end-of-grade test scores were above state and district averages but did not meet expected academic growth as identified by the state. These results are an indicator that many of the students were proficient but were not growing at an acceptable rate. Beginning in the 2017 school year, teachers attended professional development training on the framework, processes, and best uses of Mastery Learning in a classroom. I created a survey, piloted a focus group, examined responses, and analyzed achievement data to determine the impact of the implementation of Mastery Learning at this site. The impact of Mastery Learning on student achievement and growth were examined, and teacher perceptions were studied. The results from this study led to conclusions that a need exists for students to master necessary skills, either before learning takes places or as a corrective teaching when a deficit is presented in learning, in order to show growth in student achievement scores. My recommendations were for the school to continue to pursue professional learning on Mastery Learning practices. I also recommend continuation of research on many of the Mastery Learning framework aspects in order to maintain high fidelity standards, increase participation from the teachers, and provide students more time to meet growth on achievement tests

The Integration of Literacy and Science: An Ethnographic Case Study set in an Appalachian Elementary School

Policy makers and textbook publishers have long discussed content integration as a necessary means for kindergarten through grade five teachers to provide generalized instruction that addresses all content standards alongside literacy and math standards. Recently, the state of Tennessee published new science standards and corresponding curriculum known as the Teaching Literacy in Tennessee K-3 Unit Starter Professional Learning Packages that encourage teachers within the state to enact cross disciplinary teaching in the areas of literacy and science. This study is focused on two primary grade teachers who implemented the state standards and curriculum as well as Inspire Science, a commercial curriculum selected by the district and purchased by the state. Using qualitative ethnographic research procedures within an interactive sociocognitive model of classroom instruction as a framework for understanding the intersecting roles of teacher, text, and learner (Ruddell and Unrau, 2004), I sought to understand the following research questions: 1) How do two primary grade teachers interpret and enact science and literacy integration? and 2) How does the rural Appalachian setting influence the teachers’ interpretation or enactment of science and literacy integration? Interviews, observations, photos, and other documents were the sources of data for the study. Findings suggested that state policy impacted the synergy of disciplinary integration. Teachers learned through implementation of new curricula in ways that enhanced their teaching practice; yet, they adjusted the curricula to meet the developmental needs of their students; and they submitted substantive ways to improve disciplinary integration. Further, place-based culture appeared embedded in the pedagogy and instruction observed in the study and reported by the teachers. An emphasis on place-based understandings may, in the future, broker rural students’ understandings and interest in science and literacy

Influences of Parent Physical Activity Support and Physical Activity Modeling on Adolescent Physical Activity Engagement and Weight Status

Influences of Parent Physical Activity Support and Physical Activity Modeling on Adolescent Physical Activity Engagement and Weight Statu

What factors influence positive father involvement in African American families?

While positive fathers appear to be a myth in African American communities among current research, this study looks at the common factors among involved fathers in inner city neighborhoods. In a secondary analysis of interviews from happily married Black couples in inner city neighborhoods, overlapping themes emerge exploring the reasons behind positive involvement among fathers. In twenty-two interviews, both husbands and wives explain reasons for continuous father involvement in the lives of their children. Findings include a heavy reliance on faith, marital support and commitment to matrimony and value of responsibility to one’s family. Future research and implications should address standards set by highly involved fathers and establish programs to help other fathers become more involved

Early Black Poetry, Social Justice, and Black Children: Receptions of Child Activism in African American Literary History

