Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences Annual Report 2018-2019

2018-2019 Annual Report of the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences No Limitshttps://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cnhs-archive/1005/thumbnail.jp

Career Outcomes for Participants in a Leadership Development Program

In an attempt to raise the level of leadership competence and to increase the number of qualified candidates for leadership positions within post-secondary institutions, many colleges are supporting leadership development training for faculty and staff. This qualitative case study explores whether participating in a leadership development program resulted in career advancements that can fill leadership gaps. The study\u27s framework, expectancy theory, suggests that individuals who participate in leadership development expect to become leaders. This exploratory case study sought to learn whether, upon completion of a comprehensive leadership development program, participants applied for, and assumed, leadership positions. The leadership program under study was attended by a cohort of 58 participants from a diverse set of 17 institutions across Canada. A purposeful sample of 12 individuals was drawn from this cohort and participated in structured interviews conducted by the researcher. Data were collected and coded to reveal their career progression. The results provided evidence that using leadership development programs to fill a leadership gap is productive, and that the effectiveness of this strategy is enhanced when institutions purposefully select and support participants through all stages of their leadership development. Participants who pursued leadership opportunities indicated the importance of institutional involvement in leadership development. Social change can be achieved by following the recommendations of this study as they illuminate participant expectations, beliefs, and values that help create effective leaders who are more capable of providing better learning environments for students

Perceptions of high school choir teachers in implementing Marzano's practices in the music classroom

Thesis (MME) – Indiana University, Music, 202

Measuring teacher effectiveness through meaningful evaluation : how can reform models apply to general education and special education teachers?

textWhile teacher quality is recognized as a critical component in school reform, and the pursuit of new teacher evaluation systems has gained national attention, the question of whether proposed teacher assessment models meet the needs of special education teachers has gone largely unnoticed. Current efforts to design teacher evaluation processes that accurately distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers must take into account the difficulties of using new, innovative evaluation systems to appraise teachers who serve students with disabilities. Important differences in the roles, expertise, and circumstances in which special education teachers carry out their responsibilities result in challenges related to the use of observation protocols in evaluating instructional practices, obtaining valid measures of student progress, and understanding the relevance of teacher credentials (i.e., degrees earned and certification) in the special education setting. Through this qualitative research dissertation, the researcher sought to gain insight into the perceptions and experiences of special education teachers and administrators to better understand (a) the relationship between teacher evaluation and teacher effectiveness; (b) the ways in which educators approach the challenges of applying teacher evaluation systems for special education teachers; and (c) the ways in which teacher evaluation processes support the professional growth and development of special education teachers.Educational Administratio

Exploring the variability in how educators attend to science classroom interactions

Many researchers assert educators must develop a shared instructional vision in order for schools to be effective. While this research tends to focus on educators' alignment around goals of science classrooms, I argue that we can't assume that educators agree on what they see when they look at science classrooms. In this dissertation, I explore the variability in what teachers and leaders notice in science classroom episodes and how they reason about what they notice. I ground my studies in real classroom practice: a videotaped lesson in the first study and a live classroom observation in the second. In Chapter 2, I discuss the importance of grounding discussions about teaching and learning in classroom artifacts, a commitment that motivates my dissertation: educators may have a shared vision when discussing teaching and learning in the abstract but disagree about whether that vision is being realized in a classroom. I then describe and analyze the video clip I used in my interviews, highlighting moments that I consider to be good teaching and learning. In Chapter 3, I present my first study, in which I showed this episode to 15 different science teachers, science instructional leaders, and principals. I found that participants attended to many different features in the episode, which led to significant disagreement about what is happening in the episode. Additionally, I found that these differences in attention corresponded to differences in how participants were framing the activity of watching the clip. In Chapter 4, I explore the attentional variability of one science instructional leader, Valerie, in multiple contexts. In addition to interviewing Valerie about the videotaped lesson, I also observed Valerie engage in an "observation cycle" with a teacher. Even though Valerie is quite skilled at attending to student thinking in some contexts, I found that Valerie's attention is strongly context-dependent and gets pulled away from students' scientific thinking when she uses a district mandated form. Finally, in Chapter 5 I summarize my findings and describe the implications my work has for both research and practice

