Browsing by Subject "Secondary"

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Does A deeper level of empathy help high school engineering students generate more innovative consumer products?
(2011-08) Garcia, Bobby Jo; Seepersad, Carolyn; Allen, David T.
Secondary level engineering education is a relatively new field of study. This report evaluates an activity in which high school students experience simulated disabilities as they interact with and redesign consumer products. These activities are also known as empathic experiences, in which the designer is challenged to place himself or herself in the position of a lead user who pushes a product to its extremes and experiences various customer needs sooner and more acutely than the typical user. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not these types of empathic experiences help high school students develop more innovative product ideas in a concept generation activity. The results of this study are compared with similar studies that use college students for the subject pool. Differences between subject pools are examined to identify implications for secondary engineering education and assessment.
Empowerment in rural secondary novice science teachers
(2013-12) Stehling, Susan Melinda; Barufaldi, James P.
The purpose of this research was to investigate what can be learned from the professional voices of secondary novice science teachers in rural schools during their first one to three years of their teaching assignment. The results of this research were viewed through the lens of empowerment as defined by Melenyzer (1990) and the six dimensions as defined by Short (1994): autonomy, self-efficacy, professional growth, status, impact, and decision making. This study examined what caused teachers’ empowerment to change in the context of their work environment with a focus on key events or experiences that caused empowerment to change. Data were collected that provided insight into what can be done to strengthen empowerment and improve retention so that rural novice science teachers can reach their full potential. In addition, patterns were examined to determine what strengthened or weakened teacher empowerment so that schools, professors, or science specialists can provide appropriate professional development opportunities for their new teachers and help teachers move along the professional continuum. This research can be utilized to determine what secondary novice science teachers bring to the classroom as well as what they need to become empowered effective teachers. The data revealed some important findings that fill in the gaps from Hobbs; (2004) and (Barufaldi, Hobbs, Moreland, & Schumacker, 2010) empowerment work with veteran (9+years) science teachers and Moreland’s (2011) empowerment research with mid-career (4-8 years) science teachers. Autonomy and decision making were not viewed as distinct dimensions but had significant effects on empowerment, self-efficacy was influenced by student successes, classroom management, and inadequate pre-service training, professional growth closely resembled empowerment, impact was weak but it did exist for many of the teachers, status was higher than expected for all teachers, overall empowerment was higher than expected, attending conferences such as the Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching (CAST) was a major positive force for empowerment, positive reinforcement played a large role in empowerment and leadership was found to either drive empowerment upward or break down empowerment depending on the situation. The results of this study can be used to inform decisions on how to differentiate professional development for science teachers as well as how they can be professionally sustained, empowered, and retained over time.
Investigating the nature of opportunities for proving-related activities in Korean, Singaporean, and United States secondary textbooks
(2023-04-14) Kim, Hangil; Gomez Marchant, Carlos Nicolas; Knuth, Eric J.; Azevedo, Flavio S; Riegle-Crumb, Catherine; Na, GwiSoo
This dissertation examines the nature of proving-related tasks included in textbooks from Korea, the United States, and Singapore. As an international comparative study, the nature of proving-related activities is analyzed in regard to how frequently proving-related tasks appear in textbook, what kinds of proving-related activities are expected from student, what prompts are used to solicit which of proving-related activities from student, and how consistently prompts are used. In this study, proving-related activities include identifying patterns, formulating generalized statements or conjectures, and justifying conjectures. The dissertation is composed of three distinct articles which are in equivalent form of articles seen in peer-reviewed journals. Using Herbel-Eisenmann’s (2007) framework, the first article examines the voice of the text to address the research questions: What prompts are used to solicit which of proving-related activities from student and how consistently prompts are used. The second article reports on lessons learned from the international comparative study on the nature of proving-related tasks discussing issues and challenges of decision making in the process of conducting the study. The last article discusses implications of the dissertation for teachers to implement proving-related tasks with attention to what teachers need to know and what might be helpful to support students when engaging in proving-related tasks. Findings from the dissertation indicate that textbooks tend to contribute a small fraction of the volume to proving-related tasks, that the vast majority of expected proving-related activities is testing the truth of a conjecture with the exception of the Korean textbook, that the select textbook series commonly use prompts, explain, tell, and what with relatively higher frequency than others, and that prompts are used with consistency indicating that prompts are associated with particular kinds of proving-related activities.