In spite of the substantial amount of critical work that has been produced on the recovery of early African American literature in the last few decades, our representations of black authors are still limited. Current studies of early African American poets privilege the identification of African American literature with resistance to slavery. This identification has persisted and has made the field one-dimensional. My dissertation provides reception histories of four early black poets—Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, Frances Harper, and Paul Laurence Dunbar—to argue for and present an expansive understanding of African American literature. A thorough examination of these authors’ circulation histories reveal that editors engaged in children’s literature, a topic that is often overlooked in African American literary history. I argue that editors and sometimes poets recirculated black poetry in the interest of training children for social justice activism. This topic requires scholars to reconsider the complex cultural influences that shape their representations of early black authors; it will also allow for the inclusion of early black authors into white spaces. Forgetting these histories further deepens the gaps between recovered and unrecovered works. Scholars often represent Wheatley as a poet concerned with appropriating western language or subtly resisting western hegemony. Chapter one argues for the importance of Wheatley’s neglected poems by examining an unrecognized circulation history. My research reveals how various kinds of readers often repurposed Wheatley’s poems to provide varying forms of moral uplift that subjugated black children to dominant political forces. By using Arthur Donaldson’s Juvenile Magazine (1811, 1813), Freedom’s Journal (1827-1829), and even The Upward Path (1920), just to name a few, I uncover the ways editors used Wheatley’s moral poetry to teach varying forms of uplift to black children. My second chapter will redirect attention back to Horton as a nature poet for black children to recharacterize Horton’s importance in shaping black identities. Horton’s obscurity attests to the ways scholars have characterized his poetry as simply derivative of white models of poetry. I examine publications such as Eliza Follen’s juvenile magazine, The Child’s Friend (1843-1858), and Lydia Marie Child’s The Freedmen’s Book (1865) to argue that Horton’s poetry was used to teach black and white children rhyme and romantic ideations of nature to reshape their relationship to the turbulent American landscape of nineteenth-century America. Chapter three reorients Harper’s poems in the context of children’s literature to reimagine Harper not only as an advocate for black and white adults, but for children as well. My research refocuses commonly anthologized poems to consider how they speak to black children in the mid-nineteenth and late-twentieth centuries. The Anglo-African Magazine (1859-1860), William Wells Brown’s The Black Man (1863), and The Freedmen’s Book (1865), among others attest to the ways Harper’s poems were reimagined for child audiences. Chapter four relocates Dunbar in contexts of children’s literature that sought to make Dunbar the ideal early black writer for black children. Relocating Dunbar as a children’s poet rouses more scholarly attention toward Dunbar’s Christmas poems and poems that went beyond racial themes. My analysis of Readings from Negro Authors (1931) and Christmas Gif’(1965) enables an unique perspective on Dunbar’s representation. My conclusion surveys the patterns that emerge in the representations of Wheatley, Horton, Harper, and Dunbar in several American literature anthologies and newspapers throughout four different periods. The collections, Over the River and Through the Wood (2014) and Who Writes for Black Children (2017) have garnered attention for topics of early black children’s poets within African American literature, though more work remains to be done in ciphering through the messiness of nineteenth-century periodical culture

For You Will Not Abandon My Soul: Co-optation, Deradicalization and Renormalization of the Black Radical

This thesis focuses on the exploration of state-sanctioned violence against Black radicals and radical Black organizations and the essentialism of cooptation, deradicalization and renormalization as a fundamental part of white racism. The thesis further explores the ways in which Black radicals and Black social movement organizations from the height of the Black civil rights movement (1964-1969) were de-radicalized and stripped of their intellectual and social property by the effects of power exhibited by the state. Concurrently, I also argue that these same radicals and organizations would later have many of their “radical” practices, culturally co-opted / appropriated by the white legal structure. I explore what Foucault writes as the state\u27s attempt to reanimate what is useful and what Bell describes as white and Black “interest convergence”. Both theoretical viewpoints though traditionally not used together, complement one another. Foucault gives us why the state is attempting to create docile bodies, where Bell explores who is affected because of the state’s co-option of ideas for the greater white state

Knowledge Management Practice Strategies in Project-Based Organizations

Companies globally have lost profit each year because of the lack of intra-organizational knowledge sharing. The purpose of this descriptive, multiple case study was to explore the knowledge management practice strategies that project management business leaders use to improve knowledge sharing in project-based organizations. Nine project management business leaders from 4 project-based organizations in metro Atlanta, Georgia completed individual Skype/phone semistructured interviews, and 5 project team members completed an in-person focus group discussion and an interview questionnaire. Knowledge management was the conceptual framework for this study, the basis for understanding the world around project management business leaders, and the implementation of knowledge management practice strategies for knowledge sharing. The individual interviews, focus group discussion, and interview questionnaire yielded the lived experiences of project management business leaders and the perceptions of project team members regarding knowledge sharing in their project-based organizations. The data were analyzed through data source triangulation and cross-case synthesis, which resulted in various themes such as communication, practices to overcome barriers, and a centralized resource center. The findings of this study may effect positive social change and the improvement of knowledge sharing by promoting the worth, dignity, and development of individuals, communities, organizations, cultures, or societies

Short-term Outcomes of Saffron Supplementation in Patients with Age-related Macular Degeneration: A Double-blind, Placebo-controlled, Randomized Trial

In modern pharmacological medicine, saffron is used for various purposes due to its antioxidant effect. This study evaluated retinal function after treatment with saffron supplementation during a follow-up period of 6 months to provide further insight into the efficacy and safety considerations of this treatment. Sixty patients with wet or dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) were randomly assigned to receive oral saffron 30 mg/d or placebo supplementation for 6 months. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), electroretinography (ERG), fluorescein angiography, and visual acuity testing were performed at baseline and 3 and 6 months after treatment. The main outcome measures were OCT, ERG amplitude, and implicit time. Six months after treatment, no statistically significant decrease in OCT results was observed between the groups with dry AMD (P = 0.282). However, there was a statistically significant increase in ERG results between the groups at 3 months after treatment (P = 0.027). In addition, there was a significant decrease in OCT results between groups with wet AMD at the follow-up (P = 0.05). Finally, there was a significant increase in ERG findings between the groups with wet AMD at 3 months after treatment (P = 0.01), but these changes decreased at 6 months after treatment (P = 0.213). Daily supplementation with 30 mg of saffron for 6 months may result in a mid-term, significant improvement in retinal function in patients with AMD.Â