Using Video to Reframe the Teacher Evaluation Process as a Professional Learning Experience : An Action Research Study

The purpose of this action research study was to work with a group of teachers to refine an organizational routine dealing with teacher evaluation with the dual goals of (a) increasing the teachers’ sense of professionalism and improving the technical core of their work—instruction— and (b) moving toward a routine that the district will be able to use in the future. The research question that guided this work was, “How do we experience the organizational routine that I developed using video for teacher evaluation for improving teacher practice as compared to the existing teacher evaluation system, and how does our experience inform the routine’s continued development?” This study takes place against the backdrop of over 100 years of American educational history in which teaching has not been treated as a profession as well as a more recent context in which teacher evaluation systems have focused on teacher accountability but failed to emphasize teacher development. As a result, our teacher evaluation system contributes little to the professionalization of teachers and does not align with elements of effective professional development to the improve teacher practice. Therefore, I set out to conduct a study that used the power of an organizational routine to potentially change teachers’ perceptions of being treated as professionals and to foster teacher learning and improve practice. The study took place over two cycles, with the teachers and me collaborating on revisions to the routine for the second of the two cycles. Four findings emerged from this study. First, I explain how the participants viewed the existing evaluation system as transactional and deprofessionalizing. Second, I explore how both the first and second versions of the new routine increased the participants’ perceptions of being treated as professionals due to increased teacher agency in the teacher evaluation process. Third, I examine how the participants and I experienced improving teacher practice through the routine in light of the tenets of effective professional development. Finally, I examine the relational aspects of the study, specifically how relationships affected our experience and what lessons could be learned from the process. This study has implications for teacher evaluation and administrators looking to conduct action research collaboratively with teachers around the use of organizational routines

Computer science: Key to a space program renaissance. The 1981 NASA/ASEE summer study on the use of computer science and technology in NASA. Volume 2: Appendices

Adoption of an aggressive computer science research and technology program within NASA will: (1) enable new mission capabilities such as autonomous spacecraft, reliability and self-repair, and low-bandwidth intelligent Earth sensing; (2) lower manpower requirements, especially in the areas of Space Shuttle operations, by making fuller use of control center automation, technical support, and internal utilization of state-of-the-art computer techniques; (3) reduce project costs via improved software verification, software engineering, enhanced scientist/engineer productivity, and increased managerial effectiveness; and (4) significantly improve internal operations within NASA with electronic mail, managerial computer aids, an automated bureaucracy and uniform program operating plans

Персональне освітнє середовище – як один із трендів сучасної освіти

To meet the needs of the modern information society one must constantly improve the education system. The effectiveness of teaching today’s students fully depends on the implementation and use in the study of modern information and communication technologies, including network services that allow you to create an appropriate pedagogy and technology support base of modern information systems for educational purposes, and effectively organize the electronic learning university environment. An analysis of e-learning environments of modern domestic and foreign universities demonstrates quite a high level of qualitative and quantitative indicators of the implementation of electronic resources for educational purposes. However, despite the relatively high level of organization and content of university portals, the creation and implementation of students‘ personalized e-learning environment, which in turn is based on personalization in a global network, student-centered learning, which acts as a basis for the formation of ICT and key competencies of modern student, is still an open issue. The selfspontaneous creation of personalized e-learning environment does not cover the training needs of students, but is only partially able to satisfy them, as knowledge students cannot improve the quality of both formal and informal learning. This paper focuses on the study of students‘ ICT competencies and their ability to use information and communication technologies to carry out information activities in their professional field. The authors also discuss the results of studies on personalized and adaptive learning, based on consideration of learning styles. Based on a statistical analysis of the pedagogical experiments, some recommendations are suggested for technology training for teachers and students in order to to improve training efficiency

School administrators\u27 perceptions and practices associated with the utilization of eWalk during classroom walk-throughs