The relationship between the theory of transformational leadership and data use in schools : an exploratory study
(2011-05) Goodnow, Elisabeth; Wayman, Jeffrey C.; O'Doherty, Ann; Young, Michelle; Gooden, Mark; Rhodes, Lodis
Nationwide reform efforts strive to improve schooling through a range of approaches including improving the quality of campus leadership, restructuring organizational design, and revamping instruction. National and state education policies reflect the reforms addressed in educational research literature and drive state, district, and campus based improvement initiatives. For example, the more recent influence of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability system has led to a significant increase in the use of data to drive instructional decision-making. Campus leadership is key to both the successful implementation of data initiatives (Wayman and Stringfield, 2006) as well as comprehensive reform efforts (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005). The literature provides a wide array of leadership theories that offer promise in understanding more effective approaches to leading school improvement efforts; however, much of this literature remains conceptual and vague (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins 2008). Data use has gained increasing attention in the literature as well, but the research lacks a strong conceptual framework for leadership. The purpose of this paper is to view data use through the lens of Leithwood’s model of Transformational Leadership in order to explore the linkages between the leadership theory and data use practices and to offer a framework that situates data use as a tool to increase all students’ academic performance and build a democratic and socially just learning organization. The linkages between Transformational Leadership and data use are presented as both bodies of literature are reviewed. The study was guided by the following questions: 1) What are the levels of Transformational Leadership Behaviors exhibited at each campus? 2) What are the data use practices being implemented on each campus? 3) What is the relationship between Transformational Leadership and data use? Two schools served as the sites for the research which drew on both quantitative and qualitative data sources to address the research questions. Results and findings show evidence of Transformational Leadership Behaviors that linked closely with the data use practices. The final discussion offers a preliminary conceptual framework delineating the intersection between the theory of Transformational Leadership and data use in schools.
STEM integration : an analysis of an integrated unit
(2012-08) Kendrick, Kyle Mason; Petrosino, Anthony J. (Anthony Joseph), 1961-; Marshal, Jill A.
In most high school curriculum Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) classes are taught separately but there is increased attention and funding for STEM integration. This paper examines the history of why high schools teach STEM courses separately, how classrooms and curriculum can be integrated, and the benefits and challenges associated with STEM integration. A tool for evaluating integrated units is included with the analysis of a current integrated high school project used in a Precalculus and Scientific Research and Design course taught at a high school.
Toward understanding tricuspid valve leaflet (mal-)adaptation in heart disease
(2022-06-24) Meador, William Diederich; Rausch, Manuel Karl; Sacks, Michael S; Suggs, Laura J; Baker, Aaron B; Ravi-Chandar, Krishnaswamy
The tricuspid valve regulates blood flow between the right atrium and right ventricle of the heart. Clinically severe tricuspid regurgitation, or backflow of blood during systole, presents in 1.6 million Americans and has been linked to increased morbidity and independent prediction of mortality. In most patient cases, tricuspid regurgitation is considered functional, or caused by valve-extrinsic factors. For example, right ventricular remodeling from pulmonary hypertension can immobilize the tricuspid valve leaflets via chordal tethering or dilate the tricuspid annulus beyond leaflet surface area limits. These hindering mechanisms result in tricuspid valve incompetence and regurgitation. In other words, in functional tricuspid regurgitation, tricuspid leaflets are believed to be passive in their own dysfunction. However, tricuspid valve leaflets contain mechanobiologically sensitive valvular interstitial cells which could activate and adapt the leaflet’s fibrous network due to pathological mechanical stimulation, resulting in altered tissue properties and function. Beneficial adaptation, such as leaflet growth, or detrimental maladaptation, such as leaflet stiffening, could thus organically alleviate or contribute to tricuspid regurgitation, respectively, challenging the passive leaflet paradigm in functional tricuspid regurgitation. Prior to our work, it was unknown whether (mal-)adaptation occurs in the tricuspid leaflets in heart disease. To address this, we employed a multiscale biomechanical approach to improve our understanding of tricuspid (mal-)adaptation. In this dissertation, we first characterize the mechanical and microstructural properties of all three tricuspid leaflets in healthy sheep, reporting leaflet-specific distinctions in their collagenous networks and thus, mechanical behaviors. Second, we evaluate the tricuspid valve anterior leaflet’s propensity toward (mal-)adaptation in a biventricular heart failure model. To this end, we report strong evidence of mechanical, structural, compositional, and biological changes to these leaflets on tissue-, matrix-, and cellular-scales. Lastly, we developed a micro-bulge test device capable of simultaneous multi-scale characterizations of minuscule soft tissues. We demonstrate our device in characterizing rat tricuspid valve anterior leaflet mechanical and microstructural properties, in anticipation that small animal models could support investigations to unlock the mechanistic origins of leaflet (mal-)adaptation. With a better understanding of tricuspid valve (mal-)adaptation, our work could inform more efficacious interventional strategies to treat tricuspid regurgitation, improving patient outcomes.