Browsing by Subject "Student Engagement"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Aesthetic Responses to Literature and Their Effects on Student Engagement
    (2015-07) Boardman, Alyssa
    The purpose of this mixed methods study is two-fold. First, I investigated the effects of poetic or music texts on student responses. I focused on the different types of responses the students had, how their responses changed, and the teacher's role. Second, I investigated how aesthetic responses influenced student motivation; I examined the impact this type of read aloud has on student motivation, particularly relating to engagement. My study draws from the frameworks of reading response theory, aesthetics, and reading motivation. Data sources included surveys, observation checklists, video and audio recordings, photographs, student artifacts, student and teacher interviews, and field notes. Data were collected in a multi-age first, second, and third grade elementary school classroom. Findings indicate that the use of musical texts in read alouds support students as they responded aesthetically to texts. Findings also indicate that incorporating music and video that relates to the musical texts being read aloud enhances the aesthetic responses of students. Teacher questions, reactions, modeling, and scaffolding provide students with different ways in which to engage with the text.
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    The dynamic components of citizenship education and student engagement: lessons for leaders and educators
    (2010-05) Anderson, Timothy J.
    The study utilized a traditional qualitative case study approach to investigate two curricula offered at a single middle school in a suburb of a major metropolitan area. Three groups of participants, totally 50 individuals, were interviewed. Participant groups included middle school administrators, middle school teachers, and middle school students. Interviews were analyzed by using idiosyncratic analysis within each participant group and nomothetic analysis across all participant groups. Interview analysis was augmented with document analysis. Pre-interview questionnaires were used to provide a prelude to this qualitative study.Information from a review of four focused literature sets provided the foundation for the conceptual framework for this study. Through an exploration and review of literature, several key concepts were found to contribute to student engagement. The themes that consistently appeared in literature that were germane to this study were divided into three main categories: academic engagement, civic engagement, social engagement. Data were analyzed by examining characteristics that impact student engagement identified by administrators, teachers and students. Major findings of the study revolved around the characteristics most often perceived by participants as causing student academic, civic, and social engagement. Without a doubt, the components of citizenship education that produce full student engagement are numerous. In sum, full student engagement is the result of a variety of external and internal components whose nature can be characterized in terms of "doing", "being", or both. A newly introduced Model for Capturing Descriptions of Engagement (Figure 3, p. 237) summarizes these various components, and suggests the difficult reality that exists when interpreting qualitative data in a highly quantitative paradigm.
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    Organizational Learning for Student Success: Exploring the roles of institutional actors
    (2016-06) Taylor, Leonard
    Calls for institutional onus in efforts to increase student success, and the increasingly data-centered culture in higher education institutions, make it especially important to understand the roles that administrators, staff, and faculty play. This study explores institutional actors’ roles in supporting student success, particularly in their consumption and application of research knowledge, institutional data, and best-practice to inform institutional efforts. This multi-site case study conducted at three public, research universities; included semi-structured interviews and document analysis to generate emergent themes, and critical discourse analysis to further interrogate those themes. Findings suggest that institutional structure, culture, and politics present explicit and implicit barriers to enhancing student success. Student success efforts are largely predicated on institutional data, with little discussion of research knowledge to guide practice. Additionally, discourses that emerged from interview narratives reveal how institutional actors’ own dispositions and paradigms sometimes impede their student success work. Continuing to understand how institutional actors and factors inform student success efforts helps expand institutions’ capacity to improve student success efforts and subsequent educational outcomes for students.
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    Student Voice in Education Policy: Understanding student participation in state-level K-12 education policy making
    (2019-07) Holquist, Samantha
    Purpose: K-12 education systems are expected to prepare students to participate in society, but education leaders often neglect to ask students how policy decisions affect their learning. Educators have begun to incorporate student voice into classroom, school, and district decision making. However, students are still a largely untapped resource in statewide K-12 education policy change. One reason may be that there is no clear understanding of how students may participate. The purpose of this study is to examine how students, through student voice efforts, collectively participate in and influence the policy-making process for state-level K-12 education decision making. Research Methods/Approach: This study employs a qualitative case study and utilizes document analysis, observations, and interviews with students and adults participating in two statewide student voice efforts. Findings: Students are able to participate in and advocate for policy reform adoption in the K-12 education policy process. Statewide student voice efforts are generally structured to include the following components: (a) power shifts, (b) shared practices, (c) adult supports, and (d) student relationships. Within these structures, students participate in the policy making process by (a) identifying a problem and policy solution, (b) assessing social, political, and economic capital available to move a policy forward, (c) building a coalition for support and to gain access to additional resources, and (d) engage in grassroots and grasstops advocacy. Students utilize their status to gain power in the grassroots arena; however, this status also decreases their power in the grasstops arena. Conclusions and Implications: This study reveals the importance of providing a structured space for students to access support from their peers as well as adults when engaging in student voice efforts. It also demonstrates the importance of shifting different aspects of power within student voice efforts, particularly social order power dynamics, to ensure that student voice efforts do not become homogeneous and representative of a particular student voice. Finally, it shows the ways in which students harness their own power and access the power of others in order to engage in the policy process.