In the era of accountability, school administrators must not only meet the demands of merely managing a building but must also serve as the instructional leader and lead learner working to improve both the teaching and learning of the institution. Increasingly, administrators are using the supervisory practice of classroom walk-throughs as a means of formative evaluation to purposefully monitor and evaluate the intended curriculum as well as lead the learning within professional learning communities in order to assess the enacted curriculum as a means to improve student academic achievement. The classroom walk-through process can assist administrators in creating a systemic process to monitor implementation of instructional practices, professional development initiatives, and student learning experiences. Recently, electronic evaluation technologies and tools (EETT) such as eWalk are being utilized in conjunction with walk-throughs as a method for collecting, aggregating, and disaggregating data as well as the catalyst to improve the teaching-learning process. The aggregate data gathered through the use of eWalk allows for the administrators to engage the faculty in meaningful and reflective discussions regarding the schools instructional practices. This study examined how the level of eWalk use, as determined by frequency and years of experience, impacted building-level school administrators\u27 practices and behaviors regarding the intent of conducting classroom walk-throughs. The purpose of this study was to: (a) gather general demographic information; (b) answer general questions regarding information on demographics and frequency of classroom walk-through behavior; (c) descriptive research regarding the perception of the purpose of the function and intent of the administrator as he/she conducts classroom walk-throughs; (d) reveal perceptions of their behavior to function as the lead learner, conducting joint classroom walk-throughs, sharing of the walk-through data results; and (e) explore the associated practices tied to the framework of Balanced Leadership and those behaviors linked to conducting walk-throughs. This study used quantitative research methods to analyze the descriptive and inferential statistics (ANOVA) of administrative practices and their perceptions through a self-reported questionnaire to determine the impact of using eWalk during the classroom walk-through process. The Qualtrics software was the web-based survey tool used to design, administer, and collect respondents\u27 data that was downloaded into Microsoft Excel 2007 and the Statistic Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 for analysis. The survey was sent to an adjusted sample size of 6,325 eWalk users currently serving as administrators in the three states of Georgia, Iowa, and Kentucky with 649 started surveys resulting in an overall response rate of 10.26%. The final data analysis utilized the 411 finished surveys completed by building-level school administrators. The analysis of the results demonstrated that there were no overall statistically significant results between the level of eWalk use in relationship to the impact upon a) the perception and behavior regarding classroom walk-throughs for formative evaluation, b) the perception of themselves as the lead learner, or c) the change in associated practices linked to the Balanced Leadership framework. However, the practice of sharing aggregate classroom walk-through data with the faculty was linked with statistical significance to an increase in practices associated with conducing classroom walk-throughs with the use of eWalk for a) the purpose of formative evaluation, b) functioning as the lead learner of the faculty, and c) the associated practices of MCREL\u27s Balanced Leadership responsibilities. The findings of this study illustrate that the practice of sharing the aggregate data gathered during classroom walk-throughs is a cornerstone to the impact of using eWalk as a means to influence a school leader\u27s behavior and practices aimed at improving teaching and learning in the school. The incorporation of eWalk can be the systemic guiding force that a) solidifies the process for collecting data from walk-throughs, b) provides easy to use reports to aid in analysis, c) allows for the administrator to review data trends prior to prompting feedback to spur reflective dialogue, d) assist in creating a professional learning community revolving around discussion of teaching and learning, and e) the data gathered can be incorporated into continuous improvement plans for both the school and district

Remote access laboratories for preparing STEM teachers: A mixed methods study

Bandura’s self-efficacy theory provided the conceptual framework for this mixed methods investigation of pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) self-efficacy to teach Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. The Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument-B (STEBI-B) was modified to create the Technology Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (T-TEBI). Pre-test and post-test T-TEBI scores were measured to investigate changes in PSTs’ self-efficacy to teach technology. Interviews and reflections were used to explore the reasons for changes in pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy. This paper reports results from a pilot study using an innovative Remote Access Laboratory system with PSTs